Bittersweet Weekend

Last weekend was fun. Thursday after work I drove to Richmond and visited with my grandpa and mom very briefly (she was in town staying with him). Then Josh and I drove to his grandparents' house again (the same place we spent Memorial Day weekend) to make pickles. When we arrived we ate dinner and then got to slicing cucumbers. His grandpa had already sliced half of them though, so that didn't take too long. They spent the night in lime, and Friday we made up the juice for them to soak. I'm trying to think of what else we did during the day, but I can't remember exactly. Visited the book sale at the local library and went for a boat ride on the pond I think. That evening we had shrimp for dinner on the porch, and then played games with his grandparents.

Saturday it was time to cook and can the pickles (the term "canning" is confusing to me because really they're going into jars, but anyway...). Once we were done with all that we ate a little lunch, and then Josh and I took our bikes to Urbanna to ride around. We rode around the little town and in some cute neighborhoods by the water, and stopped occasionally to walk along docks. After that we went to a miniature golf place for a banana split and one game. Then it was time to get back to the house, pack up, and go to dinner with his grandparents on our way out of town.

We drove back to Richmond that night, where Josh dropped me off at my grandparents' house before he came back to Charlottesville. I spent the evening hanging out with my mom, and spent the night there. Sunday I went for a run, then we picked up Grandma and went to brunch. That afternoon Mom and I did some shopping at Target, and then I drove back to Charlottesville. That's when I had to kick it into high gear and pack quickly for...

Camping! After Josh was done with the rescue squad Sunday we loaded up his car (embarrassingly full) and headed to Sherando Lake for two nights of camping with his aunt and her boyfriend. As we neared the campsite the weather looked more and more ominous, but luckily we got our tent set up before it was too dark and without rain. But then it rained all night and into the morning. We stayed in the tents until around 10 because of the rain, and finally ventured out to make breakfast. Here's our pancake cooking station.

The rain let up and was nice the rest of the day. We went on a little hike and geocached along the trails around the lake. We looked for three caches and found two of them. You can't see it too well in this picture, but there is a toy turtle cache in the tree.

After a late lunch and a nap, we played games, drank beer, made dinner, and enjoyed our campfire and marshmallows. Then it was time for bed.

 

The most exciting part of the camping trip came in the middle of the night though. Around 1:30am, the dog with us (not ours) woke to something in our campsite. The something, you might guess, was a bear. We didn't see it, but Josh says he heard it. I couldn't tell if I was hearing it because of the noises the dog was making. Then we heard noises up above, and discovered that the bear had stashed her three cubs up a tree in our campsite! All of this was discovered from inside our tents while shining lights out the windows. We made a bunch of noise and kept shining the lights and watched as one by one, all three cubs came down out of the tree and scurried off into the woods to join their mother. It was all scary but exciting! (And if you're wondering, all of our food was locked in our cars, so the mama bear wasn't actually rummaging around our own site much. We think she just put the cubs up there while she rummaged around the other sites around us.)

It rained a little that night, too, but nothing too bad. By mid morning on Tuesday the sun was out and it was getting warm. We made breakfast and packed up our tents to clear the site. Then we drove down to the lake and swam briefly (which, by the way, was very difficult. I can run but swimming kills me.) After quick showers (my first since Sunday) we left Sherando Lake and headed to the Devil's Backbone brewery for lunch. After a wrong turn and long drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, we finally found the restaurant and enjoyed a great lunch with good beer. It was a nice ending to our long weekend!

But now for the bittersweet part. I had a great weekend, but it was my last weekend with Josh. After four and a half years of dating, we've decided we won't be able to go on to the "next step" with each other, and have thus broken up. It's very sad and hard, but I think it's the right thing. As anyone can see by skimming through this blog, we've had a great time together, and I will cherish the memories. So please keep us both in your thoughts as we go through this difficult transition in our lives.