Camping with the Naylor Family

About a week and a half ago, we joined the Naylor Family at Prince William Forest Park http://www.nps.gov/prwi/ for some delightful autumn camping. Friday night is what worked with both families' schedules and well, let's just say that both families forgot we live in commuter central! Without Friday afternoon commuter traffic this 18 mile drive takes less than a half hour to/from our home. On a Friday afternoon - 1.5 hours!!!!! We all arrived about the same time and set up tents by headlight. But, you just learn to go with the flow (or lack thereof regards the traffic) and it didn't ruin a thing for any of us. After/during tent set up we grilled our suppers and ate separately at our adjacent tent sites - couldn't fit the whole gang at one picnic table. The children gathered wood for a fire and we roasted marshmallows and made smores for dessert.

We got to listen to the "deafening roar" of acorns falling to the ground from very tall trees for much of the night. A new experience for sure :-) If you have not had the privilege of a similar experience, you cannot fathom how loud their impact with the forest floor is!

We were all up about 7am and the children gathered wood for another fire. Scott Naylor toasted bagels on their grill and we all sat around the campfire and enjoyed them for breakfast. We gathered loads of acorns and leaves. Many of the leaves were in the midst of turning their fall color when they fell, so there were some beautiful combinations of green, yellow, red, brown. Everyone pitched in to pack up camp mid-morning and we all drove home at the same time. We had a birthday party for Christy to get ready for - and the Naylors had to rest up before they came over as Christy's guests :-)

We all hope to start camping more often again - it was refreshing and restoring for all of us. And I'm sure we'd all get used to the acorn meteorites after a few nights too!!!!

The time was short but didn't really seem so - well worth the effort. The greatest blessing of all was another chunk of time spent with this precious family - our treasured friends.

A day on Virginia's Eastern Shore

The Eastern Shore is in dark green like the rest of Virginia, The Eastern Shore is basically the southern tip of the peninsula formed by Maryland and Delaware. Growing up in Nevada, I 've never learned of it until now! The Cheseapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel provides a permanent way to traverse the gap between Virginia Beach and eastern shore of Virginia.

Virginia Beach was overcast, extremely windy and rainy one day so we drove the 20 miles across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and explored the eastern shore of Virginia. Well, our exploring consisted of following sings "on a whim"to the small town of Cape Charles. Once in Cape Charles we followed a small white arrow pointing to public beach. We arrived in the late afternoon and didn't leave until well after dark. The weather was warm, sunny and the winds were calm. Yay! We never saw another person on the beach and it was a perfectly lovely evening. When we walked back to our van, we watched some fishing boats come back to the harbor in the dark. I think all of the children were asleep before we were back on the main shore of Virginia :-)

Friends at the beach

This was a good week to catch up with good friends. We didn't get any photos of Dean and Cara but got some sweet ones of their children whilst they spent a few hours in our cottage on a rainy day. Our dear friend Lynne is holding Dean and Cara's youngest wee one in this last photo. Lynne drove up from North Carolina to spend a couple of days with all of us. Then the children had two laps to warm them up in between body surfing the waves with Daddy :-) Lynne made a fondue supper for all of us one night. By the time we'd had a full day at the beach and cleaned up, the boys were ready for bed. In the midst of our indulging in fondue, Lynne mentioned how sorry she was that the boys couldn't partake with us. Simultaneously, each of us looked at her, smiled a big chocolate smile and empahatically said "We're not!". Yes, it was a quiet, peaceful evening of cheese and chocolate and our boys were sleeping peacefully after a full day of running and playing. A win-win situation :-)

Cape Henry Lighthouses

We really had no idea what greeted us at Cape Henry. We just knew we were going to enjoy a week together on the beach. We were delighted to discover two lighthouses on Ft Storey. According to the VA state website:

