Guus Bosman

We visited the North Carolina Zoo today.

The zoo is in Asheboro, about 90 minutes from Durham. We drove on country roads and made it a really nice road trip. North Carolina's country side is beautiful.

The zoo was great. There is a lot of green and plenty of space to roam for the animals. It wasn't very busy, probably because of the heat, which made it even better.

Another hidden gem in North Carolina that we had never been to before is the NC Museum of Transportation. It's about 90 minutes from Durham, in a village called Spencer, and we visited it on Memorial Day, when the temperatures climbed well above 90 degrees.

The museum has a large collection of old trains, some of them from the 1800's, and beautiful old cars. It was cool to see those trains in real life -- I'd only seen them in movies and comics books before.

The first time I saw visited De Keukenhof, one of Holland's largest attractions, was when Sasha visited the Netherlands. I was 20 years old and had never visited the place, nor to the Zaanse Schans, whose windmills are famous all over the world.

Now Milan and Nadia are here we are similarly visiting attractions in Durham and the area we've never been to before.

For example, we visited the Duke Lemur center the other day. An amazing place, where on an area of 85 acres more than 250 animals are housed. Some of the lemurs live indoors, others in large cages, but many of them roam freely in a dedicated part of the Duke Forest. It's the biggest sanctuary for lemurs in the world outside Madagascar. All of this 15 minutes walking from our front door, in the Duke Forest.

Saturday we went to the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.

The museum was recently renovated, and to celebrate they purchased several works by Rodin, the French artist. The new building is beautiful, and we spend had a nice time in the museum and afterwards with a drive through downtown Raleigh.

We had teleshko vareno for dinner, a delicious beef stew.

We often go for a walk on the Al Buehler trail, around the Duke golf course. The leafs now have beautiful fall colors.

Yesterday morning we were at South Point mall.

I went for a haircut this morning and afterwards I visited the farmer's market downtown.

I bought a free-range chicken from a local farmer and some fresh herbs and flowers.

We went for a long hike yesterday in Umstead Park. We walked in the middle of the day, and it was humid and hot, around 90 degrees.

We walked the Company Mill trail, a beautiful 6 mile walk through the woods. It took us about 2 hours and 20 minutes.

We saw two large snakes, larger than I've ever seen in the wild before. Both of them were around 3 feet long (90 centimeters).

The first one we heard before we saw it, a couple of feet away from the trail in the bushes when we were near a creek. It was brown and patterned. We're no snake experts but after looking at pictures later it might have been a hognose, northern water snake or a copperhead. We respectfully kept our distance.

Just a few minutes later we saw a similar sized snake, but completely black. That was almost certainly a black rat snake. It quickly moved away and crossed the trail behind us.

This week there was a basketball game between the University of North Carolina (UNC) and Duke University. This annual game is a hugely popular event, and some of the Duke students have been in line since December (!) to get tickets for the game.

We went for a walk over campus earlier this week and saw the tents and camping equipment in front of the sports stadium. The next day the TV news mentioned that one of the kids in the tents was treated for meningitis, but was doing relatively well. The name of the tent ville is Krzyzewskiville, or Kville, named after 'Coach K' a hugely successful coach of the Duke men's basketball team (and also of the US Olympic team in 2008).

Read more about the line policy on Kville.info.

Sadly for those enthousiastic fans, Duke lost to UNC with 87 to 101.

Today is the first day of snow in North Carolina this winter.

Travel hazardous as snow builds.

In the summer when my parents were here we went for a cup of coffee at Shade Tree, and realized what a great coffee they served there.

Unfortunately, they closed a month or two ago. Bull City Rising has good news though: there is a new coffee shop coming into its place.

This should make »

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