Friday - Day 6

Today started like most other days - we intended to get up early but instead slept in. All of the sleeping in is good and healthy, or so we tell ourselves. Bethany made pankcakes while I put some pictures on the computer and did some blog work. When we finished eating, she opted to do the laundry and clean around the house for a little bit while I did the dishes. I finished everything, cleaned up the counter and as I was walking in to tell her I was done my chores, I noticed another stack of dirty dishes. So I had to fill the sink back up with dishwater... that was frustrating.

It was raining when we woke up (off and on) and continued through most of the day. We had been holding off on visiting the Luray Caverns until a rainy day (since it's underground and all). Today was a perfect match, so we went off to the Caverns. I wasn't all that impressed (no head-biting-off-bats or anything like in Kentucky), but it was a fun trip anyway. I wish our digital camera worked better in low light.




Learn more from Wikipedia if you are so inclined: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luray_Caverns

After the Caverns, we went to the "Car and Carriage Caravan Museum"... It was neat to see some really old cars.

From there, we tried to go to Luray's "internet cafe" - it's apparently only open from noon to 5 on certain days of the week (we got there at about 5:30). We went to Dan's Steakhouse just outside of Luray for dinner. It was fair (a 5 out of 10). Afterwards, we decided to go home for a while, then come back into town at 9:30 to watch Evan Almighty.

We got home and hung around outside until it was time to leave for the movie. I wish you had the chance to see the movie theater we were in. There were 4 rows with maybe 10 seats total across both sides of the aisle. Beth almost laughed when she walked in!

The movie was good and made for a great evening outing.

Now we're back at home with a fire dying down, the bullfrogs in the pond making noises CONSTANTLY, a few birds chirping, and enjoying an extremely relaxing night in the woods in Virginia.

Thursday - Day 5

We decided we would get up at 8 to leave the house by 9 for an excursion to Shenandoah National Park. When we woke up at 11, that kind of fell apart. Instead, we had breakfast and tried to figure out what we wanted to do with the day. We decided to go ahead and go to the park. We entered at Thornton Gap and drove down through the central district. Here are a few pictures from our day at the park. We'll post all of the pictures (these plus others) on Shutterfly overnight (the internet is extremely slow up here and the pictures take forever to upload).

This is the lake that we went paddle-boating on yesterday... as viewed from the top of the mountain.

These deer were just hanging out alongside the road. We stopped to take a couple pictures, as did another car. The deer stayed calm for a while, then gallopped off into the woods.

It was about 4:30 when we finished the central district and were ready to get dinner (having had breakfast at 11 and no lunch) - we drove back to Luray outside of the park and got to see a few small towns along the way. We went to dinner at "Artisan's Grill" in town. Dinner was fair - nothing special. From there, we were going to walk the Luray Greenway (we'll do that another day and include some pictures). It sounds like it's a well-manicured walking trail that goes through town. The brochure we looked at makes it look really nice. Anyway - rain clouds with occasional drops scared us off of an outdoor walk.

Instead, we drove back home (and got caught in a ferocious downpour). When we got to the house, I worked on starting a fire in our outdoor fireplace. We ended up sitting outside by the fire for several hours, talking about all kinds of things. Then we let the fire die down and we went to bed.



Beth made herself a s'more.

Wednesday - Day 4

Today was the first day we woke up rather early. (Well, at least I woke up. Steve got up and made it all the way to the couch.) After yet another nutritious meal of Lucky Charms and Orange Juice, we showered and headed to downtown Luray to explore.

The weatherman said it was supposed to be cloudy and rainy, but the day turned out to be be sunny and warm. After driving around for a while, we found the Chamber of Commerce (proudly opened 7 days a week 9-5). We met the most wonderful lady who was more than willing to show two out-of-towners the plethora of brochures and posters. She shared with us all the fun activities to do in and around the area, and wasn't shy in sharing her own life stories peppered with her slow, native draw.

Armed and dangerous with Virginia brochures, Steve and I made our way to "A Moment to Remember", an eclectic cafe for lunch. Steve had a southwestern wrap with roast beef and I had turkey breast and swiss on focaccia bread. Very delicious! A full tummy and $20 later, we headed to a popular location in Luray...Lake Arrowhead. I must admit that we were both slightly disappointed in its size, but its location was perfect.

