Grayson Highlands 2021

 Our girls' school district always has a teacher workday near Halloween. We used to go to Pilot Mountain, which was a perfect little getaway when the kids were younger. The last couple of years, we've ventured a little further to Grayson Highlands, a state park in Virginia. That's where we decided to go again this year. Oh, that place is magical. I love it so much.

Some amazing log cabin mansion that we passed along the way

Welcome to Virginia!

Gorgeous!

Seriously?

I couldn't get enough of these views.

They feed my soul somehow.

We stopped at the little store when you first enter the park

to use the restroom and the girls wanted to get this plush

pony from the vending machine there. They named it

"Cream Puff" and had so much fun with it on our hike.

Autumn Splendor

The girls and Cream Puff getting ready

to start the Rhododendron Trail.

This is the PERFECT hike.

It's about two and a half miles with around 300 feet of elevation gain.

It takes us about an hour and a half...

because we spend time checking out the ponies!

Wild ponies!

They are SO cute!

Care Bear introduced Cream Puff.

So far, we've come here three times and have

seen the ponies each time we've come.

This time we also saw a boulder-er hiking down with his crash pad.

Made us think of B-train.

Hanging out with teenagers is the best.

Whitney soaking up some rays.

It was a GORGEOUS October day.

More action pics of Cream Puff.

And me. Ha! :)

Oh, how I love spending time with these people.

I'll miss Whitney when she moves out next year!

Love the beautiful rolling hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

While we were in the area,

we decided to take Drew to Doe Run Farms,

the awesome sunflower maze the girls

and I discovered last year.

Jumped on the pillow for a bit.

Then started on the maze.

Cream Puff came along for some photo ops.

Such a fun place!

We also love shooting their apple launcher.

It reminds us of a Survivor challenge.

Care Bear actually hit the edge of the trash

can target this time. You win a free pumpkin

if you get one in. We told the lady that C got HALF

of one in and she said that counted. :)

We were also introduced to the donkeys this year.

Their at the far end of the apple-shooting field,

so we picked up apples along the way to feed them.

I brought along my good camera to snap some pics

of the cute girls among the sunflowers.

And also snuck over to the zinnia field

to snap some pics there.

We stopped for dinner at our favorite little diner in

Mount Airy, Walker's Soda Fountain. Yum.

It's hard to imagine that next year, we'll only have C at home for the Teacher Workday!

In the meantime, we're making all the memories that we can with these two.