wordless wednesday

we steered our car in the opposite direction from normal on I-40 this past weekend, and headed west to the mountains.  our good friends lainey and bill and their two sons, web and marshall, invited us to their cabin near blowing rock.  (if you've been a long-time reader, you know that the bass family have starred in many previous posts, like here and here.)

lainey and i have a theory that no matter what, and no matter where, if our families are together in a remote location, there will be rain.  and sure enough, about ten minutes into our adventure to tweetsie railroad on saturday, the rain started falling.  i shocked myself that i actually had enough foresight to have packed raincoats, so the drizzle didn't really bother us.  the temperature did, however.  when we left around 3:00 pm the car thermometer read 63 degrees -- a nice break from 100+ degree heat at home, to be sure, but not exactly a match for our t-shirts and shorts.  we scratched the peach daiquiri plan and headed home to a bottle of chianti instead.

but the second part of our weather-related theory is that our day of rain is always, thankfully, followed by a day of sunshine.  and sunday was gorgeous.  we took a three-hour long hike off of the blue ridge parkway, had a long lunch in boone, and ended our trip by tubing down the river near their house.  (tubing = sitting on your hiney in an inflatable raft as you slowly drift with the current.) 

on a weekend where we rode the ferris wheel, spun in the tilt-a-whirl, and lazily rotated in our rafts in the river, there's no doubt that good friends really do make the world go round.

i think Time Out would be far more effective if we had a jail like this one -- that actually locked 

all that room on the seat, and marshall has to sidle up to susanna? i'm thinking that they might not share a bed next time.

view from the top of the ferris wheel.  notice a tiny chris on the ground below, aiming the video camera up towards us.  chris loves many things.  heights are not a part of that list.

i cannot remember the last time i laughed so hard as when the four of us were on the tilt-a-whirl.  i had tears streaming down my cheeks as the kids were cackling with glee.  and it kept going, and going, and going ... 

three smiling boys, and one grumpy girl, before our hike 

but she perked up quickly

we have a bone to pick with the national park people, who claimed that the trail we took was .8 miles.  either we took the wrong trail, or that decimal was in the wrong place.

this is the strenuous, exhausting sport known as tubing.  actually, it's tubin'.  i guess you get so tired doing it that you don't even have enough energy to say the "g".

we flattered ourselves by saying that this could be a picture of us from college.  obviously we're ignoring the crow's feet.  and the carseats in the background.