Greenville and Greensboro, NC work travel March 22-25

The month of March was filled with travel.  As the previous two posts indicate, I spent the week of my birthday at the Outer Banks (OBX).  When I returned to work, I traveled each of the last two weeks of the month.

The first week, March 22-25, involved traveling for 2 days to Greenville, NC and a day trip to Greensboro, NC.

Greenville is about 85 miles east of Raleigh - about halfway to the beach.  I had been to Greenville twice before this trip.  The first time I went with Colin to visit our friend Leora, who was doing an occupational therapy internship rotation at the hospital there.  Leora is our friend from the University of Vermont who currently lives in Massachusetts.  Her internship brought her to Greenville from January through March.  The second time I went to Greenville to visit a program I oversee in that county.

This trip brought me to Greenville for a conference of North Carolina Cooperative Extension staff.  It was nice to meet other staff from the eastern part of the state and to interact with other NCSU Extension staff from Raleigh.  My coworker and I left on Tuesday and attended the conference on Wednesday and Thursday.  We had dinner at the City Bistro Cafe, which is the restaurant in the hotel where the conference was located and where we stayed.  The best part of the dinner was this amazing chocolate cake we shared.

The conference was enjoyable and the meals provided were okay.  On Wednesday night, I was able to celebrate Leora's last night in Greenville with her.  She had a small get together at a Mexican restaurant called La Cabana.  Leora loves margaritas and, at $2.50 each, you couldn't find a better deal.  It was great to see her one last time before she went back to Massachusetts.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much time to explore Greenville because the conference was an all day event both days.  The first time I was there, Leora took us to River Park North for some hiking through the woods with her dog.  It was a pretty small park, but did provide a place to enjoy the outdoors.  We also got to eat at Sup Dogs, an eatery that offers meat and vegetarian hot dogs.  My impression of the city is that there isn't much that would draw me there in the future.

We got back from Greenville late on Thursday and I had to travel again on Friday.  This time I headed 80 miles in the opposite direction, to Greensboro, NC.  This was just a day trip to meet with a colleague from outside of Charlotte.  The library where we worked for most of the morning was one of the nicest libraries I've seen in awhile (Hemphill Public Library).  There was a small private room that was perfect for us to work undisturbed.

In the afternoon we took our meeting to Panera, where we got lunch and continued to work.  I have come to really enjoy lunch and working at Panera.  While they do not appear to offer sustainable meat, they do have some pretty good vegetarian options - like the black bean soup, the tomato and mozzarella sandwich, and the Mediterranean veggie sandwich.  Their salads are also pretty good and you can get an apple with your meal.  I do find the food to taste very salty every time I eat there though.  When I go there to work and have already had a meal, I typically enjoy their chai latte or ginger-peach tea.

I don't know much about Greensboro and will have to save a post about the area for a time I actually get to spend some time exploring.