Spring Break 2021 - Back to North Carolina

 We had some fun adventures on our Spring Break family vacation.

Day 1

We stopped in Winston-Salem, just to check our old stomping grounds. We drove through the neighborhood where we used to live and had lunch from our favorite barbecue joint. 

We also hit Krispy Kreme (a Winston-Salem original).

Then we drove on to our vacation house. We stayed at a rental on Lake James in Nebo, NC.

Day 2

We went to the Linville Gorge for a rappelling trip. The drive there was an adventure with lots of unpaved mountain road to travel. Our guide took us to Double Basement, a 120' drop through the mouth of a cave.

Down the the gorge, there was a pocket of ice remaining.

There was some downtime as our guide set up the next rappel.

.

The hardest part is going over the edge.

Dropping down into the cavern

If you rappel down, you have to climb back up, too... which was also a lot of fun.

Day 3

We visited Asheville. The main destination was the NC Arboretum. We also stopped for pizza and played a round of disc golf. Then we went for a hike in the nearby mountains.

Jen gets lots of credit for her disc rescuing heroics...

…especially this one.

We went back to the house and had a special meal for my birthday. We make grilled cheese sandwiches. (I know that doesn't sound very special, but these were actually cooked on the grill which made all the difference.) We also found some caffeine free Cheerwine and made floats.

 

Day 4

We met up with Paul and Tami and Parker and Beckham who were also on Spring Break in NC. We went to the Go Kart track and raced for hours, including one round on the high speed super karts that Paul and I did together.

They also had other fun activities like the bungee bounce and the super slide.

We had lunch at Cook Out. Yes, there is a Cook Out just down the street from us, but it is always a NC thing to me. Oh, and don't forget the milkshakes.

And we had another activity, which we had kept as a surprise...

Laurel

Clark

Spencer

Jen

Grant

Scott

Day 5

We visited Grandfather Mountain, including the mile high swinging bridge, then made our way back home.

Charleston

 This year NANOS was a virtual meeting. Since I was away from the office anyway, Jen and I decided to get away and make a trip out of the week. Big thanks to Grandpa and Grandma van der Horst for watching our kids while we were away. The meeting went well. The educational aspects were just as good as any in person meeting I had been to before. Perhaps even a bit better, since all the talks were prerecorded and you could ask questions during the meeting in the chat room and the presenter was able to answer live while the presentation was going on.

These are some of the things we did while we were social distancing in Charleston, South Carolina.

We stayed just a block away from the beach, so we spent some time in the wind and the sand. It was really cold when we first arrived, but then it warmed up considerably by the end of the week.

We stayed in this cute, tiny house on a secluded spot on Folly Beach.

The path to the light house viewing point was totally covered in graffiti.

It was a couple of miles to walk down to the end of the island where we could see the lighthouse. We'd get an even better view later in the week.

On this day, it was plenty sunny but there was a bone chilling wind coming off the ocean.

We made most of our food all week. This was a shrimp pizza we made on the grill. We had a fun time exploring the local flavors even if we made the food ourselves. We are really becoming foodies when we travel.

Grilled veggie omelet

Low country style shrimp boil

local swordfish with smothered okra and rice

sweet potatoes and greens

pimiento cheese, seafood pasta with butter beans

Cheers!
(Pecan Cream Soda)

We took some walks on the beach, but did not go into the water any further than this.

The water temperature was only 50 degrees.

We went to the sweetgrass basket makers highway and found a roadside stand, where Jen picked out the perfect souvenir. 

We went for a walk on the Ravanel Bridge

The weather started out like a fun adventure with a slight mist and stiff breeze. But then it started pouring and we got soaked to the skin. We even saw some hail. The weather this week...!

It's a cool bridge.

The next day, the weather was just gorgeous and we spent the day on the water. We did a 15 mile paddle trip through the Folly River and back channels to Morris Island, an uninhabited coastal island.

It was a beautiful day.

We pulled our kayak up onto the beach and had a picnic lunch and explored the island.

The Morris Island lighthouse is just off the shore there.

The funnest thing about Morris Island is all the shells. There were large and amazing shells like I've never seen in person before.

See...lots of shells. We collected a few. We kept finding ones we liked even better than the ones we had already found. It was a bit like hunting for treasure.

We got ridiculous tan lines from our wetsuits.

We visited two old plantations, with live oaks and Spanish moss everywhere.

Spanish moss growing in the flowering cherry trees was too much.

One of the gardeners gave Jen this camellia blossom.

There was a great swamp walk on one of the plantations.

Including this local resident. He spotted us coming and opened his mouth to look a bit more threatening. The paths through the swamp were only a couple of feet wide, so we needed to carefully scoot past this character.

The next day we played 18 holes of disc golf on this challenging wooded course on James Island.

We found an app based scavenger hunt to explore downtown. Here we are swinging on the bench swings on the wharf.

And seeing some of the other sights downtown.

The scavenger hunt took us to some interesting places we would not have found otherwise, like the old prison.

This pineapple fountain is iconic Charleston. It is a symbol of Southern hospitality.

Clark’s new desk

 I enjoyed helping Clark make a new side desk for his computer setup. Clark did the entire project from the conception and planning, to purchasing materials, to cutting and joining to sanding and finishing. I was there with him the whole time giving him tips and an occasional demonstration, but he was the one who actually did this project.