Road Trip Part 1 - Wake Forest

We took a road trip, going east. We decided to take route 98 and spend some time in Wake Forest at the start. We hadn't been there in years, and nearly all the downtown stores have changed, but the charm of the town is the same. All three of our kids enjoyed the stop.

The steeple in the photo here is Binkley Chapel, on the Baptist seminary, which used to be Wake Forest College, before Richard Joshua Reynolds endowed the college to move to Winston-Salem. The chapel at Wake Forest University is named Wait Chapel, which is another name from the town of Wake Forest - the main hall on the old campus used to be Wait Hall, and the main street near the campus is Wait Avenue. I always think of these two churches as being the same place, one with more money. They seem to share something of the same spirit, though, regardless of differences in size, materials, and the 100 miles between them.

We spent the most time in the Olde English Tea Room, a charming, quirky shop that seems a regular event among local ladies, and was busy upstairs where the tea is served. We spent most of our time browsing the downstairs, which is something of a gift store and antique mall. Vintage clothes and purses got lots of ooos and aahs from our daughter. The musty air eventually drove all of us out, though, and left us with brief headaches or sore throats.

We also drove through the old historic district, with the lovely houses and the double avenue with trees down the center. These are two of the largest homes in that section. The Corner Ice Cream Shop (where we've gotten ice cream for nearly twenty years) was closed and being renovated.

Then we headed east on 98, with no definite destination. I love this kind of trip, with the look of roads and intersections, or the names of places on the way, luring us on to who knows what.

MoominLight has more on this trip, the changes in Wake Forest, and the Tea Room in her post, here. She divides the road trip differently, and gets to further destinations in her post; I'll give my impressions of those other places in later posts. We seem to be mostly picking different photos.