A Day Out

Ahhhh warm weather, shorts, tshirts and roadtrips are one of my favorite parts of Summer. We woke up Saturday and with the temperature forecasted at 68 we decided to pack the car and go on an adventure! Brian suggested we go to Crabtree Falls, which I had never been before but he had. A hike that we discovered when we went to Apple Orchard Falls, another waterfall hike nearby. We even grabbed Grandma and brought her along. Grandpa was suffering from severe allergies so he stayed indoors.

We headed down Rte 29 and ran into Charlottesville, the beautiful town of University of Virginia. What a beautiful little town and the campus was gorgeous...I would have loved to have attended some place like that. So to give everyone a break from the car we stopped there, which was just under a 2 hour drive, walked through the really cool farmer's market and then walked through the historic downtown area where there were tons of neat shops. I found a knitting store that had a gorgeous scarf but of course they didn't have anymore of the yarn. I should have taken a picture of it but it was a beautiful saffron orange color. My favorite! I love orange. The kids found the kid store, dogs everywhere, and a local banjo player in the middle set of the mood for skipping through the pebbled road and smiling. Then we grabbed a pizza and headed out for the Blue Ridge Parkway to get to Crabtree Falls for our hike.

Crabtree Falls is the largest East of the Mississippi River. Of course for me, coming from CA, and having been to Rainbow Falls at Yosemite this isn't quite as majestic or grand. Yes for the scale of the East coast mountain this is a big waterfall! Pregnant and all we headed up the 1 mile switchback hike that had a pretty steep incline the entire way. Everyone did great, and Aria, she took after Mommy....and practically wanted to run up the mountain:-) Daddy did super with Kaden in the pack which probably was another 40-50lbs and Grandma was a trooper! Way to go everyone!

Starting our roadtrip! Aria got to sit up front with Daddy this time:-)

Of course Kaden is happy to have Mommy sitting next to him for a change!

Grandma comfortable in the back seat...



My little pony hanging out on the dash; our navigator:-)

When we got to Charlottesville we found a neat kid store. Kaden loved this doggy pinwheel outside the store and played with it for a awhile.

Aria got her face painted for free!

Granma and Aria found this neat mosaic tile chair outside an art store.

Going up the hike; our first overlook stop.

Getting closer to the water...

Our little princess posing as always:-)

Kaden really wants to go in the water...but instead we let him and Aria throw a few rocks in.

Mommy and Daddy...we don't get a lot of pics of us but yea with Grandma with us we got one!

We made it back down...now time for some ice cream!

And yes Kaden ate almost the whole ice cream sandwhich, he was in heaven! Messy too, oops I need to go wash that car seat cover!