Days 92-95 of the Journey - Raleigh, NC

Days 92 & 93 - Thurs & Fri
Spent most of the day (from 9:30 - 2:30) in shul.  Rabbi Yisroel Cotlar is extremely charismatic and offers very deep and profound messages.  His congregation has been our "home away from home" when we lived in NJ and visited Raleigh and I am glad we have the opportunity to share the High Holidays with him.

For my readers who aren't familiar with this season, it is a time of introspection, repentance and "teshuvah" - return to God.  A metaphor is used: that there is a Book of Life which is opened on Rosh Hashanah.  God judges our thoughts and deeds and inscribes our fates for the coming year.  This is sealed on Yom Kippur.   We are all forgiven and start the year with a clean slate.  Rosh Hashanah is also known as the New Year - the anniversary of creation of man.

Day 94 - Sat.
We again joined the congregation for Shabbat services, which as always was very inspirational and spiritual.  They have a lovely lunch afterwards.  Instead of driving back to the campground, we went to the kids' house and hung out there until about 9pm.  I napped for about 2 hours.

Day 95 - Sun.
Today was a driving day (not traveling).  Knowing we need to leave the NC State Fairgrounds next week due to the state fair being here, we wanted to scope out the next closest places.  One such place is about 15 miles away.  It's also a mobile home park, and after our experience at the very first place we stayed (outside Orlando), we needed to see how much space we'd be dealing with.  The other places, which seemed much nicer were about 30 miles away.  Mitch determined it would be too far to travel to jobs in the Raleigh area.  At about 8 mpg, 60 miles roundtrip would cost more in gas than he would make in a day.  Plus the location was out in the middle of nowhere; the nearest supermarket was 10 miles away. 

Right now, plan B is for him to contact one of his bigger contractors and learn where in the country most of the jobs are now, and we'll use that as a destination.  Barring that, we'll try to make a reservation at the closer place, although they told me they were mostly filled up during October (overflow from the state fair).  We must make this decision by tomorrow.

We also stopped at Dollar Tree for a bunch of household items.  Also dealing with internet issues today.  Seems the setup Mitch purchased isn't working properly.  Hopefully he can reach tech support tomorrow as well.