GEORGE WASHINGTON, KRISPY KREME, OLD SALEM & US

First of all, we're not talking about the Salem of witches fame.  That one is in Massachusetts.  

We may have ended up living in the Winston-Salem area because I fell for a house too near some meth addicts.  (OK, "possible" meth addicts.)

We were about three months from moving out here and didn't know whether we would be living in our trailer, moving from place to place while checking out areas, or purchasing a house, having found an area that we thought was "it."

I saw a place for sale at a good price, with a very large kitchen and room to store the trailer.  I got on Google Maps and followed the road to see the surroundings, then booked a cheap flight to arrive in North Carolina ASAP. 

This was 2021, at the height of the real estate frenzy.  I arrived early enough the day before my appointment that I had time to drive by the house.  The house looked fine, but I had not followed Google Maps far enough.  Maybe a half-mile away, same road, was a trailer that screamed "people who will empty your house out if your trailer isn't in sight."

Oh well.  I made some reservations in larger nearby towns and started investigating possibilities there.  One of the reservations was at The Zevely Inn, above.

I had no idea that The Zevely Inn was located in a living museum district, Old Salem Museum & Gardens, which covers more than 100 acres and demonstrates Moravian life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  The Inn was a lovely place to stay, but I was looking at housing and didn't tour the immediate area.

Mark and I finally spent a day last month visiting Old Salem.  If you do this, I recommend visiting on a Saturday unless you like to incorporate small children into all your activities!  The State's school districts bring many busloads of children to experience their heritage daily.  

Various buildings are used to demonstrate the occupations of the original occupants, which Mark may post about later.

The Heritage Bridge, above, connects the Visitors center with the historic town area.  The stars hanging from the rafters are very Moravian.  (Oddly, they remind me of the light that was installed at the entrance to the house my parents bought in the mid-70s, which also had a blue-light in what would become my bedroom.  I think it might have had hippie occupants.)

This stone, in a building which memorializes the Moravians' gardening practices, caught my eye:

I think the 1977 reflects the last significant restoration.

​The Moravians instituted a school that turned into a beautiful historic campus, one block from Old Salem's main street.  We posted about attending an outdoor concert there last year.

I took the picture at the top of this post just before I climbed the stairs into the Salem Tavern, across the street.  I'd not known that George Washington stayed in the Tavern:

President George Washington, touring the southern battlefields
of the Revolutionary War, spent two nights in Salem, attending a service,
​studying the waterworks system, and speaking to the townspeople.

If I believed in "simultaneous time" - as a few do - I might've thought of the President and I sharing the same air as we exited the lodgings!

This stairway to one of the buildings of Salem College intrigued me.  Essentially, we are seeing staples holding the bottom stair together.

The cities of Winston and Salem were united in 1913.  It would not be possible to live in Winston-Salem and be unaware that the Krispy Kreme doughnut stores began here, but I didn't know that the first shop was actually on the Main Street of Salem.

It seemed odd, because the traditional downtown of Winston-Salem is about a mile away, and Old Salem is a very quiet place, with several privately-owned homes, but that was then and this is now; the transition of Old Salem to a historical district didn't begin until 1950.