This weekend consisted of family time at the cabin! We went riding in the truck, hiking, cave exploring… Also, Nora tasted a lemon for the first time!!! So so cute. Pics:
David’s truck tours, ready to go
littlest rider
Bowsin’ through the woods
where the pond used to be
DOUBLE CAVE
cave portrait!
cave party!
cave hiker mom
hello matt!
cousins!
wagon rider
the Jill, elusive and difficult to capture in the wild, pensively eyes the double cave
We decided to go on a little getaway this weekend! Drove up to Greencastle, PA yesterday afternoon and stayed at the cutest little bed and breakfast overnight. If you are ever in that area, I cannot recommend enough the White Hall Manor B&B! Not only was it an amazing house, but our hosts, Gerry and Pam, were so sweet too. They obviously put a lot of thought into making their place feel like a home. We loved their homemade breakfast this morning, which we shared with two other travellers who were in town visiting their son. It was nice to sit and talk with complete strangers, brought together only by a certain point and place in time, and hear about their crazy families, travel stories and recommendations, and plans for the future. I hope Pam gets her baby blue vw bug.
After breakfast, it was hiking time. We walked 4.5-miles of the Appalachian Trail, up to an overlook at Annapolis Rock. Easy hike overall, and though the path was a little icy, it was sunny out, and there was a great view at the end!
Matt took this pic upon our arrival yesterday evening. Someday, I’d like a porch with columns like these.
seriously, look at this house!!
obligatory architecture pic
off on our hike!
snowy trail
icy ice
“Matt, stick your tongue on that like Christmas Story and see if it gets stuck”… “ok” … ohh i love him.
Matt inspecting the view from Annapolis Rock
Brrrrrr
“this picture is meant to give you vertigo” –Matt
Queen -o- the mountain
pointy rock
smooch.
There’s something about summer drawing to a close that makes us want to squeeze in a whole lot of weekend fun, before these free days turn into study-all-day days… On Saturday, I got in an early morning 7-miler at Centennial Park with my running ladies Susan and Lauren. It was still really humid, even that early in the AM, probably left over from Friday night’s summer storm that lasted for much of the evening, so thank goodness my run-buddies were there to keep me motivated. It was a pretty good run, slow and steady! and we sat down by the water and treated ourselves to smoothies afterwards. Feels good to accomplish things like that all before 9 in the morning.
Afterwards, Matt and I helped Val and Ty move into their new apartment in Columbia — it was a pretty efficient move and we’re now bummed that they are no longer going to be our DC neighbors. Bowser will be missing Tiki play dates as well. At least they are closer to their jobs now though. Hello easier commuting! After all their boxes were inside, we had to skedaddle home to get ready for Matt’s work party at his bosses house. There were crabs, ribs, and lots of water slide action. Matt managed to rip an enormous hole in the back of his swim trunks on the slide, so the water fun was somewhat short-lived. Reference the ridiculousness of their homemade water slide in the photo below, though. That is just the top part where you take off on a ride all the way down to the bottom of their farm. The entire slide has to be longer than a football field. Talk about being the coolest kids on the block!
After the work party, we went to the Thievery Corporation show at the Kastles Stadium on the SW Waterfront. Awesome show! We sat and watched from the very top of the stands across from the stage. Maybe my 28-year-old self is actually just acting my age now, but the whole time I was thinking how awesome it was to just sit there with a beer and relax and listen to the music away from the crowds and not be one of the people crammed up by the stage with all the other sweaty kids dancing around and screaming.
This morning we woke up bright and early to go for a little walk in the woods. We drove out to the head of the Glover-Archibald trail in Tenleytown with Bowser in tow and headed along the path towards Georgetown (with Bowser leading the way, of course). He is just so damn cute running through the woods and sniffing everything. It’s not often that our city-doggy actually gets off his leash, so it felt good to let him run around the trail, explore all the curiosities of nature, and greet all the runners and other doggies out with their owners. The great thing about this particular trail though, is that you don’t encounter too many other people out there. Just the running water, the trees, and lots of green! The trail itself is fairly flat elevation-wise, but the ground is pretty rocky and bumpy, so you definitely have to pay attention as you’re going along. We broke off the path a few times to play in the stream and also to give Bowser his very first swimming lesson. (First, that is, if you don’t count the time that Matt briefly threw him in the pool at Ivory Road, thinking my mom wasn’t looking. She was actually watching from the deck the whole time and immediately gave him the NO-DOGS-IN-THE-POOL friendly reminder. No way he was getting away with that one…) Anyways, todays swimming lesson consisted of Matt tossing Bowser into the stream water up to his chin, and Bowser standing there in the water whimpering and shaking, not realizing he could just walk out of the water. After a few minutes, we walked downstream and left him to his own devices and he finally scampered out of the water. The great thing about dogs is they immediately forget things and he was again happy as can be.
By the time we got home, we had worked up a pretty good appetite, so walked down to H Street for some much-needed sushi sustenance at Sticky Rice. We made it there just in time to miss the MASSIVE storm that came through. Thunder and lighting and gushing winds. Glad we weren’t still out in the woods at that point. After sushi, we sat in the window at Sova and enjoyed a cup of coffee. Matt read the newspaper while I thumbed through an awesome book about America.
