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In all, we hiked about 6 miles. The trail was often pretty muddy, but the weather was beautiful. The gorge that the creek runs through helped keep the wind off us and the temperature was perfect for hiking.

It’s actually a little hard to compare pictures to get an idea of how much more water there was, because the extra volume changes how the river actually looks. I can’t even tell where I took some of the pictures anymore, and for some, I couldn’t get to the place that I shot from in the past.

Anyway, if you’re ever up our way and want to go, we’d be more than happy to take you.

We planned to go to Shot Tower State Park, but it was closed, so we headed on to the New River Trail State Park (NRTSP). The NRTSP is Virginia’s longest park — 57 miles. The park follows an abandoned railroad right-of-way. The trail is for walking, biking, and horse-riding. Our entrance to the park was in Foster Falls, VA.

Foster Falls used to be a center of iron industry. Now all that is left are some deserted buildings near the river, a Methodist church, a post office, and several homes. A hotel, built in 1887 is still standing, though it fell into disrepair in the 50′s. After it was a hotel it became a girl’s industrial school and a children’s home.

While in the park we walked along the trail a few miles in each direction (North and South). The scenery was beautiful. Some sections had rocks on both sides of the trail. We had a picnic lunch and wandered past the deserted buildings by the river. Andrew enjoyed taking some pictures.

It was a beautiful day to spend outside enjoying God’s creation. We would enjoy going back and renting bikes for half a day in order to go further along the trail.

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I’ll give the highlights of each day below, but there were some regular activites each day. A different crew cooked or cleaned up for every meal. Andrew and I cooked two meals and cleaned up three. It was great to not be in the kitchen for every meal. I know everyone else felt the same way. Another regular event was family devotions in the evening, just as we have done on every family vacation. This summer we sang some songs, had testimonies, and the “young” guys (Michael, Andrew, Nathan, and Brandon) gave a challenge. Each night was such a blessing.

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Saturday
Uncle Dave and family took I-81 down from New Jersey, so we invited them to our apartment for lunch. After lunch Stephanie rode with us. We ended up taking NC-197 instead of the interstate. The road still got us there, but it took MUCH longer. We went up and down a mountain and ended up in a valley with several houses and a church or two. Then went up and down another mountain past some more houses and a church or two. This continued for several hours. We finally made it to the house. The driveway was almost worse than the road we had been on. It was steep and narrow, and the last section was all gravel. Brandon got his family’s van stuck on the first attempt. They had to unload some people to shift the weight to the front wheels. We were the last ones to arrive. One of the first things said to us was, “Don’t drink the water. It smells like sulfur!” Sure enough, the water had a strong stench of sulfur.

Sunday
My dad spoke for family devotions in the morning. He spoke longer than the rest of the guys (more like a church service). There was nothing planned for the rest of the day, but in the afternoon some people were going to the town of Green Mountain. I wanted to go along. Green Mountain was not very big. It consisted of a general store (which was closed), a post office, and a Presbyterian church. A few people drove by, but no one was around. My car then went into Burnsville to get more bottled water.

We celebrated Grandpa and Grandma’s 60th wedding anniversary after supper (the reason we all got together in the first place). Grandpa and Grandma, Sharon and Nathan, and Andrew and I played the newlywed game. Uncle Dave had collected questions from everyone to ask Grandpa and Grandma about their marriage. Then we watched a picture slide show and ate pound cake with mashed strawberries.

Monday
We left in the morning to go to Mt. Mitchell. First we had to go to the store to get some bread. Some of the cars needed gas. Through miscommunication, Nathan’s and my dad’s cars headed off to Mt. Mitchell while Uncle Dave’s car waited for us in the store parking lot. They finally realized we had already left and headed out…only they turned the wrong direction out of the parking lot. Cell phone reception was hit and miss, so it was difficult figuring out what was going on. We finally waited for them at an overlook of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We were amazed that Uncle Dave could have such trouble when he was the one with the GPS!

We got to Mt. Mitchell and had a picnic lunch. Uncle Dave’s family, my family, and Morgan went on a hike. We had those who didn’t hike drop our cars off at the end of the trail. It was a beautiful hike through the woods. There were a lot of raspberry bushes along the way. Most of the berries weren’t ripe, but we managed to find a few we could eat. Halfway down the trail came to a restaurant along the road. We went to see the view and took some family pictures. Morgan said, “I don’t have a family.” There was another guy standing there and he pipes up, “I’ll be your family.” Then he walked over, put his arm around Morgan, and they took a picture together. It was really funny.

