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View from Strongman Mountain

 I know the postings have been sporadic lately.  We went on vacation and my partner (ahem) didn’t find the time to post.  We didn’t have any internet or even cell phone connection in our cabin – except one bar on the top floor with the phone up against the top part of the window.  It didn’t matter, we were there to unwind, hike, read, have fun and disconnect.  It was family time – well mostly. 

One evening my husband and I decided to take a little time to ourselves.  We drove up into Shenandoah National Park for a wine tasting.  They have a person from a Virginia vineyard come up and do a wine tasting with a group of about 12 people. You get to sample the different wines, plus their representative tells you about what he thinks you should know about the different wines.  They’ll tell you how they think it tastes on the palate, where you’ll get the most taste, what you should be looking for and how to pair it.  The restaurant servers also pass around some cheeses, crackers and fruit (grapes) to go along with it. The servers replenished the glasses throughout the tasting, which lasted about 45 minutes.

The day we were there, a gentlemen from Barboursville Vineyards was directing the wine tasting.  While we were kind of a quiet group, he kept everything interesting and we enjoyed it a lot.  I really liked that we could taste wines from a vineyard that was a little further than we would probably go for a wine tasting.  When we were done with the tasting, they did let the group finish off the bottles, plus we were able to purchase some at a special price.  We brought four bottles home with us since we won’t be back in Virginia for a while, though my daughter was a little squished on our trip home today.

We’re happy to be home, even if the house now looks like a war zone with all of our bags and paraphernalia sitting around.  The roughest part is trying to get up the energy to put everything away afterwards after driving all day.  My sister in law remarks on how lucky I am to have kids that take vacations with us.  We realize as they get older and leave the nest it will be just us after a while, so we treasure the times with our kids while balancing it out with moments alone when we can. Vacations help to bind the family together – I cherish them all.