Where We're Headed

So I thought I'd show everyone a little about the place we are moving to. Rutherfordton is the county seat of Rutherford County. The southern end of the county touches borders with South Carolina. In fact right now Kendall has to drive into South Carolina and back into North Carolina to get to work until a new bridge is constructed that can withstand the heavy loads of haul trucks heading into and away from the Horsehead property.

Rutherford county. About 6 hours from the beach, 1/2 hour to the Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Highway.

 Here is a closer look. Our house is below the red dot, next to the sharp curve in the red road, which is highway 221. It is that very road that takes Kendall to work, about a 20 minute drive. The commute was a big deal. There were other homes that would have suited our family better, I think, but only this one had the commute Kendall needed. The hour each way commute was too much here. And living closer to work wasn't an option here in AZ.
If you look at the map, you'll see that there are three towns close together: Rutherfordton, Spindale, and Forest City. Driving down 74 it all blends together, like Farmington, Centerville, and Bountiful. Without the signs, you'd have no clue you'd changed towns.
We're only about an hour or so to the outskirts of Charlotte, the largest city in NC. The locals consider it "rural". We drove around there that first weekend and it was more like Layton, with the amount of people and businesses. That first night in town we decided to look for a nice place to eat, something beyond KFC. Urbanspoon showed us this restaurant:

 It was ITALIAN FINE DINING. So, so good. Reasonable prices, fabulous food. When we mentioned going out to eat to our realtor, she complained, "Oh, yeah, we really only have five or six restaurants." When we questioned her (we'd seen several more than 6), she explained, "Well, I mean nice restaurants." Kendall and I looked at each other. Coming from a town that boasts over priced steak and measly sides and a $3.50 salad bar that they charge you for twice as "the" fine dining establishment, plus a few fast food places and pizza joints, an area that has 6 nice restaurants that you'd go to for your anniversary or other nice occasion is NIRVANA. We traveled two hours to Tucson for decent food, sometimes. We didn't find sushi, but since I was there for only a few days, I may have to go on a hunt for it when we get there.

And just for fun, if you look at the county map and see a town up in the left corner, you'll see a lake and town called Lake Lure. This is one of the locations from Dirty Dancing, including this famous scene in the water (I heard they filmed it in October and the water was freezing) and that really cool staircase that Jennifer Grey dances down.

It's only a 25 minute drive up there, so hopefully during the summer we can take the kids up there for a day to go swimming.



So there you go. Or more accurately, there WE go. I hope that it will be on people's list to visit sometime, since it's not the nasty dry desert three hours from true civilization.