After our visit to Polyface, we drove southwest to Grayson Highlands State Park in Virginia. What a beautiful place! The drive through the Shenandoah Valley was gorgeous and the campground was perfect for our style of camping (read: they had warm showers in the bathrooms!)
We got our camp all set up and basically just enjoyed not having anywhere to be! Simple vacations are so nice sometimes :) The girls had stocked up on library books, so we did a lot of reading, napping, nature walking, eating campfire food, and just enjoying each other's company.
At the front of the campground there was a little swing set to which we made multiple trips for some afternoon playtime.
Of course, Ellie found the stage (I think she can sense if there is a stage within a 10-mile radius!), and as she is wont to do, put on a show for us. Campbell, as usual, got roped in to play the supporting role(s). Actually, one evening a couple of Americorps volunteers came a presented a show on the heritage music from the region. It was quite interesting and the girls enjoyed all the fiddle-playing.
Rosie Posie came along and for the most part she behaved herself. We joked that maybe we should just leave her up there... she was exhausted most of the time from all the sniffing and hiking. In fact, nearly every night before dinner, she would be sacked out on the entrance to the tent. Now, you'll notice I said, for the most part she behaved herself... She wouldn't be Rosie if she hadn't gotten into some trouble...
... As soon as we arrived, she bounded out of the car and disappeared into the woods. We called and whistled for her, but she didn't come back until we were already unloading things. As she trotted toward us, we recoiled in horror because she had apparently rolled in something dead. She smelled horrible! So, after only a few minutes in the park, I was elected to drag her to the laundry sink and wash the dead varmint smell off of her.
On Day 2, I cooked some of the bacon which we had bought at Polyface the day before and there was a ton of grease in the pan, so I poured it out in a little bed of rocks that was nearby. Rosie then proceeded to (unbeknownst to me, since I was still busily cooking breakfast) move the rocks from their place and roll her entire head around in the bacon grease. Needless to say, bacon grease doesn't wash out with water, so Rosie had the look of freshly slicked back hair for the rest of the week. At the end of the week, we took her to a boarding kennel while we visited our friends in Blowing Rock, and Daniel said she was going to have some serious street cred among the other dogs what with her smell cornucopia of: woods/campfire, dead varmint, and bacon.
Cooking my Polyface chicken on a make-shift spit.... it actually turned out really great! I had packed plenty of butter and a dried mix of herbs de Provence in anticipation of preparing it. Plus, food always seems to taste better when cooked over a campfire!
[lookin good]
The weather was wonderful for almost the entire week. We did have a big rain storm on our second-to-last night (thankfully everything stayed totally dry thanks to Daniel's high tech tarp-cover over our tent!). Unfortunately there was rain in the forecast for the entire next day (which was to be our last), so after we tired of reading books in the tent, we decided to pack up a few hours earlier than originally planned. The kids were bummed at first, but we got a hotel in town that had a pool, so they got over it pretty quickly!
One of the reasons we picked Grayson Highlands is because there are supposedly herds of wild ponies that roam the country side. We unfortunately didn't get to see any! Mostly this was because in order to get to the plains where the ponies like to frolic, you have to hike at least 2.5 'adventurous' miles. The girls just weren't able to to do it and carrying them wasn't an option with all the climbing. The Park had some awesome trails, but most of them (including a section of the Appalachian Trail) were too long or strenuous for 2 and 4 year olds. Next time, I'll do better research on the ability levels so we're not relegated to a 1/2 mile loop around the campground :)
The last stop on our vacation: Boone, NC to visit some great friends!
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