Paul and I had an excellent Thanksgiving Weekend with the 'rents, but I am not going to blog about that. yet. First things first. I am going to start with September. Here goes:
So our "weekend friends" Maggi and Fer invited us to their mountain house (ok, ok, it's Maggi's parents' place) over the summer and we had the BEST time and so did the dogs. I have no idea how, but we got invited back the last week in September and looked forward to the trip for weeks and weeks.
Friday afternoon we set out for the mountains (and remember the incredible heat wave we were having so we were super excited to be CHILLY for a day or two) with not a care in the world. After stopping at Smithfield's for BBQ sandwiches (duh) I drove for a bit so P could grade. Just about out of Winston-Salem the car starts making a very interesting noise. It sounded just like the sound your car makes when the muffler is about to fall off...
I stopped at one of the scenic overlooks near Pilot Mountain and we looked at our dangling muffler, shrugged our shoulders (damn determined to have a fun weekend) and kept going.
When we got off the interstate P was driving and I was navigator. I read the directions: "go on 86 for 12 or so miles...." I looked at the odometer and the last two digits were ...82. So I'm thinking about ...92 we should start looking for our turn onto the Parkway. Chatty chatty, la la we're going to the mountains, more chatty and 10 or 12 minutes later I look down at the odometer again and it says ...82. Still. wtf? The odometer is broken - and who knows how long it has been like this but now that I think about it I thought we should have hit 200,000 miles by now. Foiled! We'll be perpetually stuck at 196,000. Argh!
Luckily we did not miss our turn and made it to the mountain house, dangling muffler and all.
The weather was spectacularly chilly and we had a great time relaxing and sharing education (read: war) stories with each other all night. The next day we got up "early" to go to the Highlands Festival. The Festival was great fun - sunny and chilly again. We bought souvenirs, lots of jams, ate excellent food, and listened to music. On our way back down the mountain, we happened to notice this church sign:
Needless to say, we were giggling pretty hard and Paul wanted to take a picture so Fer turned the car around and on our way back we see the other side of the sign:
Now we are all in convulsive laughter as P takes the photos. A youth group prank? Innocent Biblical quotations? Sexually regressive church? How much Freewill does Grace have? You decide. Either way, it is a funny diptic. We were all very bummed that the church was so far from the mountain house and P and I had to get back to Chapel Hill fairly early on Sunday so we didn't get to go to Sunday service at the church. Darnnit anyway!
We had BBQ for dinner that night and then relaxed by a nice fire all night. Here are the dogs enjoying the mountain house:
On the way home P ingeniously tied the muffler up with Masha's leash (she has a new one now) and off we were. I can't tell you how many miles we drove, but it was a good trip. Maybe we'll even get invited back!
P.S. The muffler is fixed but the odometer is not yet.
October installment coming soon...
