Road Trip Day 7 and 8 - In Virginia

Day 7: Mon July 22
We had a really nice day enjoying the Lord/Oliver cabin at Wintergreen.  Jason ran for 4 hours around the entire resort on a new perimeter trail with lots of ups, downs and brush.  Rachel spent the afternoon jumping into Jason's arms at the pool.  I saw a bear while out for a walk.

Day 8: Tues July 23
We packed up, including a few extra things from Wintergreen, and headed to Charlottesville to have lunch with our friend Kate.  Then we drove to Sterling, VA and made it to Grandma's house!  Yay!

Road Trip Day 5 and 6

Day 5: Sat July 20

We were late risers Saturday because of the time zone change.  We left the house before 10am to head to the market.  There was a small fair going on, and Jason performed poorly in the bubble blowing contest.  Jason went for a run while the girls stayed at a playground for a while.  Sara's daughter AJ and Rachel had great fun playing together at the park. I then packed up our girls in the car and drove them 40 min south to the South Carolina state line. They slept.  Notes on the fifty states to follow.  The wet, green, lucious rain forest and the curvy road made for a fun drive.

After naps, we went to the river and swam. Sadly, when leaving the river, we noticed we had a low tire.  Jason spent the rest of the evening calling tire repair stores, removing a sharp piece of metal from the tire, and putting on our spare.

Day 6: Sun July 21

As hard as we tried, we couldn't get going before 9am.  We drove on the spare tire to a repair shop and waited our turn to have our tire fixed at the only place open on Sunday for miles around. Accents and southern culture surrounded us.  At one point a man drove his extremely loud muscle car into the lot, left it running while filling it with gas, then revved his engine and sped out. rachel rode her bike around the parking lot; when another customer smiled and tried to chat with meggan about rachel, she had no idea what he was saying. Decided we didn't have time to explore great smoky national park and drove North toward Virginia.  Our destination: cousin Scott and Laurie Oliver's house for hot dog and hamburger supper.  Rachel was motivated by hot dogs all day.  Stopped for groceries and a picnic lunch and 90% of the people we saw were in their Sunday church clothes.

Grocery store conversation: 

Man: " hey ya Dottie.  How are you an' yours?"

Dottie: "good. And how are you?"

Man: " well, I can't complain."

Dottie: "nobody won't listen anyway, mm him."

We drove to our cousin's house to have dinner with Scott and Laurie Oliver and their two dogs.  Rachel had looked forward to eating hot dogs from their grill all day.  Unfortunately she was sick to her stomach while we were there and didn't eat much or feel much like playing.  After a short and sweet visit, we drove to Wintergreen with the girls in their pajamas, hoping they would sleep.  They didn't.