A couple weeks ago, our friends Kristy and Ryan came to visit for a few days. We hadn't seen them since their wedding earlier this year, so it was nice to have a few days to catch up with them!
They got to our house in the afternoon, so we had dinner outside on the patio. Mark grilled some chicken and we made tacos, and we drank a few bottles (oops) of our homemade wine. And since Kristy never fails to accidentally make a goofy face when I take her picture, here she is. :) We were all pretty tired (Mark and I had just worked a mid, and Kristy and Ryan had been going nonstop for a few days on their roadtrip), so we went to bed fairly early to make sure we were ready for the next day.
Waffle time! We made some waffles for breakfast the next morning, and I broke out the dark chocolate spread I brought back from Belgium. Mark squeezed some OJ and we all had coffee, then got our stuff together to go adventuring.
We started by heading up to Shenandoah for some hiking. It was still foggy when we got there, which made for some neat tree pictures. We hiked Stony Man, and even though it was a weekday there were a lot of other people there.
I had hoped it would clear when we got to the summit, but it was still foggy. We climbed around on the rocks a bit and Kristy did her best to not fall in the puddles.
After a few minutes you could see the fog starting to move...
...then it suddenly lifted, right in front of us! It was really cool to watch, and I've been trying to see the clouds do that for a couple years now. Huzzah!
After the clouds lifted, we walked back down to the car, drove a little further on Skyline Drive, and hiked down a fire road to check out a waterfall.
Ooo...waterfally. There were a lot of people here, too, so we only stayed for a few minutes before hiking back up.
It was early afternoon by the time we finished hiking, so we drove over to Luray, grabbed lunch at a tasty little cafe that Mark and I had gone to before, and went to check out Luray Caverns.
No headsets this time - we had an actual guide! Which also meant we had to stay together in a group and couldn't just listen to things on the recording at our own pace. Oh well. I caught Kristy taking a picture of Ryan while we waited for our group to gather up. :)
Dream Lake is still probably my favorite part of the caverns. The lake is very shallow (no more than 18-20 inches deep), but since it's so still it perfectly reflects the ceiling.
We wound our way through the caverns and I managed to get some pictures, despite the very tall guy in front of me that kept leaning into every shot I was trying to take.
That stalactite fell down thousands of years ago and is HUGE.
We got to hear the stalacpipe organ play, too. I can honestly never pick out the melody of the song it's playing...it just sounds like a bunch of random notes. Maybe I'm lacking culture...?
By the time we got finished in the caverns the dogs had been alone in the house for a long time, so we headed back home to take care of them and grab dinner. Mark made some homemade pizza, we had some tasty drinks, and spent the night playing pool until we were eventually wiped out and fell asleep. Fun fun!
Kristy and Ryan had to head home the next morning, so we grabbed breakfast at the Corner Deli. They said goodbye to the dogs, packed up their car, and followed us over to the airport so I could show them my planes before they left.
I wish the weather was nicer - I would have taken them for a ride! Instead, Kristy settled for sitting in the pilot's seat and holding the controls. Oh well...now they'll have to come back and visit again! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment