A few days after school got out for the summer it was time for my family's annual vacation! My sister picked the spot this year and she choose a rental house on Beech Mountain, North Carolina. We were excited to explore the mountains, but we didn't realize just how far up the mountains we were going to be. It turns out Beech Mountain is the highest elevation city east of the Rocky Mountains! Driving up and down the mountain scared me half to death the entire week we were there.
The night before we left we went to the store to stock up on essentials for the trip...
This was our first big trip with Baymax, and it went really well! We figured out a way to leash him so that he would stay in the back seat of the van and not try to climb into our laps while we were driving. I swear this dog thinks he is a lap dog!
We stopped at few different rest areas on the drive to let everyone out, walk and water the dog, and take bathroom breaks. Thankfully we didn't run into any traffic (which is the worst when you are already on a long drive) and only a few minutes of bad weather. We did drive through a 10 minute hail storm though! It was crazy to see all the pebble sized hail hitting the windshield of the car. I was scared that we couldn't see in front of us, but Anthony and the boys were excited to see the hail and was sad when it stopped. Boys!
Baymax takes up the entire back seat!
He does make a pretty fluffy pillow though.
Mountains!
As we were driving around the top of the mountain trying to find the right address (apparently the gps doesn't work well there? Such a terrible place to be lost!) we drove right by this deer. It wasn't scared of us at all! Apparently all the deer on the mountain are like that, very tame.
Since there was no fenced in yard, we had to take Baymax on walks multiple times throughout the day. Which wasn't a problem because it was so dang beautiful, you wanted to get out and explore. The boys were so excited by every little thing they saw. If we came to a small creek they would whoop and yell and say, "Oh my gosh!!!! A creek!!!" and run to investigate it. Of course they had to throw rocks in some form of water over and over again.
A random gate between these huge rocks:
We tried to take a walk to the nearby general store and came across all these deer just hanging out at the side of the road. No fear at all! Once again, the GPS failed us and it turns out we were nowhere near the general store, so we gave up and walked back.
More walking:
The trail next to the rental house had a large fairy garden with a lot of assorted figures in it. It was so adorable!
We roasted marshmallows and had smores one night in the fire pit in the back yard. The boys both don't like to eat roasted marshmallows, but they like to roast them so they take turns roasting them for me. They kept giving me one after the other and I think I ate a half a bag of marshmallows in 10 minutes. I finally had to tell them that I couldn't eat any more!
We took a day trip to a local site called "Blowing Rock". The shape of the rock formations funnels the wind so that it blows up and there is an old legend that it will blow things back to you if you lose them. We tried it out with some leaves and it really did blow them right back to us!
I went with my siblings and James to the grocery store and left Anthony at home with Rett. This is what I came home to: Anthony asleep and Rett had used a chair to reach the snacks and was going to town on a box of fruit snacks!
My mom got this video of Rett leisurely eating goldfish while watching TV. This kid loves his food!
We went gem mining at a tourist spot and the boys were so excited to find all the different color gems! After we sorted through our bucket they went through our finds and told us what our gems were. The boys loved it!
We also took a trip to a local toy store and got a few new educational card/board games to play this summer.
Anthony took the boys down to the creek a few times throughout the week to go salamander catching. They would find rocks and flip them over and find all sorts of creatures. They collected them in a critter cage and then let them go the next day.
They would also disappear for the afternoon and do some fresh water fishing. Anthony isn't used to fresh water fishing, but they got the hang of it after a few tries.
James' first bass!
One afternoon we decided to try out a trout farm. You fish in a stocked pond of trout and then pay per pound of what you catch.
I thought since it was a farm it would be really easy to catch something, but it took us almost an hour to hook into anything. James caught this guy all by himself! Anthony had gone to the car to get his fly fishing rod and I was holding Rett while he took a nap.
Rett fell asleep in the car on the way there and could not wake up! So I just snuggled with him for almost an hour while I watched Anthony and James try to catch fish.
When he finally woke up, it was his turn to try to catch one. I was able to hook one for him and he got to reel it in.
Anthony liked the gem mining so much, he wanted to try it again but on our own at a creek. We bought some baskets and small shovels at Lowe's and found a creek to try out. There were a lot of really cool colored rocks, but no gems (at least that we could see).
No comments:
Post a Comment