Cafe Carolina and Bakery in Cary

Quick stop for dinner on the way to a quick evening hike in Umstead State Park.

The Caesar salad, veggie panini, and thin-crust spinach artichoke flatbread (pizza) were all tasty. They also have a nice assortment of baked desserts, which are all quite fully-leaded...

Cafe Carolina has a nice atmosphere and is a step up from the usual fast food restaurants.

Day trip to Cedarock & Saxapahaw

Beautiful weather, but we didn't have time to plan any big trip for this weekend. So we did a quick day-trip instead.
Our best-case expected route:

Although we only made it to Saxapahaw General Store and then to Cedarock for some frolf and hiking.

Saxapahaw General Store is an amazing oasis in North Carolina. We bought sandwiches to go (of course, including some bakery desserts).

We ate our picnic at Cedarock Disc Golf Course. The park actually has two frolf courses. "Cedarock" is the first course you'll see, and consists of mostly large, long open fields. A little boring for my tastes, but excellent practice for long drives (if you're working on your professional game).
"Wellspring" is the slightly more hidden course just past the first parking area.

Wellspring is the usual frolf course you'd expect: lots of trees, streams, and hills. Unfortunately, both of these courses were more difficult than what we're used to, so we didn't come anywhere close to par.

There are a number of nice hiking trails in Cedarock Park as well.

And of course, on the drive back home through Chapel Hill, one must eat dinner at the Spotted Dog and shop at Weaver Street Market.

Related useful links:



Cedarock Park map.pdf

Haw River Trail map.pdf

Awaze Ethiopian

Awaze Ethiopian is now open.

They took over the previously closed Ashee Ethiopian restaurant.

They say they have some differences from the previous owner's take on Ethiopian, but those subtleties are beyond my taste range.

Still the same basic good Ethiopian food to me. Slightly spicy, with lots of injera bread. (Ok, their injera might be a little better than the previous style.)

Two thumbs up, if you're in the mood for Ethiopian in Cary.

Good Morning Pho Vietnam!

On the way to a nice hike at Yates Millpond to take advantage of this rare good-weather day, we decided to risk our lives in the Crossroads traffic and lunch at Pho Vietnam.

I'd been here a year ago and was thoroughly unimpressed.
Luckily we decided to give it another chance because we were surprised at how much they've improved here.
We had an excellent lunch of overindulgence!

The Vermicelli Tofu was huge and very good. The Bánh Mì sandwich was a perfect compliment; a fairly small entree by itself, but an excellent side when sharing two dishes.

We also splurged $6 for the avocado durian fruit smoothie: quite tasty, but afterward we found out it's basically just a milkshake with a tiny bit of flavoring added (i.e.: heavy cream and milk with just a slice or two of avocado). We'll stick with the Thai iced tea (or water) next time.

Pho Vietnam doesn't seem to have a website yet, but we did snag a menu:

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7/9/2015 Update:

We went back again and got a similar (but not quite as good) dish.

The breaded/fried tofu "strips" weren't quite as good as the style we had last time, plus, the sauce was way too fishy...
The Bánh Mì sandwich was still excellent though.

Yuri again

Visited our old fave Yuri again, on our way to Whole Foods and Trader Joe's as usual.

Excellent as always.

A nice ginger salad and miso soup comes with most entrees.

This time, instead of the usual Sukiyaki, we tried the Tofu Teriyaki and a Veggie Maki roll.