North Carolina Trip: Highs & Lows

Evan and I headed to North Carolina for 4 days from Saturday February 21st until Tuesday February 24th... or so we thought. It was just a"quick trip" to see family... but a blizzard hit at home and we could not find a flight back home to the airport I had parked at until very, very late Friday February 27th and we arrived home at 2 am on February 28th. 

Evan had been asking to go down "one last time" to see his cousins before he starts college in the fall and we were able to make that happen. My sister, her husband, and her two teen/young adult sons had just moved in January and live much closer to my mom now so we figured this was the perfect time to go. I only had to pay for flights and my mom offered to chauffeur us around for the weekend plus got their spare bedrooms set up for us to stay with them. I thought this would be a cheap trip as well but added airfare costs, much longer parking at the airport, and filling our days with things to do added up quickly. 

We left Friday night to sleep at a hotel near the airport that included parking and a shuttle... only to find that the shuttle was a one way Lyft voucher. We slept horribly and found that when we woke Lyft still had not found us a driver. We drove ourselves and I parked in the parking garage; quickly calculating how much 4 days would cost us. 

Our flights were short and bumpy and we had an hour or so layover in Philly on our way from Providence to Wilmington. We arrived around lunch and headed out to Our Crepes & More. It was delicious!

 

I was so excited to see sweet tea on the menu; we don't have sweet tea in New England.

We visited with my sister and her family and saw their new house then headed back to my mom's for dinner. 

The next morning after breakfast Evan and I walked all around their neighborhood while my parents prepped food for a cook out. My family started arriving around 2-- both my sisters are/have families of 4 and my aunt & uncle live in the area too so we had 16 people gathered around my mom's kitchen island eating, talking, laughing and catching up since most of us hadn't seen each other in a few years. 

 

Monday we decided to tour the Bellamy museum with my sister and nephew. We did spend the morning with my parents touring nearby towns of South Port and Oak Island before heading to the mansion in the late afternoon. 

I spent the entire hour ride to the mansion trying to find us new flights home. We were supposed to fly home Tuesday afternoon but our flights were canceled since a blizzard hit the east coast. The airport we were flying into got over 3 feet of snow in 24 hours; in fact Alec's college canceled all in person classes/exams and let the students that could & wanted to start their spring break early (though the earliest Alec could get out of the city was Thursday. 

 

we ended almost every night playing board games

 

Tuesday we decided to head to the Cameron Art Museum since the earliest flight I could book on us to get back to Providence wasn't until Friday! We did some laundry in the morning and then headed to the museum around lunch. It ended up only taking 30 minutes and then we went to the Cotton Exchange for a late lunch. 

this glass art display was so neat!

Wednesday we decided to go on a nature walk with my aunt and then met her husband at Pizzetta's for a late lunch/early dinner. 

 

we walked around my parent's neighborhood in the morning 

playing Trivia Adventure

Thursday Evan declared he was having computer game withdrawals and decided to spend the afternoon at my sister's house with her sons who he often games with online from home. Meanwhile my aunt came to my parent's house with some games for the 5 of us to have a game day. By this point both Evan and I were getting extremely home sick... and we had to do yet another load of laundry. Boy did I ever wish I had packed more clothes/choices and things like my activity tracker charger, razor, shaving cream, laptop, etc. Thing I never thought I'd need for a 4 day trip but after nearly a week I was kicking myself for that decision. 

 

 I had a horrible time trying to check in for our flight and ended up having to call the airline direct. After yelling HUMAN at the computer I finally got a representative on the line; turns out when the airline rebooked us they only linked one ticket to the flight! Luckily they were able to fix everything and I got us checked in with boarding passes downloaded to my phone.

 

Sadly, we woke to several message pinging the app the next morning that our first outbound flight was delayed... then it got pushed back again... and again... to where our first flight was landing AFTER the second flight was supposed to have landed us back home! I went and booked us on a direct flight home from another airline through Breeze for that same night and managed to get a refund for our delayed/canceled flight from American Airlines.  Since our flight wasn't until 9 and it was pouring rain we decided to head to the  bowling alley. 

 

After 2 rounds of bowling (only 4 of us actually bowled), we headed to my sister's house to visit then went back to my mom's for dinner. We played games after dinner until leaving for the airport. We planned to arrive around 7:45 for our 9:30 flight. 

 

We flew through check in and security... only to get a text message 5 minutes later that our flight was delayed an hour. We finally boarded and took off just a bit before 11 and landed in Providence at 1 am. While our parking garage charge was SO much larger than I had anticipated I was so thankful to be parked somewhat inside and not having to dig my car out from under several feet of snow. 

 

We climbed into the car and made it home at 2 am on the dot Saturday morning. I don't think I was ever so happy to be back in my own bed before.

 

Of course we had a wonderful time with the family and it was nice to get to see almost everyone a few times (my youngest sister and her family live further away and both work full time so we only saw them once) but it was definitely stressful dealing with the airlines and canceled flights as well as knowing what everyone back home was dealing with. It was one trip I'm sure Evan and I will never forget! 

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