Wednesday, June 7, 2023 - Today, we drove from Winston-Salem, NC about 100 miles to Raleigh, NC the capital of the state. We started out in light rain, but ended up without rain, but overcast. Considerable maintenance along I-40, but overall, the roads were good. The drive took about 2.5 hours (we go slow). We did get sent the wrong way by the GPS due to maintenance being conducted on a bridge. Luckily, I was able to make a U-turn and get into the park via and alternate entrance. It all worked out fine.

We arrived at the fairgrounds and picked a spot that we liked. There were many slots available. We then called security and a lady came to our spot to collect our fees. Cost is $35 per day. After setting up the rig, we drove into Raleigh to go to the bank. We had to go to a Chase bank to put some money into a Certificate of Deposit. After that was done, we drove through the town of Raleigh and we circumnavigated the state Capitol building a couple of times. The town of Raleigh is really spread out. The main part of town was nice with some quaint places to eat and shop. We then drove back to the RV to relax and plan the next day's activities. We are only here for two nights before we head over to the cost of North Carolina to the Kitty Hawk/Elizabeth City area.

Thursday, June 8, 2023 - Today we are off to ride the Neuse River Bike Trail located just to the east of Raleigh. It is 30 miles long and all paved. It also winds through the countryside with very few road crossings or places to interact with cars. The trail was awesome and there are no (well, just one) places where you have to cross roads to continue on the trail. We saw tons of squirrels along the trail and some of them were of the "Kamakaze" variety. They would run back and forth in front of you daring you to hit them. When we approached on squirrel, it jumped straight up about two feet into the air and did a complete flip before it took off to climb a tree. We also had a beautiful, speckled fawn run along side us for quite a while. It was fast and bounced up and down. Another deer ran across the road in front of us while at the park where we started the ride. During one section, there were large fields of yellow flowers to view as we rode along; it was super pretty. The Neuse River Trail is 30 miles long and very smooth all the way. There is one section that has been closed for about three miles due to construction of the infra-structure of a housing project, but we drove the the other end of the construction to continue our ride, since we started in the middle of the ride. We ended up with 41 miles and a great day on a beautiful trail. We also met Dan and Cathy on the trail and we rode with them for a while coming back to our start point. They are super-nice and were also planning to drive to the Virginia Creeper Trail in a couple of weeks to ride this trail as we plan to do too. We tried hard to talk them into going on the road as RVers, but Dan still plans to work for about five years. Very nice people whom we hope to meet again on the trail some time.

Friday, June 9, 2023 - We drive to the cast and Elizabeth City to stay at a Coast Guard Air Station near Kitty Hawk, NC.