With the sun shining and temps reaching up into the mid-80’s it was a perfect day to take a drive up along lake Norman to Hickory; the furniture capital of North Carolina. Hickory is home to Hickory White, one of the oldest furniture manufacturers in the United States; established in 1902 and is still operating at its original location.
As far as Hickory goes, the local story is that under a huge Hickory Tree in the mid 1800’s, a log tavern was built and the surrounding area quickly became known as the city of Hickory Tavern. In 1863 the city was officially established but later in 1873 the city’s name was changed to its current name of Hickory.
Our destination in Hickory was a furniture outlet call Hickory Furniture Mart. It’s a mix of about 100 furniture outlet stores and shops covering a million square feet and all housed inside a four-story complex. The place has everything you could imagine to furnish a house such as furniture, lighting, art, rugs & even fabrics.Karen and I spent about 3 hours walking throughout the entire place. We visited Amish Oak and Cherry first where their bedroom sets had some of the finest craftsmanship I have ever seen but were about $8,000. So, we went over to Basset Showcase
Gallery where they had a lot of nice furniture but they were still around $5,000 dollars. So, we went over to Heritage Furniture outlet and they were a bit less but at $4,000 still.Frankly, this was more money then we wanted to or in the case of Amish Oak and Cherry could even spend; especially since we just bought a king size Simmons Black Natasha that cost us a small fortune.
By this time we were getting a little tired of shopping and Lilly was becoming fussy. So, we decided to head back home.
Along the way we stopped into Mooresville to fuel up and get something to eat. This is where we found a little BBQ pit called Sonny’s
At Sonny’s they serve good ol’ Southern food and plenty of it for cheap. The have all sorts of yummy food. Everything looked so good that I couldn’t decided what I wanted, so I just got a plate that had it all; pulled pork, BBQ pork ribs, beef brisket and BBQ chicken with sides of slaw, beans, mac & cheese and garlic toast….yum!
There is nothing like 5,000 calories for dinner.
After dinner we drove back to Huntersville and went through a few neighborhoods to look at houses. Karen isn’t comfortable with buying a house yet, the move is still too new but I thought it would be a fun thing to do after dinner. After an hour of driving it started to get dark so we headed for home to turn in for the evening.
I think it was a fun first Saturday for Karen and it was definitely a fun Saturday for the three of us to be together…too bad Herbie had to spend it at home all by himself.
Here is a home in Huntersville, NC. This one is just a few miles from our apartment and is listed at $184K. In the South, you can get a lot of home for around $200K.
