Life After Cows...Trip Part One...

When Jim and I first started thinking about selling the cows, we also began dreaming of a vacation.  We had each been able to get away on occasion...alone...but not together, and we were ready for that to change!

We are very thankful to our current employers, who saw how important this was to us, and who were willing to give us some extended time off so soon after we began working for them!

All that said, I'm excited to recap our vacation for whoever would like to follow along!  I posted on Instagram and Face Book along the way, but didn't give a lot of details.  I'll warn you up front...the posts will be picture heavy, but it's what I do!  I snap away.  After all, I wouldn't want to forget anything!

Here's the first weekend...

We left home on Saturday morning March 23.  I had filled up the gas tank the night before on my way home from work, so we started with just ten miles on the trip odometer.  (We typically drive older cars and run them until they die, so none of our current vehicles were trip worthy.  We found this car at an auction last fall and bought it with this trip in mind.  It's fourteen years old, but had only 45,000 miles on it when we bought it.  An older man was the sole owner, and he had kept it spotlessly clean and had it serviced regularly and garage kept.) The mileage will look a lot different when we get home!

About an hour from home, we hit a traffic jam.  A stand still, get out of your car and walk around traffic jam that delayed us about an hour.  There was an accident on the highway a mile or so in front of us.  We never heard if anyone was badly injured, but we could clearly see where it had happened after traffic began moving again.

Thankfully (for more than just us!)  it was the only accident we encountered on the entire trip!

Our first destination was to my sister and brother in law's home in Kimball, West Virginia.  They are location coordinators for SWAP (Sharing With Appalachian People) which is under the umbrella of MCC (Mennonite Central Committee)  It's a great organization, if you want to check it out!

One of my favorite things on this trip was seeing how the landscape changed from state to state...even from mile to mile!  This is somewhere between here and there, either in Virginia or West Virginia...

It was supposed to be about an eight hour trip, but it took us ten hours due to the accident and a leisurely lunch stop.  We still had some daylight left when we passed Pinnacle Rock along Route 52, so we stopped for a quick hike to the top.  It's not a long or difficult hike...but it's worth the view!  The Appalachian Mountains are quite different from the Rockies, which I'll get to later...but beautiful just the same...

On Sunday afternoon, Lee and Peg took us hiking at Brush Creek Falls.

Aren't the water falls beautiful?  That's a 33' drop, in case you were wondering.  While we were there, a couple of young people took the plunge.  They looked pretty cold when they got out of the water!

The first waterfalls were close to the beginning of the trail, but there was a second falls about 1 1/2 miles further along the trail.  It was a beautiful day, and we had no cows to milk...so on we went...

And this...THIS...almost got us off to a really crummy start on our vacation.  I slipped and my phone ended up IN. THE. WATER.  Totally submerged in about two feet of water.

Jim was closest to it, and he grabbed it as fast as he could.  I thought it was all over.  I mean really...we are so attached to and dependent on our phones!!  How were we going to travel halfway across the country for two weeks with no means of communication and no internet access??  Talk about a first world problem.

I am so very thankful to say, that after the screen went blank for about ten minutes (and me panicking) my phone came back to life with no apparent permanent side affects!  My case is mostly made of rubber, and I think that's what saved it.  I don't know.  But ANYWAY...we were fine.  Sigh.

Thanks for following along on the first weekend of our getaway.  More to come in the next few days...