Shenandoah National Park to Charlotte – Saturday, July 26, 2024 (Author: J)
Because of the bizarre aerobics of our nocturnal upstairs neighbors, we woke up on Saturday happy to check out of Skylands and start our journey to our next national park. Congaree National Park is about an 8-hour drive from Shenandoah, so we spread the journey out over two days. But we still had a 6-hour drive ahead of us, so we wasted no time packing and hitting the road.
We turned in our keys, bought some overpriced lattes (and our traditional souvenirs – an ornament and magnet) at the Skylands Visitor Center, and continued driving south along Skyline Drive. Even though it was now the official weekend, there weren’t many cars on the road. That meant we could stop off at a few more viewpoints as we made our way through the park. We exited at the Swift Run Gap entrance. This put us on the most direct route to the Carolinas but meant that we did not explore the southern 3rd of Skyline Drive.
It took a little over four hours to reach our first planned stop of the day – the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro. We learned about the zoo via the recommendation of a poster on the Tripadvisor road trip forums. (Their advice was along the lines of, “If you insist on going through with your silly plan to skip the Blue Ridge Parkway, then you can stop at the North Carolina Zoo.”) The zoo advertises itself as the largest natural habitat zoo in the US. Its exhibits on North American and African wildlife are spread across 500 acres, with animal habitats set in the natural landscape. The whole concept sounded like it was right up our alley. Once we learned that the zoo was part of the reciprocal admission program with our local science museum, stopping was an easy choice.
As we approached the zoo, we debated whether to start in North America or Africa. That turned out to be a moot question. If you arrive at the zoo in the afternoon, the North America lots will be full, and you will park near Africa. After some initial confusion when we presented our out-of-state museum card, we received our admission tickets and entered the zoo. (If you are doing a US road trip, it’s worth checking whether your local museums and zoos offer reciprocal admission. The free and discounted admissions we got with our museum pass on this trip were enough to cover the cost of the annual membership).
A summer afternoon is not the ideal time to visit the North Carolina Zoo. A visit entails a lot of walking – something that poses a challenge in the summer heat and humidity, even on the zoo’s well-shaded paths. We explored most of Africa and then decided to take a tram to North America to cut down on walking. Unfortunately, everyone else who had entered the zoo that afternoon had the same brilliant idea. The line was long. The trams were slow to arrive. We soon regretted our decision. When 20 minutes of waiting hadn’t put us much closer to the front of the line, we gave up and started walking.
P’s energy flagged before we reached the first exhibit, a glass-domed building full of desert plants and animals. We agreed that we would peek inside and then head back to our car to finish our drive. The desert exhibit turned out to be a highlight for us. It had free-flying birds, interesting reptiles, and adorable sand cats. After seeing how well-done the desert was, I was a little disappointed to miss the exhibits on local Carolina wildlife. I consoled myself with the knowledge that we would have the opportunity to see some of the same animals in their natural habitat at our next national park.
From the zoo, it was only about a 90-minute drive to the Ballantyne, our hotel in Charlotte. (Although Asheboro was the halfway point in our drive to Columbia, I decided we would push on to Charlotte because it had a broader range of accommodations and restaurants).
The Ballantyne was our favorite hotel of the trip. However, it was also the most expensive hotel of the trip. So, although we got what we paid for, we also paid for what we got. The hotel sits in a neighborhood of the same name on the outskirts of Charlotte. It sits next to “The Bowl,” a redevelopment project that converted a corporate park into a mixed-use project with a lovely park, restaurants, shops, and apartments. It was a great place for a one-night stopover because everything we needed was a short walk from our hotel.
As we were approaching Charlotte, I put our name on the online waiting list for Postino, one of the restaurants in the Bowl. Postino, a chain with locations in the South and on the West Coast, specializes in bruschetta and cheeseboards. It was quite popular on a Saturday night, so we had plenty of time to check in, get cleaned up, and relax in our room before we made it to the top of the waitlist. Once we were in the top 5, we made the short walk to the restaurant so that we wouldn’t miss our table. D and I shared an assortment of bruschetta, a cheese board, some crispy cauliflower, and some sweet potato wedges. P got the kids grilled cheese board. It was too much food, but we did our best to eat it. After dinner we returned to the hotel, where we had a swim in the beautiful indoor pool before turning in for the night.
Overall, we really enjoyed our little peek at Charlotte. It certainly beat my trip to Charlotte earlier in the month, when I was stranded at the airport during the global IT outage. We would consider revisiting to see more of the city.
Travel Monkeys 