Cradled by the beautiful mountains, Lake Arrowhead is home to a small beach for swimming, canoeing, and paddleboating. The lake also has areas for fishing, picnicking and hiking. At $2 a person for a half hour of canoeing or paddleboating we were sold. We choose the latter and skeptically signed our lives away on a little piece of paper and handed it to a kid who looked about as knowledgeable about paddleboating or canoeing as the little kids who were in swimmies.

It was so beautiful and peaceful on the lake. We were the only people on the water and the stillness of the mountains and the cool breeze across the lake made for a wonderfully fun ride. For a $4 half hour of peace, it was certainly worth it.

After our boating, we headed back to the cabin. We decided on mint chocolate chip ice cream and a movie. By the time the movie was over, we were hungry again, so Steve fired up the grill. In the last battle with the grill it was an even tie. We hope for better success tonight.

With the sun low in the sky and the haze settled on the mountains, I sit here on the porch with Steve, peacefully waiting for the grill to work its magic. I love spending time with my best friend in our quiet hideaway.

Tuesday - Day 3, cont.

It was so nice to sleep in today! I thought that being in a new place, in a new bed, I wouldn't be able to sleep soundly, but we both slept great.

I prepared an elaborate breakfast of Lucky Charms and Orange Juice. It was really important to Steve and I to document our honeymoon since it is easy to forget the little details that make everyday so great. He came up with the idea to do a honeymoon blog, and it has been a lot of fun remembering events from the last few days and documenting them online.

While Steve started setting up our blog, I went in the bedroom to find our dirty clothes and clean up a bit (we kinda threw our things around yesterday) when MUCH TO MY HORROR, I saw a huge, black, long-legged spider on our curtains. Although I may be over exaggerating just a little bit, please remember that one does not expect to find such an uninvited guest on their honeymoon.

Steve came to my rescue and smooshed it with a broom.
What a hero!

We have loved spending time on the cabin's big, wrap-around porch. It is extremely relaxing out here...quiet and restful. This was all interrupted by the Jehovah Witmesses who came to hand us a flyer. You can never escape them...

We had high hopes of exploring the town today, but ended up taking a 3 hour nap around 2pm. It was great to be lazy. We both woke up feeling a little scuzy and hungry, so while I hopped in the shower, Steve edited our blog and conquered the grill.

We have two VERY annoying creatures that visit us from time to time. You will never find more frustrating flies than at our cabin here in Virginia. As Steve and I sit at the computer or read through brochures on Virginia activities, these flies dive-bomb us relentlessly. It is now war against these flies.

Tuesday - Day 3

This morning we woke up (at 11:30, if that counts as morning) and had Lucky Charms and Orange Juice for breakfast (a great find at Walmart yesterday). As we were eating, we decided it would be a great idea to do a honeymoon blog to include pictures and notes from our trip. I took time to set that up while Beth worked on a list of little things we'd need to get from the store. We also went down to the basement to find the washing machine - we had plenty of laundry that we brought with us that needed to get done.

While I was outside on the porch writing, she came out to let me know I needed to fulfill my husbandly responsibilities - there was a spider on the curtain in the bedroom. I went in with a napkin, figuring it would be a wimpy spider. That wasn't the case at all - he was a very quick ugly spider. I ended up beating him with a broom and then carried him outside (to be humane) and released him (though now injured) into the wild. Then I came back outside and went back to writing. If you look closely, you can see me in my white t-shirt on the front porch.


If you've watched the show Sports Night, you'll remember the episode where Casey fights with the invisible fly that keeps "dive-bombing" him during the show. That very same fly lives in our cabin. I hunted him around the place for a while but finally gave up. At Walmart, we picked up a fly trap - we'll see how well it works.

As I began writing for today, we had a car drive up our driveway which was extremely suspicious. You guessed it - Jehovah's Witnesses came to visit us. The lady was very considerate though - she quickly realized that this wasn't a residence but a rental cabin (plus the "Just Married" that Dave wrote on the back of my car with NJ license plates helped to give it away) and handed us the flier and she left.

Monday - Day 2

After dinner on Sunday night, we filled out the breakfast room service sheet and hung it on the door for breakfast on Monday morning. We had called for a wakeup call at 8am to get time to be up and ready when breakfast came. That worked as well as you might have imagined - I groggily answered the phone, then hung up and went back to sleep. We both woke up to the sound of a lady outside the door knocking, "Room Service!". I jumped up and got dressed to answer the door and let her in. As she was setting up the table/cart thing, she asked if I'd like her to turn the lights on. At this point, I'm squinting from the light out in the hall and wasn't remotely interested in any more light.

