A few weeks ago, the weekend of October 16-18, the Mister and I took a mini-vacation to Raleigh. Although Raleigh is just an hour away from our house, we made a point to make the weekend a little getaway, as we know our chances to travel out of town on a whim are going to be few and far between once our kiddo arrives (not that we mind, we're looking forward to weekends spent at home with her when the time comes).
We started the weekend with our yearly tradition of visiting the North Carolina State Fair. As always, it was good, high-calorie fun. Pretty much the only two activities we partook in this year were walking miles and miles in circles to find the specific fair food we were craving and wandering around the artisan booths to ooh and ahh over the trinkets and treasures local artists had made. We LOVE the fair, and I'm really hoping the Oklahoma State Fair will measure up next year once we've moved out west.
Since we were too shy to ask a random stranger to take our photo, we don't have any photo evidence of our night at the fair, other than these pictures I took of two goats that reminded me of Hank and Luellen.
After the fair, we drove to my parents' house in Burlington to spend the night because we didn't want to pay for a hotel room for two nights and our doggies were there hanging out with them for the weekend.
The next morning we got up bright and early to head back to Raleigh for the American Roots Music Festival. Other than the CMA Music Festival in Nashville a couple times, I've never been to a legit music festival, the kind with dancing hippies and folk music, so when I found out there was a music festival coming to Raleigh this year and that Eric Church, one of my most favoritest artists, was headlining BOTH nights, I knew we had to go.
My goal Saturday morning had been to make it in time to see the second act of the day, Chris Stapleton (he recently shot to mainstream fame after winning three CMA awards at his first major awards show as an artist last week). But after picking my sister Caroline up to join us, enjoying a leisurely Mexican lunch at one of my favorite restaurants in town, and solving a forgotten ticket fiasco, we didn't make it in until the second or third act. The first day's lineup included Chris Stapleton, Leftover Salmon, Tedeschi Trucks Band, The Roots, Modest Mouse, and Eric Church.
We didn't leave on Saturday night until around 11:00 pm and we had to sit in traffic for a bit, so we didn't make it into our hotel until around midnight. Much to our surprise, upon our arrival, we found out our hotel had been overbooked, and we were sent to another Hyatt for the night. Even though that was a bit obnoxious, our hotel room was FREE because of the inconvenience, so we got over the frustration pretty quickly.
On Sunday morning, we enjoyed our complimentary breakfast at the hotel, and then headed back out to the ampitheatre for our second day of music festivaling. That day was a little more low key, and we spent a lot of the time just lounging and napping on our blanket in the grass, but we were happy with that because how often do you just get to relax in the sunshine and listen to good, live music? Greensky Bluegrass, Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, Grace Potter, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, Sheryl Crow, Willie Nelson, and Eric Church all played on Sunday. The Mister had to be at work bright and early on Monday, so we didn't stick around for Eric Church again, even though I would have loved to. But we did hang out long enough to hear Mr. Willie Nelson play a couple songs, so I can check that off my bucket list. : )
I know this photo is blurry, but that is THE Willie Nelson on stage.
Even though it was a little exhausting for my pregnant self, our weekend in Raleigh was a great time. We fit a lot into a few days! We were tired and happy when we got home Sunday night.
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