Last Thursday my mom, dad, Mammaw and I piled in to dad's car to head to Delaware for a long weekend to visit with my moms side of the family. My uncle has a place in a campground near Rehoboth Beach and my aunt's family spent the week there. We were packed to the brim:
We got up there late Thursday night and found our home for the weekend, a rental unit in the campground. It wasn't big but it did the trick. And it had a gorgeous water front view!
Friday morning we headed over to hang out with everyone at my uncles.
My mom, dad, aunt and cousin and I rented kayaks and a stand up paddle board. The weather was really nice and we enjoyed a couple of hours out on the water. Charlie made paddle boarding look so easy, so I decided to try it! It was pretty cool and I managed to not fall off :)
Saturday I went on a 13 mile bike ride with my aunt. We rode around some of the other little communities near by, they were all so pretty and had great views.
For lunch, mom, dad and I headed in to Rehoboth Beach to go to the Dogfish Head Brew Pub. I enjoyed two of their beers that are brewed only for the brew pub that were both really good. Mom and Dad weren't sure what they wanted so they got a flight to try a few different options. Our food was really good too.
After we ate we walked towards the ocean along the strip of stores and enjoyed some Kilwin's ice cream along the way.
We finally got to the beach and it was CROWDED. Literally more packed than any beach I have ever seen... made me really appreciate North Carolina beaches!
As we walked back to the car we stopped at Dogfish again to purchase some goods from their kiosk. They also distill liquor at the brew pub so I bought a couple of bottles of rum along with the Extreme Brewing book for Trey to enjoy reading for his home brewing :)
We enjoyed a delicious seafood dinner at my uncle's on Saturday night and just hung out with the family.
Sunday we dodged most of the rain that was all over the east coast. We had a nice view over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and stopped at the gift shop/pier to check things out, since it was dark when we crossed it on the way there.
It was such an awesome weekend with family :)
Although my summer break has started we had yet to really take a break and relax together. Trey has been busy at work and I was in a two week workshop for my first two weeks of summer. Last weekend we took a much needed getaway to my aunt & uncle's house in Valle Crucis. Our friend, Rick, was biking in the Blood, Sweat & Gears 100 mile bike race up there so he and Jennifer were going to be up there for the weekend. We also learned about Peabody's Cellar Sale so we wanted to check that out too.
Friday Trey picked me up from my workshop and we hit the road. We stopped at the grocery store as we got in to town to pick up food for dinner that night and breakfast for the weekend. The dogs were super excited about being up there, they love the land to run and the river to play in. As soon as we opened the back door to let them run around Tyson sprinted down to the river & jumped right in.
It was a gorgeous night, we let them run around and play frisbee. Tyson just couldn't get enough.
Relaxing:
Saturday morning I woke up as the race was about to start... it started at the Valle Crucis Elementary which is basically just across the river from the cabin. I could hear them announcing directions, etc and saw the bikers go across the main road in the distance!
After dropping Rick off to bike, Jennifer joined us for breakfast and we let the dogs play in the river for a while. We enjoyed a lazy morning :)
The Peabody's Cellar Sale started at noon. Some people got in line super early to get the best selection but we weren't dying for too many things in particular so we just showed up in time for it to start. We were towards the back of the line but still got quite a few nice beers, which were either already aged for about a year or so, or are very difficult to find now. They had a food truck and a tasting tent following the sale. We hung around there for a few hours and enjoyed trying beers from NC breweries.
Jennifer had gone back to pick up Rick from the finish line and then they stopped by to enjoy a few beers too.
We went to downtown Boone for dinner at Mellow Mushroom. Trey had one of the delicious beers from the beer tent on draft, Mother Earth Brewing's Windowpane Series Blackberry beer.
We headed in pretty early that night just to relax and hang out with the dogs :)
Sunday morning we got up and wanted to go hiking somewhere. I had been googling places to go hiking but information on locations, trails, etc is not all that readily available! We finally decided to go to the Moses Cone Park area, but even in that there are a lot of trails to try to sort out. After driving around not really knowing what we were doing we finally stopped at the Moses Cone Manor, hoping for signs or a trail guide. I took a picture of the trail map at the top and we decided to hike down to the lake below. It is about 2.5 miles down, 1 mile around the lake and 2.5 back up... I didn't GPS it though and their mileage signs seemed a little inaccurate, so we aren't totally sure. It was a gorgeous day though and most of our walk was in the shade, which was nice. The dogs were really excited when we got to the lake, Tyson wanted to go swimming... of course!
We stopped and ate the sandwiches we had packed and let the dogs put their feet in the water. We headed back up, with a detour to see the "Apple Barn" which was literally just an old barn, no information signs, history lessons or anything anywhere to be found! Weird...
The climb up was not quite as easy as going down, but it really isn't too steep and it's all gravel and easy footing. The dogs were pretty exhausted by the end... Vegas found the AC coming out of the floor in the car :)
It was such a nice weekend relaxing just us and the dogs with a little bit of fun thrown in there. Definitely the rejuvenation that we needed :)
