East Coast Trip, Spring Break 2006

As I mentioned last week, with Darrell's family living on the East Coast we try to make as many trips out there as we can. And while I could technically consider all of them "vacations", there is really no need to recap Every. Single. Trip. we've taken out east. But, just for fun, I wanted to highlight this trip because this was my first time traveling home with Darrell. And I really wish I could share some advice and pointers on how to deal with meeting your significant other's family.... But Darrell's family made getting along with them so easy that it felt like we had known each other for ages. It did help that I had talked with them on the phone multiple times (Darrell called home every weekend and I'd sit in on the calls with him occasionally), so I guess maybe that would be my piece of advice.

As far as spring breaks/vacations go, this one was pretty awesome, and--as was par for the course with Darrell and I in college--filled with quite a bit of time in a car. The drive from Waverly to his hometown alone was sixteen hours, and I think I only helped out with about four hours of the driving (I was nervous to drive through big cities/the mountains, so that pretty much ruled out most of the route). Once in NC we didn't just sit around at the house; we spent some time driving two hours north into the heart of the mountains so Darrell could so me the summer camp he worked at (and take me on some awesome hikes). 

Enjoying the view from Pinnacle Point at the camp Darrell worked at in the summers

We also spent some time driving along the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway, where Darrell may or may not have gotten a speeding ticket (to be fair, he wasn't really speeding by very much, but the cop was strictly enforcing the limit because "the conditions were poor" aka there was a little bit of snow on the roads. Unfortunately Darrell was plenty used to driving on snow by this point so he didn't slow down like the cop thought he should have).

View from one of the outlooks along the Parkway

We weren't done driving just yet; lots of Darrell's extended family lives in Georgia, including his grandparents which he doesn't get to see very often, so we headed down there for a few days at the end of our break. I'm quite certain we were both in food comas after his Grandmommy got done stuffing us full with chicken and dumplings and banana pudding (mmm...). We managed to squeeze in another hike though; after all, since I live in the state the proudly claims Mount Rushmore, it was only right to visit the "Mount Rushmore" of the South--Stone Mountain. 

Never even knew such a place existed. The carving depicts the Confederate President Jefferson Davis, along with Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson

I'm going to cheat a little bit and post a picture from a trip out to North Carolina later that summer, but only because it's one of my favorite photos of us. Since we usually only travel just the two of us, and we have a tendency to go off the beaten path, there usually isn't someone we can ask to take a picture of us. So, we've had to master the art of propping our camera somewhere safe and using the self-timer. This was one such shot, and I love how it came out.

I'm going to have to stop there because I could go on and on about our trips out east and how much I love them, but I'd just end up repeating myself a whole bunch: great family, great food, great scenery, etc. You get the point.