Monday, June 11, 2007

A Week in Virginia!

Yay for Virginia! One week after the last day of school, I flew out to Virginia for a week long vacation, and it was full of fun and adventures! The first part was a four day backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail.

Here we are at the very beginning, packs packed and ready to go, even Merlin, the dog, has his own little doggie pack! Crysty's on the left, then me in the middle and Jane is on the right.

These are the trail posts telling us we're going the right way.

Thanks to Jane and her fabulous map, we never lost our way : )



Here we are and it's starting to get dark! Luckily, we won't be camping too far from here!


Merlin found this little guy, probably scared the poor thing half to death! Aside from being a little frightened, I think he was ok and was shortly reunited with it's mom.


Stopping to refill our water. Luckily we were hiking by a stream most of the weekend, so that was convenient : )

This is where we stopped for lunch and I think Merlin was pretty tired! The night before, we had a family of deer and probably a variety of other nocturnal critters wandering around our campsite and I don't think Merlin slept much!

Here Crysty and I are splashing our faces with cool stream water, it was hot! We hiked mostly in the shade of the trees, which helped for sure!


These are a couple of group pictures on our last day.


One of the few places that had a nice view of the mountains. Merlin and I are posing for one of our final pics : )

Overall, the trip was a blast, but we were definitely ready to go home after four days : )


On our way home, we stopped at a couple of wineries including the prestigious Linden Vineyard. We had an educational wine tasting upstairs and then signed up for a cellar tour.



Here we are in the wine cellar with our fabulous tour guide, who after we told her about our camping trip, gave us a free glass of wine in celebration! She was sweet : )

We got home Sunday night and then Monday and Tuesday, I got to hang out with my brother Matt. The last time I visited Virginia I didn't get to see any of the sights, so I put my brother through the torture of checking out all the memorials. I got to see the WWII memorial for the first time, and saw some others that I hadn't remembered from when I was a kid. It was great, and I loved getting the time to catch up with my "little" brother : )

The Hope Diamond, a girl's best friend ; )

Tuesday, Matt and I drove up to Charlottesville and he showed me where he and his wife, Courtney, will be living when they move in a week or so, and it was really beautiful! After, we took the afternoon and toured Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. We couldn't have asked for a better day!

That night I met up with some old college friends for dinner and then went back to Jane's for my last night in Virginia. It was a fantastic trip, and I only wish I could go more often! Thanks to all of you who made it a great trip!

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