here’s the rest of that same entry that i was working on last monday, when we drove down to the westmoreland state park in northern VA. we’d had dinner with kelly, rob, and their daughter katie on sunday night, and we left thad’s house around one on monday, after stopping at the fabulous wegman’s grocery store.
as we drove south on I-95 away from DC, the traffic coming towards us in the northbound lanes was at a standstill. there were also special fast lanes for commuters going south, and those lanes were suddenly shut down.
up ahead, there were about two dozen fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, and a big helicopter on the fast lanes. it was a huge, huge accident. we turned on the traffic report, and all it talked about was that wreck – a trooper had been hit at the scene of an accident, and in addition to the helicopter that had landed, another was coming in to transport injured people.
i’ve always hated traffic in DC. i lived there for about nine months in the early 90’s, and i hated that traffic just about every day. it has only gotten worse.
So we were quite happy to get away from all that and head down to more remote locales.
Here’s the rest of that entry about camping:
Kevin drove here to the park and he wasn’t crazy about pulling the camper on the many little bitty twisty turny roads. Hmm, I wonder how it’s gonna go when we’re in the Shenandoah mountains? I wonder if we’ll actually make it there? Either way, it’s all good.
This morning we went on a hike, which mollie was very happy about.
lots of trees were down; it was because of some hurricane that had passed through a few years ago. there were still gobs of trees in the park.
even though mollie is going up the stairs here, we actually walked down them. somehow we managed to hike the trail leading downhill – if we’d gone the other way, it’d have been a lot more work.
The hike ended at the Potomac River, at this beautiful little spot.
Kevin and Mollie decided to wade through a little shallow bit of water to get to the other side of the beach, but then it was DEEP water and mollie had to swim and Kevin got his jeans wet almost to his knees. Neither of them cared, though, and Mollie kept racing up and down the beach. A very happy puppy.
a massive downed tree we encountered on our way back.
We came back and here I sit, typing away on my laptop in the middle of the park. It’s funny to be doing that but I really must stop now because this is way too much activity for the day.
Ok then,
Monday grace.
OK THEN…that’s all the writing i did during the trip.
as i was doing all that writing that monday afternoon after we hiked, kevin was busy making an apple cobbler in the dutch oven. it was delicious.
it
after lunch and relaxing, we drove down to yet another beach. this one had a huge pool next to it, and lots and lots of picnic tables. i wonder if it’s really crowded in the summer. it was almost completely deserted when we were there.
kevin, with his vacation-pipe-smoking.
way out there on the dock is the only other person on the beach – a guy out fishing.
kevin and mollie are walking along the fence by the pool.
i took about a million pictures of this guy out on the dock. it was such a peaceful sight, and i think i had this idea that i could print up some photos of this and sell them somewhere, after i start my collection of peaceful photos. i have a picture i love of an old lady out fishing in the ocean in oahu, that i took on the first day of our honeymoon. i like to look at that picture; it’s very soothing.
i was definitely a little nutty about taking lots of pictures on this trip. when were sitting around the campfire that night, i took some pictures of it. the first one had a flash, and i thought it was interesting to see what the fire looked like in the light. not early as beautiful and dramatic as how it looked to us in the dark.
here’s mollie napping in the camper. yes, we brought two dogs beds. i figured that she could use one when camping and in the van, and the other one when we stayed with people, so there would be a clean one and one that could get dirty. i can’t tell you why i decided that she needed both of them while camping.
the next morning before we left, we walked back to that first beach.
walking back, i saw this butterfly. i haven’t seen any like this around here, but maybe i’m not looking for butterflies that closely usually.
that afternoon we drove to kevin’s aunt marj’s house, and i, of course, have more photos, plus thousands of photos of the shenandoah national forest.
but that’s enough for now, since i have one million things i want to accomplish today.
ok then,
still pretty early on thursday morning grace.