Read Mountain

The ONE thing Holly has wanted to do all summer is hike.  Between her geology class, my work schedule, the weather (either too hot or rainy), or just the busyness of life in general, we hadn't made it out yet--until today!

We hiked the Appalachian Trail about two years ago, and we flat out did not bring enough water to make it to our destination, McAfee's Knob.  I was really discouraged.  I also have not been walking the dog at all (so hot!), and I'm completely out of shape from walking.

So I chose a mountain for us to hike today, lol, 2 miles to the top, with an elevation gain of 821 ft.

After parking the car, we exchanged greetings with the Inmate Work Crew, lol.

We were the only car in the parking lot. It was mid 60s, gorgeous.  The walk up the mountain was entirely through the woods. I think we were a mile in before we caught a glimpse of the view.

Downtown Roanoke

 Looking south towards the Blue Ridge Parkway.

We stopped several times to drink for a minute or two along the way.  Gosh, the Virginia mountains are gorgeous.  None of the in-your-face of the Rockies, but still breathtaking.

We stopped to snack on cheese and crackers.  I was really worried about overdoing it, so I wanted to be sure that I had enough energy and went at a slow enough pace!  I tried not to apologize too much to Holly, because I think I was being overly concerned, and she didn't seem to think I was going particularly slow!

The view at the top of the Buzzard Rock Trail.

We admired the view for several minutes before turning back around.  On the way down, we saw three other groups of people making their way up.

I flew downhill, making it down in half the time it took to go up.  Holly was sweet enough to follow me, just like she did on the way up, so I wouldn't get left behind.  :)

We stopped for lunch at Subway on the way home.

I love this photo. I see it and think of Holly, perched near the edge, looking out at some of the possibilities God holds in His hand for her.   ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

It was a sweet day. She'll be gone again in three and a half weeks.  I hope we get a few more times like this in before then.

More soccer!

A local church is doing some sort of outreach and hosting a large group of children from Nepal this summer.  Our homeschool rec league was asked if some of our kids would like to get together and play against the Nepal kids.

Trevor at first dismissed the idea, but he saw one of the games when he was out playing soccer with friends a few weeks ago.  He signed up for yesterday's game.

I was surprised at how large many of their players were. I was expecting smaller kids.  All of the players were 13-16 years old, and we had three girls on our team.  We had one sub; they had several.

Fun, fun game to watch!  It was a hot, hot, and I'm surprised that I don't have a sunburn from being out for a couple of hours.

We knew it'd be a tough game, but I was proud of our players.  Our group was a collection of players from eight or more different teams, not used to playing together.  We kept the ball down on their side of the field for more than half of the playing time, but we couldn't get the ball into the goal.

The goalie was our sometimes goalie from our regular Rams team.  He doesn't have much experience but volunteered to take it on. He does a great job, and Trevor told him yesterday he was the MVP of the game.  We lost something like 9-0, but Carson did a fantastic job deflecting a dozen other attempts.  :)

Trevor had a good time and is looking forward to playing again.  He had some interesting observations in the car afterwards about the game, the teams, our league.  He is so insightful and observant, and I'm proud of the remarkable man he is growing up to be.

Geology

For Holly's summer geology class, she's required to make a few outside field trips on her own. The teacher gave very detailed instructions with, complete with photographs and where to park on the highway shoulder (!), where you needed to take a photo of yourself, along with information about what to observe. Holly, Trevor, and I hopped in the car on Wednesday and headed north. We stopped at these out at Eagle Rock. I'm reading two different things, were they lime kilns or iron furnaces?

Adjacent to the furnaces were train tracks. We waited for the train to pass before collecting certain rocks from the train bed.

We walked up the hill we had driven down to look at certain rock outcroppings, sedimentary structures, deformations, and I don't know what else.  (Hah, I'm copying it from the instructions!)

We drove a little further to look at the last lock of the James River and Kanawha Canal.  I'd never heard about this before.  Initially surveyed by George Washington, the canal extended 200 miles from Richmond to Botetourt County.  Such incredible history, almost in our backyard!  This is really amazing stuff.

We then headed out to Roaring Run, driving v-e-r-y leisurely as we followed this.  I imagined i to be two giant drills, but Robert quickly pointed out that they were just mowers for the sides of the road. 

There's a popular picnic place and swimming hole with a great sliding rock. We've never been here, and I know we were very close (maybe even the same parking lot?) But we were on a mission to find the iron furnace.

Breathtakingly beautiful, I don't think it showed in the photo though.

Found it!

Trevor and I walked around the walls of the furnace. For just these ten feet or so, it was like something out of Lord of the Rings.

Finished the day without getting rained on!  We timed it perfectly to hit DQ's afternoon 1/2 price sale.

