An Epic Vacation Part 1: Road Trip!

So last week I only ran one time because Charles and I were gearing up for a long-awaited trip to West Virginia to visit Liz from In Omnia Paratus for the first time ever. Too many things to do: get the car tuned up for the trip, pack and pack and pack (riding gear, trimming gear, hiking gear, dancing gear, chilly weather clothes, hot weather clothes), get the cats transitioned to free choice dry food before we left (I always leave them tons of water and dry food dispensers, but if I don't transition them onto it first, they get diarrhea. Not fun to come back to!), get Lily worked as much as possible (2 days riding with the one 4-minute trot set, 2 days lunging with the 4-minute trot set) and get her settled with Jackie and BQ, who would be hand-walking her for me while we were gone. Busy, busy, busy! And all that had to be done before the weekend, as I knew I wouldn't have time to get anything done in-between 12 hour shifts.

Monday the 15th was my birthday. I worked, and my coworkers are awesome: not only did all of them remember my bday, my supervisor brought me an amazing vanilla cake from Wegmans. If you live in MD and haven't tried cake from Wegmans, you haven't lived!

On Tuesday morning I woke up before the alarm to finish putting stuff in the car. Charles arrived home from work after an overnight shift, showered, changed, and piled into the car with me. We were on our way by 8:40 am.

Harman, MD.  We liked the brick buildings; all of the churches and what seemed to be a college had tall spires. 

Windmills of death. I always thought they were cool until Liz pointed out how many birds die because of them. They have them on several mountain tops in WV.

Beautiful. Ironically, this reminded us so much of PR! We have very similar views on the island.

The drive took 4 hours. The iPhone GPS changed the route on us at least 4 times, for no good reason, sending us on a completely different route from what we had originally found on Google Maps at home. We went all the way north through Maryland, then turned into WV, where we had to go all the way south again to get to Liz's town. Bizarre. We lost phone signal about 40 minutes away from our destination, but by that point Liz had given us an alternate and more scenic route that took us through Canaan Valley, where she does ski patrol during the winter. It was gorgeous.

We arrived safe and sound and starving at Liz's house at 1:00 pm. The house is stunning, and has a breathtaking view of the mountains from the living room balcony, which she has shown on her blog throughout the seasons.

Main entrance to the house. Beautiful.

Windows facing the balcony.

View from the balcony

Goofy grin, much?

 We met Kenai and (K)Atticus, had a lunch of BLTs with fried green tomatoes (first time trying fried green tomatoes for both Charles and me) that was DELICIOUS, courtesy of Liz. Atticus managed to steal one of Liz's fried tomatoes off of her sandwich! He is a very naughty kitten. He has 2 dogs and another cat to play with, yet still manages to get himself into trouble. He is adorable, though.

We then we changed into more comfortable clothes, and the adventures began.

A preview:

To be continued!...