Appalachian Vacation

A is for Appalachians

All sorts of funny things can happen when you go on a vacation, especially when you are with your family.

My family and I was going on a vacation to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, as that was where I had concluded I wanted to go on my twelve year trip, a trip everyone in my family gets to take when one of my siblings turns twelve. This is, for my immediate family, the last twelve year trip, as I am the youngest.

We were driving to North Carolina, and as such had to pass through the Appalachian Mountains to get there. Seeing as the Appalachians were so beautiful, we rented a cabin in the mountains for a few days, just north of a small town.

On our first night in this small Appalachian town, we
went to see what shops and other intriguing things they had there. We found a chocolate shop instantly, and it was positively glorious! Chocolates covered nearly every surface in the shop. They had everything from chocolate bon-bons, to praline fudge. My siblings bought some, and we continued on with our ramblings. As we came into the town square, we saw people sprinkling boxes of cornmeal on the road. The town was preparing for a square dance. As the townsfolk danced, they were being taught new steps for different dances. Eventually, my parents finally convinced me to join the dancing. I decided I would dance, but I wasn’t going down alone, I would dance only as long as my brother George went along with me. So we learned the next dance, and had a great deal of fun during the energetic square dance.

That wasn’t the only thing the town had to offer, however. For dinner, we walked through the streets, and looked for someplace that seemed promising. We found a thai restaurant that had good food, nice music, and bright colors.

After we finished dinner, we wandered around the town some more.
Eventually, we came upon a very large store, that was in essence, a mountain town’s Walmart. I don’t remember what it was called now, but it was massive, slightly eclectic, and was chock full of humorous knick-knacks. The store had that old-fashioned-general-store-with-everything-under-the-sun type charm that only older buildings with hardwood floors and older themed goods have. The store was a wonderful place to find. It had all sorts of things that I found great use for, come Christmas time. The main floor was clothes. Clothes for men, women, teens, children, and even for the pets. They had something for everyone. The upstairs floor, was camping gear. From bug spray, to sleeping bags, or roasting sticks, to hammocks, this store had it all. The best is yet to come, for the downstairs portion of the store, was better, or at least more appealing than anything else above. I’ll start with the more mundane parts of it first. In the back, there was uncountable amounts of cooking we, in every color under the sun. There was three sets of shelves, if not more, of Willow Tree art work, most of which I had never seen the like before. There was also a massive section dedicated to children’s toys. I found all sorts of interesting things there, many of which were Dr. Seuss themed, none of which I got. The best out of all this, was the very front part of this basement full of intriguing things; the candy section. It was
a child’s dream come true. The candy section took up a quarter of the space in a very spacious basement. It was full of old fashioned candies, some newer candies, but no matter the era of their origin, they were all delicious.

We got back to the cabin later that night, and stayed in the next day, just talking, playing games, and having fun.
My parents had to leave early, because my dad had a meeting in one of the Carolina’s, and had to go to it, leaving myself and the rest of my siblings to drive by themselves to our vacation house near the Outer Banks.This was just fine, we got up very early, so that we would get there before dark, but everything didn’t go quite according to plan. We got up, made sure we hadn’t forgotten anything, packed up the cars, locked the door, and began to leave. When my older brother Mike wasn’t following us, we stopped driving to see what was wrong. His emergency parking brake was stuck. He couldn’t get it off, which meant he couldn’t drive. We luckily still had access to the cabin we had been staying in, so we went inside, and looked up a mechanic nearby. It was about 6:30 at this point. We found one, and they had to tow my brother’s car to the shop to release the parking brake. It was eventually fixed, but we didn’t end up leaving our mountain cabin until about 10:30 that
morning.

Life Lesson: Spending time with your family on a vacation is lots of fun, but that doesn’t mean something unexpected won’t happen.