Saturday, January 2, 2010

Back from Virginia

What I did on my vacation: flew across the country, got stuck in the snow, chopped out the ice and got unstuck, met really great neighbors in VA, coughed, blew my nose, coughed some more, petted donkeys and horses, wrapped up in blankets, took pictures of a foot of snow, met some more neighbors, ate mucho food, made one book, drove to NY, visited my mother on Christmas, drove south to Binghamton to visit my sister and her family, ate more food, drove to VA, picked up Dave in Charlotte, went to a picking party, ate more food, tasted Gumbo for the first time, spent all day flying back to Phoenix.
The first pic is my rental car stuck on our road (hit some ice and slid into a small snowbank). The car was stuck for a day until it warmed up to the 40's and I spent 3 hours the next afternoon chopping out ice. In the meantime our neighbor, Maggie, got me some groceries to tide me over until I could get to the store. I walked A LOT! Our "street" is almost 1/4 of a mile, so I trudged luggage both ways as I parked at the end of the street (where the Laurel Ridge Lane sign is). Our street is not flat and not straight, I was afraid of getting stuck again, so I parked by the gravel road while I was there. You can see how painfully close I was to the road where I got stuck:
Once I dug my way out, I drove almost 12 hours to visit my mother in upstate NY for Christmas. I got there Christmas Eve and left the day after Christmas.
Our house in the snow:
Our neighbor, Brian, was very nice and plowed our street so I could at least get to the house. He owns the farm behind our property so when I saw him I asked him if we could pet his animals. So instead of just taking photos, when Dave came out we walked over and got closer. The goats wouldn't let us pet them, but the horses and donkeys weren't shy at all. My camera got funky with low battery juice so I was only able to get pics of 'ole no. 10 (the big goat):
After walking home from the picking party (man, those two kids can play!) at Maggie and Bill's house it was snowing and I got a few pics of the snow falling that night. Even though the weather was horrendous before I got to VA, the weather while we were there was great!

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