Once she left, we made our way over to the breakfast table and enjoyed yet another well-prepared meal. We took our time eating, then started packing our bags and getting ready to leave.

We left the hotel around 11:30am (and later found out we left one of our folders that had our honeymoon plans/receipts in it for Virginia - oops!). Shortly into the trip, we stopped at Wawa for gas and a couple sandwiches.

The drive down to Virginia seemed to take forever. We went 95 to 495 around Wilmington, back to 95, to 495 around DC and then to 66. That got us to Front Royal where we took 340 down to Luray (looo-ray, not ler-ay).

The directions we had took us to a small-town grocery store where we met Dennis and Martha. We had a little trouble making the final payment - turns out the credit card company thought that spending money on a limo, hair salon, a marina, a bakery, and a hotel in Philadelphia were unusual expenses so they wanted to check with me before authorizing this transaction. Once we got that squared away, we got the keys and headed up to our cabin.

The whole drive in, we were wondering if the cabin would really be as nice as we thought it would be (based on a few pictures online). As we followed the directions from the grocery store to the cabin, it was a roller coaster of emotion.

We drove past several nice small houses, then the asphalt ended as we went down a gravel road. At first, this wasn't a big deal. Then we passed a house with what looked like a junk yard behind their house - old cars, an old front-end loader, various lawn equipment that looked like it had been left just where it was when it stopped working... Things didn't look up as we kept going down our gravel road. We got to a tool shed with a small sign showing our cabin off to the left. We drove on a small path through a large grassy field anxious to see the cabin. At this point, Beth got out the video camera to capture the initial discovery.

It turned out to be beautiful. We wandered around the house for a while taking some pictures and exploring. Once we had seen all there was to see, we started putting together a shopping list. We needed groceries (we had no food in the house and were hungry by about 4pm. We also needed laundry detergent, citronella candles, bottled watter, crystal light, etc. Once our list was finished, we used Google Maps to find the nearest Walmart (yes, we're not adventurous when it comes to shopping for food) and set off. We had some directions trouble getting to Walmart but finally made it. We shopped for quite a while and ended up with a packed shopping cart (complete with lawnchairs, sandals, ice cream, and charcoal). As we were leaving (now about 8:45pm) we were both starving so we stopped at Taco Bell for soft tacos on our way home.

Once we got home, we unloaded food into the kitchen, lit the citronella candles on our screened front porch to get the bugs, and then sat down to watch the video from the video camera. (I was a little disappointed at the bad camera work on Rus's bad spill from the tube on Thursday...)

After that, we went out back to enjoy a leisurely soak in the hot tub before going to bed. Beth asked when we were going to buy one...

Sunday - Day 1

Sunday (June 24th) was the first official day of our honeymoon and our first official day as husband and wife. To celebrate, we woke up around 11am and went to Eckerd for some aloe for the sunburn on my arm - it was getting a little bit itchy. We went to Pietro's for lunch - We ate here with Bryan and Kerri one time and couldn't remember the name of the place so we went exploring and found it just in time - we were ready to go to McDonalds just to have gotten something to eat. I didn't have much of an appetite before the wedding and though I was very intentional about eating my meal at the reception, I got to about half of it.

After lunch, we got back to the hotel room and decided to try and watch a movie - we put on Music & Lyrics, but then I fell asleep. Beth claims she watched the whole movie but there were no witnesses.

Once I woke up a couple hours later, we decided to try ordering room service for dinner. We both got turkey clubs with apple pie and ice cream for dessert. It may sound boring and uneventful, but the food was excellent! By the time we finished with dinner and dessert, it was time to go to sleep.

Saturday

After everything wound down on Saturday night, we left the DoubleTree on our way out to the hotel. First we stopped at Wawa to get some money from the ATM (since there aren't any Commerce Banks in Virginia and we didn't want to hunt for a free ATM). While we were there, we both decided to get something to drink - neither of us realized just how much we had been talking during the evening and how little we managed to get to drink.

From Wawa, we wandered into downtown Philadelphia and over to Rittenhouse Square where we checked in at The Rittenhouse Hotel. The bellman helped unload our bags from the car and we went inside to checkin. When we got into the room, we were both very impressed. Beth took some time to take video and a few pictures of the room at different points through the weekend.