Fourth of July

For the Fourth of July, we decided to spontaneously go on a mini-vacation. By spontaneously, I mean on approximately the first of July we decided to go. So I googled trips within 3 hours drive of our home and we got a ton of options. Since it has been ridiculously hot up here so far this summer (June set all kinds of heat records) I decided that we would try out the mountains.
I found a "resort" in the mountains off the Blue Ridge Parkway near the Shenandoah Valley National Park. It is really a ski resort, but they have activities to make it more of a year round thing.

We drove out on Saturday and made it there before lunch. And more exciting was that our condo was ready to check in to (actual check in time was 4pm). We had lunch, took a ride on the chair lift-which was huge as you could easily seat 6 adults, had naps, went to the pool, walked around, and had dinner. It was a very full day.

On Sunday we went into the valley to the lake where we did paddle boating and swam- I am not a big fan of lake swimming, but this was actually nice. There was a big floating trampoline which Brooke and D went on. There was also a floating rock climb/slide that D did. Unfortunately just as we were getting out to get some food, I managed to step on and get stung by a bee. Holey Moley did that hurt like heck! Fortunately D was able to remove the bee's butt and stinger using some tweezers the life guards had and even better they had some numbing cream to put on it.

After naps, we walked around the resort's festival - kid activities, music, arts and crafts - and rode the chair lift several more times. The girls really liked yelling to the people we would pass. The resort did a fireworks show that night. We walked up from our condo to a near-by overlook (where we had parked our car on Saturday to reserve at least some kind of spot. It was very neat cause you could still hear the music from below and the fireworks were pretty close to eye level. Audrey was not a fan of the fireworks so she and I went to the van and watched them from the safety of inside with the doors shut. Brooke took a little convincing, but eventually decided that she did enjoy them - shouting Whoo-hoo when they would go off.

On Monday, we checked out and went to the pool again. Then we took a scenic drive home on the Blue Ridge Parkway and part of Skyline Drive in the national park. We were back home by 6. All in all it was a super way to spend the fourth.