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Day 4
Woke up around 6am on the farm and had eggs over corned beef hash for breakfast (Diego’s request). Absolutely delicious! Never a bad meal with Martha and Chef D in the kitchen.
Heather has been working very hard at keeping up with her exercise regimen while we’re on vacation, but today she got in even more steps than she intended to! She set out to take a walk around “the loop” where George and Martha live. It’s all dirt/gravel roads, very hilly and very strenuous. The thought setting out was that it was about 3-4 miles around the “neighborhood” (in reality a lot of different farms, with houses scattered here and there). Eventually all the roads and farms blended together and she ended up doubling back on her footprints adding a couple of miles to the already very long walk. We got concerned when she hadn’t returned after about two hours so Martha went out in the car and was able to quickly find her. That’s how Heather ended up with over 13,000 steps on her pedometer before 9am. 😊
Diego and Grandpa George explored the area around the house, learning about plants and even eating
a wild strawberry! Adam, Heather and Olivia decided to go for a car ride around “the loop” to see how far it is and where Heather had gotten turned around on her adventure. Those hills! About 6.5 miles worth of brutal dirt hills and rough terrain, I honestly don’t know how she did that. They’re steep even in a vehicle with AWD. We figured out that she got about one hill and one bend away from Willow Creek Farm’s driveway before deciding she was going the wrong way and turning around. Mystery solved! It seriously all looks the same, even when you’re driving.
While we were away, Chef D was on the case in the kitchen with Martha. Time for home baked toll house cookies as a mid-morning snack. As was the case with everything that came out of that kitchen, the cookies were also quite wonderful. Martha measured and Diego did all of the other steps, he has a bright future in the kitchen to be sure.
At this point in the day, the temps were hovering around 92 degrees and the humidity was about 100%. We were all melting even in the air conditioning so the
traveling Cape Henry Clan (Adam, Heather, Olivia and Diego) all decided to take a swim in the creek behind the house as it was crystal clear, nice and cool and absolutely beckoning us.
So much fun!!! We sat in the cool water for a couple of hours, talking and relaxing and collecting rocks from the streambed. A definite highlight of the trip.
After we got out of the water, we had lunch made up of the leftovers from the previous meals we had enjoyed, along with some Swedish guacamole and chips that Martha prepared. All wonderful 😊
The kids headed for the living room to watch a movie (Clue - w/ Tim Curry) on TV. Grandpa and I joined in, it’s a classic and so funny. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open despite my best efforts, and slept through the last 20 mins of the movie. Afterwards I headed for our bedroom to take a nap and ended up sleeping for three hours, I guess I needed it!
Woke up to the sounds of dinner being prepared and steaks hitting the grill. Dinner was wonderful, Heather prepared some beautiful bacon-wrapped filets on the grill
and they were paired with baby potatoes and green beans.
After dinner, we started a fire in the old chimney which is part of George and Martha’s patio (legend tells that the previous owner of the property burned the cabin down in a drunken fit, and the chimney is all that remains with the current homestead built next to it). So nice to sit and relax with a drink, talking with everyone and enjoying the night air. The lightning bugs came around checking us out along with our fire. Neal the dog hung out with us, enjoying ear and belly scratches from everyone he walked up to.
Heather and I took an opportunity to bring our drinks indoors for a little air- conditioned hangout time as we hadn’t had very much time to talk and connect together. We gathered some snacks and hung out on the couch for a while before Olivia summoned us outside to look at the amazing star show in the sky, the kind of stars you can only get when you’re far away from any artificial lights. Just beautiful and a perfect cap to a great day.
Early to bed as the four
of us were headed east towards Memphis and Nashville in the morning!
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