On the way back we went to The Soap Shed where this guy makes soap. He had over 120 varieties. Some of the boys walked in and walked back out because the smell was so strong. We ended up in there a long time because the man talked a lot.

Andrew and I were making pizza for lunch on Tuesday, and we needed a count of what kinds people would eat. After devotions I made the mistake of starting this topic by saying, “Andrew and I have an announcement.” As soon as I started saying, “Andrew and I are making pizza tomorrow” Aunt Debbie had this big reaction. She (as well as most of the other women there) thought we were going to say we were having a baby (which is not true). It took me a few seconds to realize what was going on. It became one of the jokes for the rest of the week–”We’re going to have a little pizza.”

Tuesday
We were supposed to go tubing today, but the river was really low and we were told we would have to walk some of the way. We found a public pool in Burnsville, so in the afternoon we all went there. We were some of the oldest people at the pool. At first there were a lot of people in the water, but we got some of the shallow end cleared out by doing some synchronized swimming. We swam about an hour until it got cloudy (and time for a life guard break), and we stayed another hour just relaxing by the pool.

My dad had talked to the owner of the house about the sulfur water. The owner felt really bad and came to bring us some Shock (chlorine). We needed to pour it down the well, let it sit for 10-12 hours, and then let the water run until we didn’t smell the chlorine anymore. They put it down late in the evening.

Wednesday
The water treatment didn’t work. We ran the water, but we didn’t really smell any chlorine. The sulfur smell never really went away either. My dad and Nathan thought that since the chlorine was in a powder and the well is 900 ft deep that maybe it didn’t get down there. There was nothing on the schedule, so we went to Burnsville in the afternoon to go shopping. We spent a few hours going to some of the various shops.

Thursday
We took another picnic lunch and left late in the morning for Linville Falls and Caverns. My dad had gotten directions from Google, and he was leading. We were doing fine until the road ended with a locked gate. We all had to turn around and find someone to give us directions. As best as we can tell, the road became private or something and was blocked off. We got to the caverns without too much trouble. We took the tour first. The cave isn’t very big and our tour guide had a southern accent, didn’t enunciate very well, and gave a very memorized-sounding speech, but it was a neat tour. We had a picnic lunch and then took some trails to view Linville Falls. In the evening we had a campfire with S’mores.

Friday
We had some skits in the morning. Michael began with a group song. Stephanie and Brandon did a sound effects skit. I split everyone up into 4 groups and had everyone act out a past vacation memory. There was another sound effects skit and then a slide show with pictures of the week. Then was the grand finale. Back by popular demand was Matthew as the really tall person. I was a squatty body. Matthew made jokes from the week and then we acted out Brandon and Justine getting engaged. Matthew wrote a song for it. Everyone seemed to enjoy the skits.

We noticed that the water was smelling less like sulfur and more like chlorine. We weren’t sure what was going on.

That afternoon Uncle Dave’s family, Andrew, my brothers, and I went to Little Switzerland (which consisted of a used bookstore) and Emerald Village (which was an old mine and a museum of sorts). The way back was interesting. A tractor trailer truck had gotten stuck and was blocking both lanes. We followed some other cars around the truck into some back roads. We ended up getting a little bit lost. Of course Uncle Dave had the GPS, but it just sent us around in a circle. We eventually made it back to the main road. We also stopped in Spruce Pine and went to some shops.

On the way home my mom called and asked us to stop at the store for more bottled water. When we got back home the excitement began. We didn’t have any water. We don’t know why. My dad called the owner again who felt really bad and offered to pay for our hotel that night if we decided to leave. Sharon and Nathan went ahead and left, but the rest of us stayed. The hot tub had a few inches of water left in it, so we filled up our empty jugs to flush the toilets (thankfully we had saved all the filtered water jugs we had used). We used that up and then Uncle John, Uncle Dave, and Aunt Debbie went to a nearby house and asked to fill up jugs with water. We used these the rest of vacation to fill up the toilets. Grandpa spoke for devotions. He had some great things to say. We also watched some of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics.

Saturday
Everyone headed out at various times in the morning. Andrew and I stayed until my family left about 10am (the time we had to be out of the house). We decided to take our time going home, so we drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway for about two hours. We stopped in Blowing Rock at an Outlet Mall and then had lunch in Boone. We got home about 4:30pm. We are very tired, but happy to have had a wonderful vacation.