Raleigh, NC

Well we have really enjoyed our trip to Raleigh, the people here are so nice, very how may I help you and thank you so much for coming kind of folks, the area of Raleigh is beautiful! there trees covering every inch of ground, even on the sides of highways, all the rural areas have at least 5 to 6 trees in their yard, its magnificent how they have incorporated nature into the everyday.
One of the first places I went here is to the NC Natural Science Museum,

which was one of the most amazing places I've ever been, the admission is free and its a two building, 4 stories of natural science, you could spend the entire day there and still not see it all, they have everything from a hands on room where you can look at touch and pick up specimens from the stuffed to the jar preserved and dried, put it under a microscope or on a smart table and learn firsthand everything about it. They also have live animal rooms where you can see firsthand the nature around you,

I picked up and held radioactive pieces of earth (don't worry we took precautions) , held fine gemstones from rubies to every other gem and studied the different kinds of facets and saw a quartz that was so big it was on a palate and was so heavy that it was crushing the palate. The story Chris told me about how he had to get it to the museum was pretty comical. He also let me see part of the Paleontology area where I saw amazing specimens that weren't for public view. I will admit that my tour was much better than just a free admission gets you because I was blessed enough to meet one of the curators, who's name was Chris,

he was over the Gemology section of the museum and when we got to chatting about rocks, lol, he offered to give me a behind the scenes tour of the place, so not only did I get to see and learn about firsthand all the origin and history of all of his exhibits but I got a tour of the guts of the place where they work and to hold some of the pieces, I held an emerald that as much as my dog, I was a little nervous holding this but it was awesome,

There was so many other wonderful museums shops and places to go here, not to mention our wonderful trip to South Hill,VA to the Loves house and to meeting with them, we got to meet more wonderful people, see Joseph Fordam who was speaking there that day and have a great lunch with everyone. Our dog Pebbles was smiling from ear to ear the rest of the day, she really loved getting to play with the kids, 

 I can only hope that all our travels are as welcoming and loving as this has been, as Cory's husband said "it's all downhill from here" lol.

Dennis also got to go to work at the RedHat headquarters for the week, where he put faces to names of people that he works with and really enjoyed having lunch with them. We are leaving soon and I have to admit I'm really going to miss it here.