Vacations

It has been a long time since I posted. Life has been busy. Vacations being part of the distraction. The first trip was to Hilton Head with my sister, Marian and my daughter, Taylor. It was a great trip. The weather was extremely hot. Taylor and I spent most of the time in the pool. We played games and ate lots of ice cream. 

The second trip this summer was actually two trips. We began the trip going to Blowing Rock, North Carolina. It was Mom, sisters Karen and Marian and me. We drove up on Sunday stopping first in Gastonia to visit MaryJo's Fabric store. I had heard this store had the biggest fabric selection and was overwhelming. There was a lot of fabric. It would be a great place to go if you had something specific in mind. I only bought 3 yards of fabric. 

Then we drove on to our hotel which was actually in Lenoir. That town is about 15 minutes away from Blowing Rock. We drove over and had dinner there on Sunday at the Canyons Restaurant. It has a great view. The food is just fair. On Monday we went to the Blowing Rock which was beautiful. Then we wondered around town. Prices were a little high but we did stumble across a book sale at the library. The library was so quaint- they still check out books with patrons signing a card in the back of the book. 

Tuesday we intended to visit Grandfather Mountain but it was pouring rain. We decided to check out the quilt shops in Boone. Then we went to see the movie "Inside Out". It was cute. Kind of a bummer that we had to miss the mountain. That night we played a game in the room.

On Wednesday we headed home. While driving around we discovered an entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Since I was driving I opted to go home on it. Interstate 40 was a mess so I thought the Parkway would be fun. It was a beautiful drive. It was also extremely scary in a couple of places. It got so foggy at one point you couldn't see. Then we started running into tunnels. Lots of tunnels. It was fine until one of the last ones. It was pitch black and Mom's lights that were supposed to come on automatically did not come on. I ended up at a dead stop in the middle of the tunnel. I think I scared poor Mom to death. We pulled off an exit right after that and found an Arts and Craft center. Beautiful stuff inside. There was a woman there demonstrating basket weaving. I started talking to her since the next day I was headed to Kingsport to take 2 basket weaving classes. She mentioned the name Billy Owens who I was talking a class from. It was pretty neat. Here are pictures from Blowing Rock.

I forgot to say we visited the very first Mast General. That was fun.