Weekend in Raleigh

It was a big weekend here in North Carolina. I drove the two hours up to Raleigh on Friday night for a weekend of fun and excitement. I started with dinner with my Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin since I don't see them very often. They got the weekend started off right with margaritas all around. After dinner I met up with my friend Nicole. We've been friends since 5th grade and like to get together whenever we can. Friday was a quiet night in with friends.

Saturday was a different story. I got up early to drive to Holly Springs for a workshop on Salamanders. I'm working on my North Carolina Environmental Education Certification. This class talked all about different types of salamanders. There are over 500 species in the world and our state is home to at least 50 of them. That's a pretty big deal. The Smoky Mountains are considered the salamander capital of the world. We learned about salamanders and then created our own:

After we created our salamanders we went out in the field to look for them. We spent a lot of time mucking around. These are my very professional hot pink rain boots. Most everyone else had on boring gray or green. The salamanders saw me coming from a ways off. We finally had success when one of the girls caught a couple bull frog tadpoles and two eastern newts. Someone else caught a couple crayfish that are local to the area. I had to break up a fight when the crayfish tried to eat our poor little newt. It was a great workshop.

Then I made my way back to Raleigh we made plans to meet up with some of my friends from college who are living up there for school. The evening started off great, but I have to say it was the worst service I've ever had. We got there at 7:30, got seated about 8:30 and didn't leave til 11. Not because we wanted to sit and chat, our waitress was just that slow. We had all sorts of tables around us come and go in the time it took to get our food and check. At least the company was great!

On Sunday Nicole and I went to the flea market to get some ideas for her new house. There were lots of ideas and lots of junk! It was interesting to poke through though. Afterwards we headed for the main event: the megalodon exhibit at the Museum of Natural Sciences. I've been to the museum for a cold water corals workshop but I've never been through the exhibits. I was actually kinda disappointed with the sharks exhibit but the rest of the museum was amazing! It was four floors with live animals (lots of salamanders), live butterflies, and lots of interactive exhibits. I'm glad Nicole's about as big a nerd as I am! We had a blast! What a great weekend!