Mayberry AKA Mount Airy

Mount Airy is the birthplace of Andy Griffith, they like to bill themselves and the "real" Mayberry. 

The show wasn't filmed there, there is nothing "authentic" there except Andy Griffith's birth home, which you can rent out to stay in for your vacation.  (I would really like to meet people that choose to stay in Andy Griffith's house for their honeymoon, I think they would be very nice people.)  There is an Andy Griffith Museum, and a Andy Griffith playhouse.  Other than that, things are rather opportunistic. 

You have a barbershop, why not name it Floyd's?

Or build a garage the looks like Goober Pyle's...

 And while you are at it build a courthouse next door...

Then you can get some old cars and paint them up like patrol cars and give people tours. 

It was fun to drive through the town and see the sites, for us, for our kids, they only vaguely knew what we were talking about.  It makes me wonder how much longer will even this tenuous fame mean anything.

Hunger Games District 12

 

As we were driving home from South Carolina, we stopped to see Henry River Mill Village in North Carolina.  It is an old abandoned Appalachian mountain town that is conveniently located off of I-40.  And it is also the filming location for The Hunger Games.

 

  

Here is the Mellark Bakery

What is cool about this town is that it is not a set, it was a real town.

 

 They offer tours, but I think we had much more fun just going around exploring on our own.

A Whole Other World

So we went to Darlington an old track in South Carolina for a race weekend.
51 weeks a year, Darlington is a small rural town, and its only interest in that it is the seat of Darlington County.  One week a year, the NASCAR circus comes and turns Darlington into something else.  As my son said, "Going to a race is like going to another world, but the world moves around to different places".  So here is a bit of an introduction to this fun, diverse, unique world that is a race weekend.

The Track seats 60,000 people, and that doesn't include people that camp in the infield and outside, exhibitors, officials and race teams.  Everyone converges on one town from Thursday to Sunday ready for the show.

 Allegiances in order: America, the South and NASCAR. 

 

These 5 semis transport the broadcast trucks for Speed TV.  They don't broadcast the race, just pre and post race programming.  Fox, who broadcasts the race, has 16. 

Before you get to the track is the midway where exhibitors have displays.  Restaurants, food companies, insurance companies, military branches, ministries, and anything else you can think of have displays with games, announcers, give aways, or just really cool displays.

After hours on the midway, it is time to go inside.  The national anthem, a prayer and 4 F-16's later

Someone yells "Drivers start your engines.  43 cars with 750 horsepower make the grandstands vibrate under your feet.

 

The power as the cars take the track is overwhelming, the entire crowd of over 60,000 are on their feet waiting for the green flag to drop.

 

Darlington is unique on the circuit.  To go fast, the cars run right up next to the outer wall.

 The cars in this shot are blurry because they run around the track around 130 miles per hour, meaning they circle the track in 30 seconds.  The closer to the wall they go, the faster they can go.  When that doesn't work the cars scrape the wall, leaving what is called the "Darlington Stripe" 

 Then the sun sets and the lights come on. Eventually the laps tick down and the race is over.

The whole show packs up onto trucks and goes on to the next track, 39 times a year.

I had a conversation with a man today about Egypt.  He was a troubleshooter for a multinational food company.  He had gone to Egypt because the company was having trouble getting a new pita bread factory opened.  There were problems with infrastructure and equipment and many other little things. 
While he was there, the superintendant of the factory said he wanted to show him something.  They drove just a couple of blocks and stopped on a street corner.  There a man with a huge bowl of dough was rolling out pita bread.  The two men weighed a few pieces of dough, and saw that the pieces were completely uniform.  The superintendant said, "This man works 18 hours without stopping, then rests for three days, then does it all again." 
They went back to the factory and got it running.
The troubleshooter said he was there just long enough to get the factory running, then went home. "It will break down after I am half an hour out of the country but I finally got it running". 

Guess what this is.

Looks like a stair case doesn't it?  But it is actually the interior of the Red Pyramid in Dashur.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Pyramid

Here is another view.

The writing on the right side of the picture is graffiti (probably candle smoke from the 1800's) on the inside.  The pyramids at Giza were amazing, but overall, I enjoyed our visit to Dashur more. The pyramid is imposing and more grand looking on the landscape, and the interior is this awesome corbled vault. It was less crowded: at Giza there were a couple hundred tourists and double that many people trying to sell us things.  Here there were a few other people and, oddly, only one person trying to sell anything, and he was asleep.  (That happened a lot during Ramadan). It was also a fun place to go, driving over the Egyptian country side and seeing the villages and farms.  The only downside was the smell, which was worse than the  NYC subway.  

Somewhere I want to go - Day 5

Somewhere I have never been but would love to go: 
I Love Barbecue.  Living in the south for sometime I learned to recognize places to get good barbecue, (more about that later) and heard about the world of competitive barbecue.  Sometimes the food network has competitive barbecuers on TV and it looks like so much fun.  They have giant elaborate grills and smokers on trailers, so they can travel to different barbecue competitions around the country.  Inside the rigs are large unmarked jars of spice rubs, whose recipe they guard with zeal.  At the competition, they tend the fires with all the care of a steam train fire man, watching for hot spots and flare ups.  The smell of burning wood and slow cooking meat must be amazing.
Writing this, I looked up barbecue competitions, and there are many more than I ever imagined.  I think I will be doing this soon.

My Rules for Finding Good Barbecue:
1. If it is a chain with more than 3 locations, or if those locations are more than 200 miles apart: -50
2. If the location is in a strip mall: -20
3. If the building has an indoor seating -10
4. Add 5 points for each of the following that is missing; Public bathroom, doors, windows, floor.
5. If the location is a guy in a trailer with a picnic table outside +25
6. If the trailer is next to the interstate -5
7. If you are given a printed menu -10
8. If the menu has more than 10 things on it -10
9. If the menu has fish -10 or vegetarian dishes -50
10. If most of the signs are written in magic marker and taped somewhere +10
11. If the cook is also the person that takes your order +10
12. If the cook is related to the person that takes your order +8
13. If there are utensils -5, if they are not plastic -10
14. If the food is served on anything that has to be washed -10
15. If there are other people eating there who the cook has known for more than 20 years +15
16. Add 5 points if you are in a state that was part of the Confederacy

Rialto Beach, Olympic National Park

Colorado is just about as land-locked as a state gets. So our trip to Washington was the first time our kids got to see the ocean or a beach.  The idea of high tide and low tide was totally new to us.  We found out the tides are more extreme at full and new moon, and we were there in between.  Still, for people totally unfamiliar the the ocean and tides at all, it was a whole new world.  We spent most of our time at Olympic on the beach, I would love to go back and hike more in the interior.