Last weekend I was invited by the North Carolina Fulbright Chapter (a local organisation of ex Fulbrighters and friends of Fulbrighters who put on events for current, ex, and friends of, Fulbrighters!) to have an historical Trolley bus tour of Raleigh. Charlotte may be the largest city in the state but Raleigh is officially the state capital.

Named after Sir Walter Raleigh, it is a planned city, so has an easy-to-follow grid layout. Raleigh is home to North Carolina State University and forms part of what is called locally, the ‘Research Triangle’ (including Duke University and North Carolina Central University in Durham, and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill). Raleigh has some lovely old houses with a good dose of Southern character, including rocking chairs on the porch, and it gives parts of the city a relaxed feel.

Downtown Raleigh is mainly museums and businesses. There are almost no shops, with the large stores all in out-of-town shopping centres. One of the parts of the tour I found fascinating was that in part of the pavement in Raleigh, the bricks used were made by prisoners in the late 1800s.

The prisoners were required to write their names on the top brick of the pile of bricks they had made each day so that their productivity could be measured. What this means is that some of the bricks in the pavement have prisoners names on them. Our historical tour introduced us to many of the key buildings and sights of Raleigh.

The tour ended with doughnuts and coffee at Krispy Kreme (which apparently originates from Winston-Salem in North Carolina). After the tour, my housemate Babu, and I walked into downtown Raleigh to have a closer look at some of the sights we had seen on the tour and we decided to visit the North Carolina Museum of History.

They had a wonderful exhibition of quilting, which was a nice surprise for me. I learned masses, particularly about the differences between the quilts of poor women versus rich women in North Carolina. Interestingly, although I knew that poor people used recycled flour sacks in the quilts they made, I didn’t know that some of the flour companies realised this and started putting patterns on their flour sacks! It was a reminder of the important place quilts have played in the history of parts of the USA.

This weekend, I decided to drive to Greensboro to a shopping centre with an REI (Recreational Equipment Inc), outdoor equipment cooperative store, that I know through my husband Allan having some old, and still in good use, REI kit from when he cycled across the USA in 1988. It turns out to be one of my husband’s and one of my brother’s favourite shops. So I wanted to have a good look and see if there might be some Christmas presents lurking in there. What a great store, and I particularly love that they close their stores on black Friday each year to encourage people not to shop but instead to spend the day clearing up waste and rubbish from wild places and outdoor areas. I also couldn’t resist a trip to the Greensboro Barnes and Noble to compare notes with the local Burlington store near Elon. I think they are about the same size actually, but any excuse for a look in a bookshop!

I asked my housemate, Kristen for suggestions of local walks, as I am not very aware of where the best nature reserves are and places to get out for walking. The issue I have is that as a newcomer I don’t know the area well and I’m a single female wanting to go walking in the wild. So I have to make some judgments about what is sensible. Anyway, today I found a very nice local nature reserve called Shallow Ford Nature Reserve on the Haw River. It’s only about 10 minutes drive in the car from where I’m living and it looked stunning today.

However, I still wonder whether going for a walk in the woods (not the Bill Bryson, Walk in the Woods – in the Appalachians), on my own is really the smartest idea. I may need to do more walking around campus (which is stunning), and in some local parks that have been suggested (that are slightly nearer habitation), unless I go walking with a friend. Anyway, today’s walk was lovely and it was good to get out into the countryside.

I’m giving two talks at Elon University this week and then I head off to Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania on Wednesday for a conference. I then fly to Salt Lake City in Utah to give a talk and explore a little, and then I go to Philadelphia and Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania after that, so I’ll be on the road for 2 weeks. I’ll try to keep blogging along the way!

Trips to Raleigh and Greensboro, and a walk in the woods / Star spangled banter by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0