AND we made it home just after the start of one of the World Cup soccer finals--very good timing there too!  I drove Robert down the street for an x-ray, but we got there literally ten minutes too late. 

It was a super fun day. We haven't done much this summer, with my job sucking life out o me,  Robert having a lot of hip pain, and money being super tight.  Holly has one more trip she has to make for school; it looks like it will be shorter, and we'll head out there next week.

Throwback Thursday

1999, up in the mountains west of Denver, near Buffalo Bill's grave, I think.  It was right after Robert's dad passed in August.  Trevor was turning/had just turned one, Holly was almost five.

Tuesday

Hot, hot, hot.

I left work and found that my A/C in my car was no longer working.  Shock!

My typical reaction would be to get pissed off.  No real reason, but that's just what I would do. Who wants to drive home in 93 degree weather, on the interstate, with no A/C?  But instead my reaction was, "Whatever."  Ugh, I just wanted to get home.

And then I got stuck in a four mile, dead stop traffic jam.  The fastest I went was 8 mph.  I was in it for an hour. With no A/C.  (eye roll)  On the plus side, I could keep my windows down and catch the breeze at the top of the hill, and there wasn't the horrible noise and vibration I get in my car when the windows are down and the car's moving.

And honestly, I could think of just two things:  This was better than being at work.  (I really do not like my job.)  And after hearing the World Cup Soccer score, which at the time was Germany 5, Brazil 0, it was better than sitting at home watching my team be crushed.

The cause of the accident?  A semi carrying live turkeys had overturned at 8 o'clock in the morning.  They had to remove every turkey individually from the wreckage, and it was still backed up at 5 p.m.

My A/C?  Turns out that my car had a different system that is electric powered. Robert recharged my freon over the weekend, not knowing it was the wrong stuff.  (That's the extent of my mechanical vocabulary.)  Reading the internet, it appears this is a very common problem and has been for 12 years.  You'd think Toyota could spare a $0.01 sticker warning people not to use the usual stuff.  Unfortunately, it's also a very costly problem.  We'll see how things turn out, but in short, it totally sucks.  Poor Robert blames himself.  That's crazy, how on earth would he know otherwise--but for that $0.01 sticker that's not there.

Pizza Hut and Coke for dinner, followed by a couple of Lost episodes with Holly and Trevor and pistachio almond ice cream.  Other than the unknown about the A/C, it was a pretty good day.

Dean's List!

Again!!

Proud Mom and Dad here!!!

Book Review

Derailed by Neta Jackson

Well, the sequel I said I didn't want to read--I picked it up and read it in two days.  Centering on Harry, Estelle, and their extended family, some of the book parallels what happened in Grounded, only from Harry's point of view.  It was good.  The next book in this series, again, is about a family already introduced. I'm not looking forward to the next book, but I'll probably read it soon and like it a lot.

 They Almost Always Come Home by Cynthia Ruchti

Ugh, another example of why I don't care to read fiction.  I realize that the premise of most fiction is that it is so unlikely, but please make events surrounding the story to be plausible.  If your husband disappears on a solo fishing expedition in the Canadian wilderness, you don't decide to find him along with your best friend and father in law.  And find him.  Temporarily blinded. And semi-conscious.  Hands down, the worst book I'll read all year

Truth usually IS better than fiction.

Happy birthday, U.S.A.!!

Holly and Trevor slept in, and then we watched World Cup soccer in the afternoon.

They requested sloppy joes and french fries for dinner. I drove Trevor down to Roanoke, and he went with friends to watch fireworks at RiversEdge.  Robert, Holly, and I went up to Fincastle, our tiny county seat, pop. 350.

We've never watched fireworks there before and didn't know what to expect.  It's a very old town, with a church that was built in 1763--how cool is that?  The streets are very narrow. But we were able to park just a block and a half away.  We set up our chairs at the elementary school and waited half an hour.

I tested out my panorama setting.  That blacktop path to the right? It actually ran in a straight line directly behind our seat. This is about a 160 degree view.  Fun setting!

 They set the fireworks off directly in front of us, in the same grassy area where we sat at the school. We've never sat that close before.  It was pretty incredible for a small town. They rely entirely on donations, and every year spend whatever they get.  The show lasted for 30 minutes, longer than I would have guessed.

Very nice, and it's great to have a dependable place to watch fireworks that is so convenient!

I dropped Robert and Holly off at home and then went back into Roanoke to pick up Trevor.  He's gotten to be good friends with Jason and Andrew over the past several months. We've known one for six years, the other for two.  They are super nice kids, and he really likes them.

“The Second Day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. . . . It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
– John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776

We celebrated accordingly!

