Over Labor Day weekend, we headed to North Carolina with one of my oldest friends, Amanda, and her husband and two kids. The boys all had a blast and we saw some beautiful scenery. What more can you ask for?
We arrived on Friday. My dad was on his way up to Maine to play some golf, so we met at the Charlotte airport to have some lunch. Amanda and her family headed off to see her family (our families are both from North Carolina - about an hour apart). After lunch we met up in Hamptonville and made the trek up the mountain to Crumpler. It was raining pretty hard, but Cameron handled the mountain roads in the giant van very well. :)
Of course, our first stop was Wal-Mart to stock up on groceries. We finally arrived at the house and spent the first night unpacking and settling in.
On Saturday we headed to Mount Jefferson State Park to walk the trails and see some pretty views. It was a little nerve wracking when the boys got too close to the edge (no barriers!) but we managed to keep them alive with a lot of "get back!" and shirt-grabbing.
On Sunday we attempted to grab some breakfast at Shatley Springs, but I underestimated how long the wait would be. We arrived at 9:50 and we were already too late to get on the list for breakfast! So, we headed to the park in downtown West Jefferson so the boys could play on the playground for a while. They have a huge slide that's on the side of a giant hill - so cool!
The park was really nice and had beautiful views of the mountains.
After we were done on the playground we walked over to the new library. I wanted to see if they have a 24 hour book drop so that I could take Noah to check out books whenever we're here and not have to worry about when I can drop them off.
There is a little statue of a girl sitting on a bench reading - the boys thought she was pretty cool.
After the park we had ice cream at a little shop downtown. Once again, Noah SAYS he wants ice cream, but when he gets it he won't eat it. He doesn't like ice cream - it would be great if he would remember that. So, we just buy him whatever *I* would like and then I eat it after he turns his nose up at it.
Later that day we headed over to the New River Blues Festival at Jefferson Landing (the golf club where I had my wedding reception). They had about 5 hours of blues & blue grass bands playing in the riverside pavilion. We were only there for about an hour and a half, but that was plenty when you have 3 kids with short attention spans. The nice thing was that parking was free, the festival was free, and food and drinks were pretty cheap. You could get beer for $3 or popcorn for $1. They don't totally screw you like they do in big cities.
There was a huge grassy area on the side of the pavilion, right near the river, where we set up chairs. We listened to music while the boys ran around and threw rocks into the water.
On Monday we finally got to eat breakfast at
Shatley Springs. I've been going to Shatley for years and years with my family to eat dinner. They serve everything family style - you keep eating and they keep bringing it to you. They serve this ham that is SO SALTY it's barely edible. Trevor loves it, of course.
Anyway, I think this is the first time I ever ate breakfast there and let me tell you - totally worth it! They do breakfast family style as well. Unlimited eggs, pancakes, bacon, sausage, ham, biscuits, etc. And it's CHEAP. For all 7 of us the tab was $35!
After breakfast we drove down the Blue Ridge Parkway to a park that had some trails and a really beautiful waterfall. I'm not sure how tall it was, but it seemed to go on forever. I tried to get some good pictures, but my vantage point wasn't the best. That, and I suck at taking pictures.
Amanda brought her brand new camera and was taking some neat photos.
On Tuesday we unsuccessfully attempted several things. First, we wanted to take the boys to
Tweetsie Railroad. Since Amanda and I had both been there as kids, we thought it would be fun to take our kids there, too. However, we neglected to notice on their website (which we looked at several times) that they CLOSE the day after Labor Day. Which was THAT DAY. So, we completely missed the opportunity. We could have gone Saturday, Sunday or Monday, but we thought that going Tuesday would allow us to avoid the crowds. Which is true, I guess, since NO ONE was there on Tuesday. When they were closed. Someone suggested that we pull a Clark Griswold.
So, next we headed to the New River Zoo. We'd seen their billboards, signs and even looked at their website. But...when we finally got there, the gate was closed. We made Trevor and Cameron walk over to see what was going on, but they said that all they could see was some animal pens and a few sorry animals standing around. Amanda wanted to call the humane society. :)
SO, we finally just headed over to Blowing Rock so we had something to do. It's got a lot of cute places to shop, but little kids don't care about shopping, so we headed to the city park where they played for a while. Noah went down a slide that was covered with water at the bottom and his shorts & underwear got totally soaked. We tried to find a store that sold kids' shorts, but were unsuccessful. Finally, Trevor dried his shorts in the park bathroom under the hand dryer.
We had lunch at a new restaurant out on the patio. The burgers were really good.
We headed home and the boys watched a DVD (Pinocchio I think?) to unwind.
We left on Wednesday. My brother was headed to the house on Thursday with his friends to ride motorcycles on the mountain roads, so we had to do some major clean up. I spent about 5 hours washing all the sheets and towels and making the beds. We cleaned the house, did the dishes, took the trash to the dump and then headed to the airport.
We had a great time!
