Vacation Days 1-3

 My, oh my so much time has passed since I last posted.   I just got back from a wonderful, but full vacation. We spent the 10th through the 19th of this month on the road, hitting up various cities in South Carolina, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, and random places in between for rest stops and such. I’m hoping to do maybe 4-5 posts of the vacation, just splitting things up because there is so much we did, and hopefully throw some cards in as well so not to bore you. 

Of the many things we did, the main things were visiting the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, NC, visiting the Columbus Zoo in Columbus, OH, and catching a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. Today, I am going to post about our first 2 days, which were spent mainly in Concord, NC, which is just outside of Charlotte. 

After work on Friday, we passed by a Crystals, and got lunch. I got 4 corn pups, and they were probably the best I ever had. We drove to just outside of Charleston, SC to have lunch with my Aunt Val. She was there to help out my cousin Heather who had just had a baby. We went to eat at a burger place called Smash Burger. It was a pretty decent place to eat. I got a BBQ bacon burger. It had bacon and pulled pork on it. The burger was surprisingly tasty, almost drawing the attention away from the saltiness of the bacon. After dinner, we drove to Concord, NC, making it there around 1AM. The next day we saw some of Karens family, and went to the Concord Mills Mall. That place was huge, and I’m spite of the enormous crowd there, every store had people up front ensuring that the stores weren’t over capacity. All of the places we saw put Florida to shame with all of the Covid precautions. I got some Chinese food at the mall for lunch, which consisted of bourbon chicken, orange chicken, and fried rice. For dinner, we went to Texas Roadhouse with Karens cousin Tiffany and her husband Matt. Matt is a big Red Sox fan, and they went to Fenway a few years ago. For dinner, I had a ribeye with broccoli and mashed potatoes. I ordered the steak medium and it was very rare. I would’ve got it recooked, but it was getting late and I figured I would at least try it. It was hard to chew and not very flavorful, but Texas Roadhouse gets them right 99 percent of the time. After dinner, we went to Krispy Kreme and got a dozen donuts, plus 3 of their new Oreo donuts. The donuts were probably the best ones I ever had, and I figured the Oreos wouldn’t be too sweet, but I was pleasantly surprised, as the donut sweetened up the Oreo. 

The next morning, one of my 3 younger sisters, Holly, met up with me. She is 2 years younger than me, and has 6 kids. She and her family are going to Malaysia soon to do mission work, so it may be the last time we see them. We met up at IHOP and I had a meal with bacon, hash browns, toast, and pancakes. I didn’t eat the pancakes, but the toast was some of the best I have ever had. I sat next to her husband Jason, and got to hear him tell me some good stories of a temporary job he got at a bowling alley. Jason is a blast to talk to, and I’ll miss him. It was a fun time with the huge crowd of 7 total kids and the 4 adults. After breakfast, we drove to Asheboro and went to the North Carolina Zoo with Matt and Tiffany. 

We found out about the NC Zoo after watching the Secrets of the Zoo show. It goes behind the scenes of the NC Zoo, and the brand actually has 3 other zoos that it films (Bronx, Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, FL, and the Columbus Zoo in OH). If we hadn’t started watching the show during the pandemic, the 2 zoos probably wouldn’t have made our trip. The first pic is of their oldest silverback gorilla Mo. The pictures aren’t in order, and I have so many that I’m not going to try to bother fixing them. 

Kyler following a Victoria Crown Pigeon. 

Some turtles. 

Front entrance. 

Kyler and a porcupine. 

Penguins!!!

Kyler trying to catch another bird. 

The family on the tram back to the parking lot. 

The desert building with Tiffany and Matt leading the way. 

At the zoo, I had a chocolate/vanilla swirl soft serve on a cone, and some cotton candy. For dinner, we got Jim ‘n ‘Nick’s BBQ. They have good cheese biscuits, but for some reason, they weren’t as good as I remember them. I had some pulled pork, and it was decent. I don’t generally like BBQ sauce on anything but I think it might have been a good idea to use some. 

On to the cards I promised. One of the days in Michigan, we went to their local Meijer grocery store. In the toy aisle, we found a shelf full of baseball cards. They had blasters, fat packs, and hanging boxes of Donruss and Heritage, and some tins of Topps. I picked a hanging box and fat pack of Donruss, and a blaster of Heritage. We went back a few days later, and the shelf was completely empty. At least I hit the jackpot once during 2021. I got a handful of favorite players, Rays/Tigers, and pulled World Series highlights cards from both Rays wins. I didn’t take pics of most of the cards, but here are the favorite players.  

The Logan Gilbert autograph is actually from CJ, who I did some customs for so he could add them to his YouTube baseball simulation channel. The deGrom cards were flying out of the packs, and I was stoked to pull 2 Casey Mize cards. Too bad that they probably won’t be worth crap when everyone realizes that Topps is overproducing their cards. They might not be as plentiful as ‘88 Donruss, but they certainly aren’t rare. They are just sitting in some flippers garages or basement waiting for them to lower the prices so they will be purchased. I really hope this hobby turns around, or we aren’t going to have it for long. 

Well, that’s enough for now. I’ll try to do a few more days of the trip in the next post. 

Thanks for reading my latest post. 

We miss you, Fuji!!

-Jeremy