Sunset reflection

I noticed this out of our back window the other night.  I was looking east, and the sun was reflecting on this cloud.  Behind the trees, everything glowed orange.  It's not unusual to see several minutes of gorgeous sunset (and sunrise) here, I guess because of the higher humidity than we had in Colorado combined with the chemicals emitted from the indigenous trees and plants.  (That's why the Smoky Mountains are blue, you know.)

Moving on behind the trees on the right, the sky continued to glow orange.

Last night, I read there was a small forest fire on Tinker Mountain, just a mile away from us, along the Appalachian Trail.  We haven't smelled the smoke, and the fire obviously is on the other side of the ridge since we haven't seen it or heard the helicopters. It's being controlled, no worries there--but I would guess lingering and drifting smoke is what gave the sky its glow on Wednesday night.

Throwback Thursday -- Uncle Joe

I usually post these old pics on Facebook but not here.  This one's too good to pass up though.  Lori and I have such great memories of Uncle Joe.  He was stationed around the Pacific during the Viet Nam War.  When he'd get just a few days' leave, he'd often drop in, unannounced. 

We came home from a dog show one day to find that he'd spent the day in our backyard, waiting for us to come home.  He left his 10-speed bike at our house and ended up leaving it permanently with my dad.  Hey, back in the early '70s, that was a big deal!  He'd also bring unusual and exotic gifts for me and Lori--the monkey banks carved out of coconuts stand out in my mind.

November 1968

We were shy.  Look at me, standing off a bit to the side, and Lori clutching her dress.  Funny that I'm the one smiling and she's not. Usually that's the other way around in the old pictures.  (She was probably really squinting from the sun.) The back of this pic says November 1968, so we would have been 5 and 3. This was just a few months after we moved into our house on San Tomas Court.

The really weird thing I noticed about this is that Joe appears to be wearing a wedding band. He didn't get married for at least ten more years.  He would have been 20 here.  I briefly wondered if we had any deep, dark family secrets, but I can't remember anything. At all. Besides, our family talks about everything. There's no way they could have kept a secret like this. ;)

Six years later when we spent six weeks in Bethlehem, we still thought he was cool.  He was a paramedic then, and he'd come home and tell us all about any exciting runs he'd had.  Our favorites were the gory motorcycle accidents.  (I still remember the cheek that stuck to the pavement.)  We were 9 and 11; I'm sure he cleaned it up quite a bit for us, but we found it thrilling.

Fast forward to now.  We've been up to PA several times.  Now he's retired, with a long beard that's turned quite gray.  He makes all kinds of cool things, gave Trevor a turkey call and a bow and arrows.  He loves his family, his country, guns and knives, hunting, and dogs. He grows tomatoes and can fix or build about anything.  He tells the best stories you've ever heard.

As a kid, he was the coolest uncle ever.  Now that I'm grown up, I still think he's the coolest.  And my kids think he's pretty cool too.

Too hot!

It's that time of year!

We meet Linda!

I first met Linda online 13 years ago when we began looking at homeschooling.  She's been a wonderful friend for many years. Her older kids are a bit older than Holly, and she was one of my loopy friends whose footsteps I wanted to follow in homeschooling.  For example, her kids' experience was the reason Trevor joined CAP a few years ago.

She lives in Florida, but her husband is working in Pennsylvania this summer.  She and three of her four kids (her other one joined the Air Force last year!) visited Pennsylvania and planned ahead to stop here on their way back home.

Holly and Trevor and Kurt were watching World Cup soccer, but the "kids" (Linda's Landon is 20) quickly found they all knew the same video game and began to play. 

We really did tell Chase that she could sit on he couch or get another chair!

And oh! Look at Lucky, right there watching!

We could barely pull them away for lunch.

I'm not sure who entertained whom more--Robert and Carys, or Carys and Robert.  She absolutely adored all of our animals, dogs, cats, and fish.  She was hilarious!  She broke out in a patch of hives on her face, and Robert helped her wash it. After they left, he commented, "I miss washing little kids' faces!"

We went outside to get photos.  Holly demurred.  Trevor snapped this to show me that my phone really does take great pictures--apparently the problem is the user, not the camera.

Trevor, Chase, Landon, Carys.

Loopy sisters.

So much fun!

As the Meahls were leaving (that's their car, just looks like mine!), another friend of Trevor's was being dropped off to watch the U.S. v. Belgium soccer game.

Holly and I went out to look at ideas for single dorm room decoration.  She's not ready to commit, but we were looking mostly for rugs, curtains, and some storage.  She took me out for Starbucks too!

Home for dinner, which was leftovers from our lunch.  Trevor and friends hung out until pretty late, and I drove one of them home. 

A busy, fantastic Tuesday!