We took a bike ride into Vienna for a self-guided food tour. We hit up all the best places including DonutChew, Lily’s, and Bobba Tea.
Category: Events
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VA Beach Surf Camp
We went to Va Beach on a Monday morning and checked straight into surf camp after lunch at a diner on the road. This last trip was our conclusion to almost 5 weeks of summer on the road. The only week we didn’t travel was our first week of summer which started with engineering camp del Daddy.
Skylar and Parker were slightly apprehensive about attending camp. It took Parker a couple days to really settle in, but once he started getting the hang of it his first question was: “When can we buy a surf board…”
Monday through Thursday was surf camp and then Friday and Saturday I rented boards for the 3 of us and we moved up the beach from 1st street to 34th. I didn’t know ahead of time that you can’t really surf anywhere but at the inlet (1st street) or the pier. You don’t get good enough breaks anywhere else and if there is a life guard around they won’t let you in the water with a board anyway. So we ended up trekking back to 1st street to surf during the day and then we played and went out at night around 34th.
The hotel had a movie theatre, indoor pool, outdoor pool, and lazy river. Fun Fun! On our way out of town we stopped at the water park. The summer was blast and we are all a bit melancholy for our last trip be over…
Until next year summer! On to our fall adventures!
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NY trip summer 2022
One of our many trips in the summer of 2022 was going to NY to visit Chris Garner and family on Long Island.
On the way we stopped for what may have been our last visit to Dutch Wonderland – affectionately referred to as our home away from home for a couple summers between 2016 – 2018 due to home times we went there and stayed at the same hotel.
This year we stayed in a caboose that also had a diner and petting zoo with donkeys, horses, pigs, and a llama.
And of course, no visit to the Garner’s is complete without a day on the tennis courts!
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Harris beach trip
We went to the Outer Banks with the extended Harris family – 24 people if I recall correctly. Most of the time was spent doing 1 of 3 things: playing in the ocean, chilling in the hot tub, or eating yummy seafood.
We only had one semi-bad weather day and it was 75, a little windy, with water temps of 68-69. Parker was the only kid who stayed in the ocean pretty much all day – like all the other days. I think he’s got some Polar bear in him.
On Thursday we went to Jockey’s ridge for a hang gliding lesson. That was super cool! On the way home from the beach we stopped at a water park. They had all kinds of fun stuff including slides, a dueling obstacle course, flow rider, and a climbing wall.
After last summer we now have a tradition of stopping for waffles for lunch in Richmond on the way home. Last year we went to Capital Waffle and this year we went to the Granby Waffle Shop.
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Memorial Day weekend – Yurt camping
We went Yurt camping with the Wilkendfelds’ for Memorial Day weekend. The first night we tried and tried to get a fire going to cook dinner and we finally had it when the wind whipped up and it started downpouring rain. We gave up, rallied the kids, and went out for pizza at Vito’s – right across from Uncle Gillette’s boat mooring.
The rest of the weekend the weather was picture perfect. Saturday we got up and had an awesome breakfast including home fries that Abby and Skylar cooked and home made donuts with cinnamon and sugar.
Gillette met up with us at the Lake Anna beach and took everyone out for a fun afternoon on the boat. No injuries 🙂 Later that night we had a successful dinner (2 dinners worth of food) of kabobs and london broil with Uncle’s G’s marinade. We played spoons until around 10:30 and got some well-deserved sleep.
Sunday we packed up and then went for a hike around the lake. On our way out we stopped at the snack shop and it felt like we were back in 1960. I don’t think the prices had ever been updated. Probably not the healthiest food, but I had an entire lunch for $3.00.
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Easter 2022
For Easter we got up and opened what the Easter Bunny brought. Chocolates, fishing rod for Parker, hula hoop for Skylar, and some kites which as to date (12/20/2022) have yet to be flown.
We also had eggs hidden all over the house with all kinds of fun surprises ranging from candy to cold hard cash!
We spent the afternoon on a picnic at RiverBend Park with the Wilkenfelds (Abby, Rachel, John, and Hillary). Parker and I walked the entire way to the big falls, while Skylar and Abby hung out on the rocks above the falls.
In the background you can see Parker’s Dungeon and Dragon’s kit that Nana got us and the “Parrots in Paradise” impossible puzzle that we worked on for 9 months and still never finished. We’re taking that one to the beach to see if we put 6-8 people on it for a week if it can be completed!
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Spring break 2022
For Spring break we went to Culpeper to hang out with family and celebrate an early Parker birthday where he turned 1 years old. We departed Sunday morning and went to an indoor water park at Massanutten. While waiting for me to get lunch, Parker got in line for the Flow-Rider and ripped it up!
There were some slides that went out of the park and wound around the outside of the building and then exited back inside – super cool! Skylar and I got a bit cold, but luckily they had a massive hot tub, aka warm tub, that could fit about 50 people where we could warm up.
After our day at the water park we went to the most ghetto Air-BNB I’ve ever visited. It was supposed to be a guest house and ended up being a garage next to a no-so-great house. I didn’t feel too bad because the previous week I had the kids give me their input on where they wanted to stay and they chose what we thought was a nice place over a traditional hotel (this choice will come back to haunt them as I now choose off-the-beaten-tracks for all our stays – see Dutch Wonderland post July 2022). The pool table was about half the size of a standard pool table and you couldn’t hit the balls from one corner because it was too close to the wall.
There was a sign that said there was only 9 minutes of hot water, so each of us had to take a 3 minute shower. The stone wall with fireplace was actually stone wall-paper. The picture of the fence that went around the firepit ended just out of view so you couldn’t see there was a bank on one side and a barn falling down on the other side. Lovely!
Regardless, we laughed at the whole situation and it ended up being the most memorable part of the vacation. Skylar and Parker enjoyed making fire in the fire pit, and we all slept well despite the accommodations.
We left our Air-bnb and went to Lexington to visit with Nana and Poppa D. We had a most delicious dinner at the mountain. Parker and Skylar took the floating dock out for a spin. Parker commented that ‘everyone in your family is a good cook’. Lots of yummy steak, corn, and potatoes on this trip!
The next day we got a personal tour of VMI via Jean and her husband including a trip to the gun museum and some goodies from the gift shop.
We returned back to Nova and met up with Ryland for a bike tour of the city. We visited the major landmarks near Ryland’s house and then got ice cream. I was in the process of coming down with a cold and the trip uphill about killed me. Nothing a little ice cream can’t fix!
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Montage Mountain
We got lucky and got a cold spell at the end of the season which enabled us to spend a weekend at Montage Mountain in March. Montage is similar in size to Snowshoe and while it doesn’t have a hotel or village at the resort they had a sound stage with the Spin Doctors and the Verve Pipe.
They also had all these picnic tables and canvas tents at the top of the hill for tailgating. Interesting setup. Montage also claims to have the steepest run in the Mid-Atlantic.
A 10-foot wide by 30-foot long swimming pool was cut out of one of the blue runs for people to try skiing across. That was fun to watch! One out of every 10 people would make it.
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Canaan Valley Skiing
We rented a house at Timberline and ski’d Canaan Valley for a long President’s Day weekend with Uncle Gillette, Mason, and our friends Ryan and his dad Paul.
The house was called “Ranger Station” and it had a parks of America theme to it. Apparently the dogs name was “Ranger”. We enjoyed reading about National Park’s each night prior to bed.
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Skylar skiing
Skylar ripping it up on the slopes. Her form looks so good! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get Propulsion Parker on video as his goal was to dust everyone to the bottom every run…