The Old Cape Henry Lighthouse was built in 1792. It started to crack in 1870 and was replaced with the new Cape Henry Lighthouse only 357 feet away, which is an active aid to navigation and operated by the U.S. Coast Guard. The Old Cape Henry Lighthouse is maintained by the APVA and is a National Historic Landmark, serving as the official symbol for the City of Virginia Beach.
We took this picture from the beach after we climbed the old lighthouse (the one on the right)Scotty and Jonathan climbed first. Seth was 3 inches too short (new height restrictions this year due to new insurance requirements) so we divided up into 2 groups so one of us was with Seth down below. Way to go Jonnie!!!!!!!!The guys took this picture from the top of the old lighthouse. You can see how close most buildings on Ft Storey are to the ocean. Now the girls are ready to climb! Christy endured many a dark, narrow, steep, winding staircase in England whilst she traversed castle towers, climbed to the top of St Paul's Cathedral, etc. with us. Now, she is exhibiting bravery again - climbing to the top of the old lighthouse when she would probably rather not. It is scary for her - but she overcomes that fear each time. We are all proud of her.



Almost there! Getting onto a ladder to go down it is still disconcerting for me. Christy and Faith did great going up and down. We were rewarded with beautiful views - the best one being that of Scotty and the boys waving at us from the parking lot :-)

An old railroad car behind the lighthouse. Seth was thankfully tall enough to climb on this with everyone else :-) The post chapel, where we worshipped on Sunday, is behind the children.

More Virginia Beach

The weather was quite windy and fairly cool for most of our week at Cape Henry. Our friends, whom we joined up, with told us that the same week last year was perfect beach weather - sunny and calm. No matter, though, as we got quite used to cool weather at the beaches and coves in England. I got to provide a lap and a snuggle for the children until they warmed up again - kept me quite warm too - through out the day. Scotty body surfed the waves with them most of the day. He also brought out his metal detector and found all sorts of metal treasures. The children enjoyed following him around and helped him dig when he got the proper "beep beeps". Faith learned to use it herself and promptly found herself a quarter. Way to go Faith :-)

The pictures in the post and also in the kite flying post are the main beach we spent our time at. We walked to it from our cottage. We frequently saw various Army and Marine Corps bulldozers, etc setting up training camps just down the beach from us. I went down to the beach early one morning to spend time with God in the beauty of His creation and several soldiers were running up from the beach in formation - having just finished a long morning run, I'm sure. Combat boots in the sand - the thought makes my legs tired! I thanked them as they ran by - for their sacrifice for the rest of us.

Another view of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel and the ships we got to see go through the gap. One morning the Boerrigters came running out on their deck shouting "aircraft carrier". It was beyond our sight at this point, but we ran down our deck stairs and past our cottage and caught a glimpse of it speeding by.

A Kite Flying kind of beach day!

A great day for kite flying! You never see the kite because it was flying so high, I couldn't get a picture of both the kite and the "flyer".

If you look closely at this picture of Christy flying the kite, you will see the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel in front of us. http://www.cbbt.com/facts.html This is the reason you will also see so many large ships so close to shore in our pictures too. The CBBT is 20 miles long and connects mainland Virginia with eastern shore Virginia (which is connected to Maryland). It is mostly bridge with two tunnels under the water which allow the military and civilian ships to pass through the bridge. We drove on it one rainy day and actually discovered wonderful weather on an eastern shore beach. More about that day later...

This day was so windy, once the children were done with their kite flying, we attached the kite handle to our cooler handle and it flew itself the entire time we are at the beach. No need for running starts to hopefully get the kite airborne on this day :-)

Sunset over Cape Henry at Virginia Beach

In mid-September we had the blessing of a family vacation to Virginia Beach for a week. We stayed in a cottage overlooking Cape Henry. The cottages are on an Army Post - Fort Storey. We reunited with some sweet friends, Dean and Cara Boerrigter and their 4 young children, who we were stationed with in Albuquerque and Colorado Springs. The Boerrigters are in south eastern Virgina now. They had the cottage next to ours and we saw them as much as our family schedules and the weather allowed.

We watched the sun set this evening from the deck of our cottage. We'd had a full day at the beach and were just amazed and inspired to see the sun slip beyond the horizon. The only other time I remember watching the sun set like this was many years ago on a San Diego beach with Mark and Britt (Scotty's brother and his wife, our sister). Do you remember, M&B? Scotty was on his remote tour to Turkey and M&B had me out for a few days. We went to Disney Land and we spent the last evening on the beach - Britt told me to watch for the glow after the sun sets - I saw it this time, Britt!!!