Memorial Day Vacation in Raleigh - Durham: Day 2

Day 2

We got home after midnight from the dancing (see previous blog post here), and around 4:00 a.m. the fire alarm went off. We hurried downstairs, seeing dogs (and even cats) scared out of their minds as owners brought them outside. We learned that there had been another alarm earlier in the evening, but since we had been out, we missed it. Fire alarms (especially when nothing seemed to be wrong) are already annoying, but we were planning to go hiking the next day, so losing sleep after a late night out was less than ideal.

We had to walk along this suspension bridge, which was a little scary!

We did fall back asleep eventually, but rushed a bit in the morning to get ready for our hike along the Eno River. We serendipitously ran into a naturalist who was just about to start leading a hike, so we went along with her. We hiked Fanny Ford's Trail, which was not too steep and was more of a nature walk. I was glad I could share some of my plant ID knowledge, but I learned some new ones, too:

This wildflower is named Green and Gold (for obvious reasons). It made me think of the song "Karma Chameleon."

We just happened to spot this copperhead snake while trying to help someone find her keys.

This is a wild ginger plant, and you can see in between the leaves the brown "jug" of a flower.

As we were finishing our hike, we saw this fire pink flower, of the pink family (I didn't even know there was such a thing.).

Although we had packed sandwiches for our hike, we reached the end of our outing just around lunchtime. So we just headed back to Raleigh to soak in some rays back at Miriam's apartment complex. It was so hot, but laying by the pool felt so good. The fire alarm ended up going off again, so I was thankful we were already outside.

Image found here

After cleaning ourselves up and tootling around on our computers while drinking champagne, we headed to Gravy for dinner. We both had delicious dishes from this local Italian restaurant: we started with fried risotto balls (yum), and then we shared Miriam's salmon and gnocchi and my veggie lasagna. And the Petit Verdot was so good! And even with our full bellies, we still walked over to Amorino to treat ourselves to gelato and macarons. What a decadent evening!