Spring Break- Saturday and Sunday the 4th and 5th

In my last post I said we were going to head out on Sunday morning. Well, we decided to leave that afternoon instead, spend the night in Greenville, and get an early start on the things we wanted to do there. So we hopped in the car, and off we went!

We stopped for dinner at Ruby Tuesday on the way. DS looks like he's having fun.



We arrived in Greenville around 7ish, checked in, and then ran to the Barnes and Noble across the street from the hotel. Our objective was a Mice On Main book. I wanted to read it to DD before we hunted the mice the next morning. We found that with help from a really nice employee, and I also scored a book of South Carolina ghost stories.

Afterwards, DH got in a little work.



We got up early Sunday, ate breakfast courtesy of the hotel, and went to search for the Mice On Main. We knew the first one was on the fountain in front of the Hyatt. It's the daddy mouse, Marvin, reading Goodnight Moon.



We had a great time finding the other eight. The hardest to find was Teeny Tiny Millie. We knew approximately where she was, and that she was up high, and I still thought we'd never locate her. DH was the one who finally spotted her, but I'm not telling where, LOL!

After finding all the mice, we continued on down the street to Falls Park. On the way, we discovered a tenth, unadvertised mouse. He is at the feet of the statue of Nathaniel Greene.



We enjoyed walking around the park and seeing the falls. The suspension bridge didn't even freak me out too much until I looked out across the falls. Then it was time to get off.



After the falls, we headed over to the Greenville Zoo. We got there about half an hour before they opened, but that was okay, because there was a nice playground right outside, and the kids got to burn off some energy.

We enjoyed the zoo a lot more than I expected to, honestly. It's very different from Zoo Atlanta in that most of the animals are much closer and easier to see, or at least it seemed that way. I was even able to get pics of DD with her favorite zoo animal, the giraffe. We are thinking about another Charlotte trip this summer, and if that happens, we will surely stop by the Greenville Zoo again.



After the zoo, we went back to Main Street to go to Mast General store for Mice on Main tshirts. We purchased DD a pink one. DS and I both wanted green, which they didn't have in our size. The general store was a fun place to browse, though. We also went to the toy store next door, O.P. Taylor's. There are cool toy soldiers out front.



Lunch was at the Atlanta Bread Company. Afterwards, I ran back to the toy store, since DD wanted to use her allowance money to purchase a set of Playmobil Pandas she'd seen there. Meanwhile, DH made a few calls to other stores that carried the Mice tshirts to try to locate green ones for DS and me. When I returned, he had discovered that the general store was the only place that carries adult sizes. I decided to suck it up and went to buy myself a pink one, the only color in my size. DS is also an adult medium, and he for obvious reasons declined. While I was purchasing the shirt, I also grabbed a sunhat I'd seen on our first trip in, that I thought I'd need walking around Charlotte. I only ended up wearing it one day, but I love it, and I'll get a lot of use out of it this summer.

Shopping done, we headed out of Greenville. Our destination was Kings Mountain National Military Park. The park is right at the border of South and North Carolina. It's a Revolutionary War battlefield. We watched the video about the park history, then headed out on the battlefield trail. It's 1.5 miles long, but mostly an easy walk. The uphill bits were a bit tough. There are many markers, monuments, and plaques to see along the way. This is the major one.



We purchased a couple of items in the gift shop, and got a Junior Ranger booklet for the kids to work on. We didn't have time to complete all the activities that afternoon, so we made plans to stop again on our way home.

Onward to Charlotte, only about 40 miles from the park!

We arrived at the Marriott Residence Inn, right at downtown Charlotte, unloaded the car, and began to debate where to eat. After a bit of internet research, I chose Brixx pizza. DH voted for Uno Chicago Grill, basically another pizza place. He theoretically knew where it was, and wasn't sure of the location of Brixx. So Uno it was. DH didn't know the location as well as he thought, but we found it after a bit of wandering. I was going to have veggie pizza, but it turned out I couldn't eat it due to cheese in the crust. I had a bowl of veggie soup instead, which was pretty good. Dessert was incredible, though. The kids each had a mini dessert to themselves, one a brownie sundae and one an apple crumble. DH and I shared this:



Yes, that is a giant peanut butter cup with ice cream. Yum! After dinner, we made a grocery run, so that we'd hopefully eat out a bit less. Then to bed.