Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Vacation highlights

What an awesome vacation. 2 weeks...no internet. Just relaxing.

We spent the first 4 days camping in North Carolina with our old friends Jeff and Steph. Great campsite right on the New River (which is actually the oldest river in America - they say). Spent a day canoeing on the river - then floating down in it on pink dollar store pool rafts, which I think really impressed the locals.

Spent a few days in Durham at our friend's house. Toured Duke University (the chapel there is stunning). Had one of the best burritos of my life at a place down the street. If you're ever in Durham, its the Mexican restaurant with the cow on top of the roof.

Then our friends took us swimming at an old rock quarry. Me and Jeff went cliff jumping off a 25 foot cliff. I tried to be macho and just climb right up and jump. It worked until i hit the water. It kind of felt like there was an inch of concrete on top of the water. Fortunately for me the kids didn't see my first jump so I got to experience it twice. There was also a pretty cool rope swing, except that you had to climb a tree to reach the rope. I have to give myself some props for pulling a full back flip off the rope swing on my first try.

We spent the last week down at my folks lake house on Lake Harding in Alabama. This was one of the best vacation weeks of my life. I'm not trying to make any kind of lifestyle statements here, but I seriously think that disconnecting from the internet, and texting, and (gasp) Facebook, for a week was the biggest part of helping me relax. We went out on the boat about a dozen times. The kids spent hours on the inner tube behind the boat. And I spent hours doing absolutely nothing.

But i did alot of fishing.
Caught a bunch of blue gill and bream. And I caught a half dozen big catfish. But the biggest one was about 8 lbs. At least. Mighta been 20. The more I think about it, it was really about the size of a VW.

I realized how completely relaxed I was when Melissa wondered out loud how church was going and I said "Today's Sunday?"

Mighty good vacation.