Fourth of July Getaway

Our family doesn't have strong 4th of July traditions because we're almost always traveling on the 4th. So we just kind of adopt the traditions of whoever we're visiting with. The 4th fell on a Saturday this year and Andrew had both Friday AND Monday off from work as holidays. I can't let an opportunity like that pass me by! We decided to go on a little weekend getaway. Our first thought was the beach. But I knew the beaches would be super crowded. And there have been several corona outbreaks that are linked with beaches. So, we decided to head to the mountains instead.

I found the CUTEST AirBnB in a town called Leicester (which I'd never heard of). We LOVED it. The girls asked if we could just move in there. Or at least stay ONE MORE NIGHT. We had the basement of a home to ourselves, with our own entry and private back patio. There was a nice living room with lots of recliners. There were two bedrooms, both decorated super cute. The girls' room had two desks, which were perfect for Whitney to work on her art while we were there. It had a pool table, too, which was fun. It was not perfectly flat, which made for hilarious game play. Whitney kicked all of our butts. Ha!

I guess I didn't take any pics of our place. Boo. You'll have to take my word for it that it was adorable. It was called Casa Bonita and lived up to its name.

This was the view from our back porch, though.

Love it.

I wish I could capture fireflies on camera better.

This place had THE BEST fireflies I've ever seen.

So bright and so many.

I loved to spend time out on the back porch watching them.

Our first evening there, I talked Andrew into going on 

a little geocaching date with me. 

We came across two herds of longhorns on the way!

Didn't expect to see that.

Those are some horns!

It was a beautiful evening to be outside,

but we didn't find either of the caches we were looking for. Boo.

 We did find some large animal tracks...

Started to wonder if it was safe to be out there...

 The next day, we got to sleep in and just hung 

around at Casa Bonita for the morning.

Over the years, I've learned that Andrew needs some

down time to just relax and do nothing when we're 

on vacation. My natural tendency is to try to fill 

every minute with something to do or somewhere

to go. I'm glad we can balance each other out.

In the afternoon, we left on our adventures. 

We got to drive through the heavily forested mountains

on super-curvy roads.

It was so pretty.

Our first stop was to find a geocache outside

of St. Jude's Chapel of Hope.

This was the cutest little chapel that I've ever seen.

It is in the teeny tiny town of Trust, NC.

A woman who lived there was battling Stage 4 

cancer. She gave up on traditional treatments, but

was miraculously healed. She credits St. Jude,

the patron saint of lost causes, and built

this little chapel to honor him.

 It is open 24/7 and anyone can go inside.

There are beautiful stained glass windows,

a couple of pews, and pictures and mementos

at the front. It was such a neat experience.

 Then we were off to Farmony,

a very *interesting* animal interaction experience.
It had really good reviews online,
but wasn't quite what I expected.
It was kind of a hodge-podge thrown-together
collection of exotic animals that some guy
had put together and lets you pay to come see them.

It is very much hands-on and we did enjoy
interacting with the animals.

Bearded dragon

Peacock chick!

What???

Chinchilla

Porcupine

Wolves!???

(So, I guess they are actually dogs that

are part-wolf...)

This one liked Whitney's mask. Ha!

This one was so pretty. And chill.

Lemur.

(Who was overweight and clumsy.)

Bat-eared fox.

I forgot what species of monkey this is.

But he was hilarious.

These little marmosets were my favorites!

Look how little and adorable they are!

Kangaroo

And the finale...a sloth.

It was late in the afternoon when we were there

and he was lazy and had drooled all over himself.

Not quite as cool as our last sloth interaction.

The only thing we didn't love about Casa Bonita

was that it didn't have a kitchen, just a little kitchenette.

Which would have been fine if there were restaurants nearby.

But since it's out in the boonies, the closest

decent restaurants are a twenty minute drive away.

That was kind of annoying.

We had Chick-fil-a dinner at a park one night.

They forgot to give us mayo and sauce,

so Andrew was disappointed with his meal. Bummer.

The next day, Saturday the 4th,

we met Ryan and Destinee to go hiking near Brevard.

I looked up a trail that sounded amazing,

the John Rock trail.

It had a waterfall along the way and then 

mountain views at the end.

Perfect!

It was so fun to hang out with the Blau's.

We hadn't seen them since Thanksgiving.

Love spending time with them.

The waterfall was gorgeous.

The rhododendrons were in bloom.

So pretty.

As we kept hiking toward the mountain views,

we kinda got lost.

I'm not sure how.

I had clear instructions,

but none of the signs were pointing

to where we wanted to go. Huh.

We found a second beautiful waterfall along the way.

I wanted to keep hiking and find the mountain views,

but everyone else was tuckering out.

And it was hot.

And we were sweaty.

So, we turned around and headed back to the vans.

We had packed picnic lunches that we enjoyed in the shade.

We went back to the Blau's house and played board games

all afternoon. It was the best! Qwixx, Pandemic, Werewolf.

Then we ordered pizza for dinner.

These three have so much fun together.

They wanted to schedule a sleepover.

I'm not sure how I feel about that during COVID....

We ended the night by lighting fireworks out on the driveway.

Perfect.

Destinee took cool sparkler pics for us!

These were supposed to be hearts.

This sums up our year! Ha!

I organized everyone and made sure their

letters were going to be facing the right way...

And then I was the one that did my "9" backwards

and turned our word into COVIDIP. Ha ha ha!

Fantastic getaway. All of us loved it. We drove home on Sunday. Had home worship that evening. And then Andrew still had Monday off of work, so he got more time to relax before getting back to the grind.

What the second half of June looked like

Aunt Irene offered to sell us Grandma Cuca's car.

