Summer Camp

I'm finishing up the last bits of planning for camp and I've decided to do a "Traveling through the decades" themed day. While researching trends of the 70s I came across Spirographing! Although I'm a child of the late 80s, I've come to remember that this was one of my absolute favorite things to do growing up so I looked to see if I could find a cheap kit on Amazon.com. Turns out the exact Spirograph kit I used to have is now a collectors item worth about $60! Who would have thought!

This is what we do at night

Current unemployment= desperate calls for cheap entertainment...
Playing cards and eating homemade granola bars is where it's at.




As usual, I lost.

Graveyard Fields Hike

Saturdays are hike days. This week's adventure was along the Blue Ridge Parkway. You can do the 4 mile loop around, or just take shorter routes to the different waterfalls throughout the trail. We decided to just visit the upper falls but ended up walking about 4 miles total to and from. The loop would have been a tad smarter.


Crossing the river at the beginning



We crawled around the river for a while before starting the trail


Don't be fooled. This inviting and clear water is more like jumping into an Alaskan ice hole.



Once on the trail. It was a whole lot of this...


and tons of these pretty flowers but they were covered in bees. I'm surprised I managed a clear picture since I was pretty much going ballistic walking through it.


1.6 LONG miles later, we arrived to the local packed waterfall




I couldn't get close enough :(

Graveyard Fielfs is quite the local swimming hole. We thought everyone would be partying at the downtown Bele Chere festival but it felt like everyone congregated at Graveyard Fields instead. All in all it was great exercise but we preferred Bradley falls where we hiked along the river the entire time. This also is not such a good idea if you have a dog who has a Napoleon complex as tons of people hike with their pups without putting them on a leash.

This is My Beach

Down by the river today we found a beach!

Feeling sand beneath my toes was a pleasure...until I remembered the gritty dry feeling that lingers afterwards.

This was Poof's first sand experience. Poof and sand do not mix well. He managed to get it fully up his nose and wouldn't stop sneezing and hacking it up. Gross.



It's my new favorite spot.

No more slacking on my blog posts! Currently we are listening to a group of neighbors singing & playing the fiddle to "Down to the River to Pray" and "This little light of mine." Good music and great singing on the back porch from lovely Asheville.

4th of July! Kyle & Chase are here!

Today will be marked in my calender as a day to remember. My little Poof Poof FINALLY conquered his fear of water!


But as you can see, we had a rough start..



A view along the hike. What's wrong with this picture??


Some lovely trailblazers left a useful note for other explorers. Thankfully, we never did see any nest.


A good half hour into the hike, we realized we had crossed the river a few times already and the red dots on trees we were supposed to follow seemed to have disappeared so we thought for a minute that the trail had ended. After all, the little boy who informed me about the trail did tell me it was "Little Bradley Falls."

Now I can't help but wonder the kinds of huge waterfalls this little boy has seen in his lifetime, because once we found our red dots and continued on, we came to this huge beauty...


While hanging out and gawking at nature's wonders, Chase decided to create his own "Sliding Rock"


The boys went to get a little closer, but I decided to chill at the bottom with Poof.



Water in slow-mo.



This was the beginning of the second trail "Big Bradley Falls" Unfortunately, this was a bust although there were a good amount of people a little bit everywhere on this trail. We followed the blue squares on trees but somehow ended up passing the important shift in direction, so we back-tracked and asked some people who led us down a path. This was quite the mistake and quite the task with a dog. We made it down, and got nowhere near the water since it was horrendously powerful and not very accessible. The climb back up was the ultimate test to my health and agility.
I failed.
It was the hardest thing ever.

With that, I really didn't take any worthwhile pictures other than this one.


So eventually we went back to our original river and cooled off our feet for a little bit.


It's a miracle! I promise you I didn't force him in. Halfway through our journey on the first trail, I put him down in a super shallow river in hopes he wouldn't freeze out of fear. I assume since we were ahead he just wanted to follow and eventually realized water really wasn't that scary.



I will leave you with a mushroom...


and some wild raspberries Kyle and I had to restrain ourselves from devouring just in case they were harmful.