FEELING AT HOME (Cheri)

Thursday we took a trip to Pinehurst and Southern Pines, considering it as a place for our "permanent" home.

Despite the fact that Pinehurst is the home of one of the most famous golf courses used as sites for the U.S. Golf Open, it is surprisingly waaaay off the beaten path.

On our way from the closest freeway, we stopped at this lovely fruit stand and homemade ice cream shop, Ben's Ice Cream at Kalawi Farm in Eagle Springs.  I highly recommend Ben's banana ice cream.  I never even choose banana, but this was great!

We sat on Adirondack chairs out front and wondered what varieties of peaches were growing across the country highway.  I felt so comfortable, having grown up in the Yuba City-Marysville area, home of many peach and other orchards, and a fantastic one-of-a-kind ice cream parlor, Brock's, for well over 50 years.

Such a personal environment, with pictures of grandkids:

If I had my way, I would do what my parents did.  Like this fruit stand/ice cream shop, their house was on a country highway, across from orchards.  Theirs was surrounded by orchards.  The type of orchards changed over the years.  My favorite was the tall, sturdy walnut trees:

When we knew that we were moving this direction and that there are a lot of peaches grown here, I looked to see if I could find a community where walnuts are also grown, but not so much.  It turns out that 99% of the United States' walnuts are grown in . . . California.

Oh well, I'll keep looking for other orchards.  Or maybe vineyards?  We are going to do a tour of the nearby vineyard region in the next two or three weeks.

Elkin Creek Vineyard

This doesn't have anything to do with orchards or ice cream, but it made us laugh and we didn't have a spot elsewhere:

Water Tower near Pinehurst