The Trip: August 2005

Wrapping up the trip in the mountains

After a brief stopover at the house in Charlotte, we headed for Darin's family's home in Lake Lure, North Carolina. This has become an annual trip for us, and we were blessed to have a good number of our cousins join us this year. We filled our days with teaching Casey and Beau to ski, along with Courtney, Matthew, Nicolas and even Aunt Dawn! All the kids enjoyed getting pulled on the tube by a ruthless Uncle Darin. One of our best days was playing on the beach with everyone - at least until the rain came! As usual, Aunt Lisa helped keep us well fed and all the adults enjoyed games of Scrabble and golf cart rides. Carlie had her first swimming pool dip, and loved it. Of course, the week ended way too soon and we headed back to Charlotte...and REALITY???

Crabs on the Maryland shore...still roughing it!

We wanted a place to camp near the water, and we found it at Assateague State Park in Maryland. Our campsite was just over the dunes from the ocean, and though the weather was overcast the kids played and played in the ocean, jumping the waves and having a great time! We stopped and picked up some Maryland blue crabs for dinner, and Darin cooked them up for a wonderful feast! One interesting note on Assateague...there are wild ponies that will walk through the campsites...we only saw a couple but it was pretty cool. We could have stayed at the beach much longer, but we decided to try our hand at crabbing. After trying for a little while, Nicole scored a couple of small crabs. The kids tied their chicken necks to a string and were able to get a couple crabs crawling up but couldn't quite catch them. The kids wanted to crab longer, but we had to get to DC...what a fun stop this was!