It's the PERFECT teenager car and we're so happy 

Whit can drive it and hope it can hang in there for Caroline

to drive it in a few years, too. 

Happy Father's Day! 

We bought a charcoal grill for Andrew.

He has loved learning how to grill.

The girls have loved having some new

options for dinners--kebobs and burgers. Yum.

For Father's Day, he grilled up some yummy steaks.

My mum has started blooming.

It makes me happy.

We found a new trail we can take to walk 

around the neighborhood.

Stopped for some portraits along the way. :)

Also tried to catch a bunny...

didn't work.

I was SOOOO happy to get this pic on my phone.

Greg and Nicolle were in St. George for a family

reunion and stopped by the chocolate factory

while B was working. LOVE that they reached out

and said HI to him.

Beautiful cotton candy sunset clouds

One of Caroline's day trip pics:

Mystery Hill near Blowing Rock, NC 

 This place was trippy.

It has a gravitational vortex there that

causes some gravitational anomalies.

They also built a room that

emphasizes those quirks.

Water can flow uphill....????

And balls can roll uphill???

It's crazy.

And it gave me vertigo to be in there.

After the vortex,

they had some other places you could visit.

We liked the plasma ball.

And had WAY too much fun in the bubble room. 

They had the coolest arrowhead collection.

It was HUGE.

And arranged so cutely by a woman 

who was also a quilter.  

Crazy shapes I'd never seen before!

Hooks.

Hearts?

I loved these!

Clear arrowheads!

I loved this arrangement.

After that, there was a historical home that you

could walk through. 

We liked this piano.

The woman of the house used it to teach lesson.

She had labeled the keys with different 

symbols to teach students that couldn't read.

Interesting...

And then it was on to AXE THROWING. 

It is harder than it looks!

Caroline got one in that part of the target

that is apparently worth more points than

a bullseye. Score!

I got one close to the bullseye.

But Whitney was the most consistent thrower.

She was a natural.

We had a great time at Mystery Hill.

It is kinda tourist-trappy and was a little overpriced,

but had such a great variety of things to see and do.

All of us had a lot of fun.

While we were in the area,

I picked a couple of other things to do that day. 

We drove down to THE Blowing Rock.

So, the town is named Blowing Rock, NC.

But there's an actual rock that it is named after.

You have to pay like nine bucks to go out and see it.

The views there are gorgeous!

But I don't think it was worth the fee.

I would prefer similar views for free on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

They had some cute gardens on the property, too.

Before we headed home, I decided to 

throw a hike into our plans.

Caroline was NOT happy to hear that.

She came along, but was rage hiking the whole time.

I didn't know that was a thing.

But she walked in front of us the whole time

with an ANGRY walk.

When Whit and I got out of view, 

she'd wait for a bit until she could see us

and then STORM off again.

Not her typical behavior...

I hope it's not indicative of what the teenagers

years will hold for her...

The hike was right in downtown Blowing Rock.

It was called the Glen Burney Falls trail.

You could park for free in their public parking

and then just start walking.

It was two and a half miles round trip.

There were a few homes still in view when

the trail started, but then it felt like you 

were out in the boonies.

.

 Weird tree on the way.

It was a gorgeous hike,

with a couple little waterfalls on the way

before you get to Glen Burney Falls.

This was Glen Burney.

Pretty!

Caroline decided she wanted to stop about 1,000 

feet before you could see the falls.

Little stinker.

Such a lush place to hike.

Rage hiking.

That's a giant millipede by Whit's foot.

The town of Blowing Rock has a cute little main

street with shops. We stopped for ice cream at Kilwin's.

It was SOOOO good.

Also stopped for a pic on the Blue Ridge Parkway on the way home.

I'm loving these day trips with the girls!

Some creature ate most of my day lily blooms,

but I'm finally getting a few.

They are so pretty. I love them!

More turtles at the lake.

Whitney arranged a version of Country Roads

for us to sing Sweat Family Harmony.

We practiced for a few weeks and 

finally all learned our parts.

So fun!

When we watched it back,

Andrew and I were like,
"Why do we look so SERIOUS?"

Ha! I think it took all of our concentration 

to hit our notes. (And even then I missed several...)

One evening we decided to do experiments.

We did the mentos-and-coke geyser a few times.

First try


It was hilarious to watch them trying to drink the last of the geyser.

Second try

Third try

We also tried making alka seltzer
rockets in film canisters.
We actually got a couple to work,
but none of them while I had the
camera going, of course. :)

Day Trip:

Trail ride at RedBarn Riding in Lancaster, SC.

This was Caroline's other pick.

We drove down just across the border into SC

for an hour long trail ride.

Our guides were SO nice and our horses were

cooperative. The scenery along the way was just OK.

And it felt kind of short.

But overall we enjoyed it.

Whitney has gotten back into visual art,

mostly sketching.

She is SO good.

It has been so fun to see her re-kindle that talent.

And just like that June is gone! It seems weird to not be driving across the country. Or at least putting together our plans to drive across the country. I'm so happy we got to see so many of our UT relatives over Christmas for Lauren's wedding. I'm REALLY sad that we can't see Grandma Cuca this summer, though. She's hanging in there. I miss her. Hopefully I can sneak in a visit at some point when this stupid virus is gone.

The other big news that wasn't photo-worthy is that I officially got released from my calling as seminary teacher. It was bittersweet. I have LOVED teaching seminary. It was so good for me personally to really delve into the scriptures every day. And I LOVED interacting with our awesome youth and learning from them. It was inspiring. But it was also exhausting. And I'm grateful that I don't have to wake up early every morning. And I'm happy that I can be there for Andrew when he has had a long night of church calls and wants to chat or hang out. I was really protective of my bed-time when I was a seminary teacher, so it will be nice to let that go.