Hanging Rock State Park- Hiking Season is here!

We finally had a beautiful weekend and decided to spend a day hiking. It was much needed after what felt like the longest winter ever!  We decided to go back to Hanging Rock, which we hiked a couple years ago. Besides the hike up to the top of Hanging Rock there are several other trails and 5 waterfalls in the park.  The last time we came we only saw three of the waterfalls, so i wanted to come back and see the other two.

First we did the short hike to Hidden and Window Falls. There were actually a ton of people hiking, and hanging out at the falls so we didn't stay long at either fall.  This is Window falls.

This one is Hidden Falls.  Both are nice, small falls that you can walk right up to them and climb the rocks near them.  They are both on the same trail right off from the visitors center. After we hiked back to the parking lot, we decided to hike up Hanging Rock.

This is the view of Hanging Rock from the visitor center parking lot. We hiked all the way to the top! 

Just to give you an idea of where we hiked up to, you can see folks sitting on the 'hanging rock'  here.

My husband and daughter were the only ones brave enough to walk all the way to the edge. My son and i made it about half way out before deciding our knees would turn to jelly if we walked out any further.

We found a spot not quite as scary to sit and relax on.  Directly across from us is Buffalo Mountain in Floyd, Virginia (home).  It's hard to see in the photo, but you can see it in the one below.  We could also see Pilot Mountain to our Left, although i didn't get a photo of it.

That mountain hump right in the center of the photo is Buffalo Mountain, which is just down the road from us.  It's pretty neat to be so far from home, and still be able to see the Buffalo.  It's the highest point in Floyd County and can be seen almost anywhere in the county.   If you take route 8 out of Floyd toward NC, it will take you right to Hanging Rock.

After we hiked back to the parking lot, my kids were tired and of course didn't want to see the other water falls. We did hike out to see the Upper Cascades, which is a super quick kick...but still didn't get to see Tory's waterfall or the Lower cascade which is the whole reason i wanted to come back to Hanging Rock. Looks like we'll just have to come back again next year. :)

Brickfair 2017- Chantilly, Virginia

Last year my son wanted to go to Brickfair (lego convention) when he found out that members of his online Bionicle podcast would be there. It was a really neat experience, and so he found out they'd be back again this year he wanted to attend again. This is the last weekend, before school starts so we decided this would be a fun way to end the summer.

This year, there were a few additional members from the podcast that were not there last year and so the first thing we did was wait in line to meet them. Even though the podcast members are basically a bunch of kids themselves, my kids think of them as celebrities. It was fun to see their excitement getting autographs and pictures. 

My boy was thrilled to get the chance to chat with his favorite podcast members. He also had everyone sign the back of his TTV podcast shirt. 

Sage was recognized right away, and stole the show again. :)  She finally got to meet her favorite podcast member, Purple Dragon (girl in the back) and there was a lot of hugging and crying going on. It was super sweet. :)

Brickfair is always pretty overwhelming! It was really large and there were so many people! One of the rooms had all the lego models on display. These are not sets you can buy, but models people created on their own just using lego pieces. They were truly amazing! i'm sharing a couple of my favorites.  There was also an area for venders with Lego sets, mini figures and custom pieces for sale. They had bingo going on all day. It was free to play, and you could win lego sets if you were lucky.  In a second room there were more displays, bounces houses and lego vending machines, an area for kids to build legos and a snack bar.. 

 The Harry Potter Quidditch pitch was my favorite. The details are unbelievable. Harry and Malfoy are both on broomsticks in the field. You can see Snape, Hagrid, Dumbledore etc up in the stands. i could have stood there all day looking at all the details and finding different mini-figures we recognized.

i'm normally the one to take pictures, but my son really wanted to take the photos this time so i (reluctantly) gave him my camera. i ended up with about 400 slightly blurry pictures to sort through. :) He did get a few good ones though.

There were tardises everywhere! It was fun to see a tardis in almost every display. This one was especially clever,  if you peek inside the door you'll see it really is bigger on the inside. 

One of my favorite things is the 2-d art. Some of the pieces were so amazing, and to think they were all done with legos. Just crazy. This was my favorite.

There was a  crane machine that was really fun and one of my favorite parts of brickfair. It would actually pick up scoops of legos! It was .25 to play or 6 scoops for $1. They had ziplock baggies there so you could collect your legos.  We had to wait in a long line to try it, but it was so much fun! You really ended up with a lot of legos for your dollar!  We are already planning to go back next year, and i'm going to save my dollars for the crane machine. tee hee. So fun.

This was our last real hurrah before school starts again. We already have one back to school night done and one more to go. Then we head back to school Thursday. i'm so not ready. 

We really enjoyed the Brickfair, and plan to make it an annual back to school trip. 

Kayaking Adventures- New River

Over the weekend we decided to kayak on the New River in Radford, VA.  Despite it's name,  the New River is one of the five oldest rivers in the world. The New River flows backwards, from south to north. Only a handful of rivers in the world have this unique feature, including the Nile.  It is thought to be older than the mountains.

The New River is a very calm and slow float. It's more relaxing than some of the other rivers we've kayaked on. There are really no rapids or rough areas on the section we kayaked. It is almost all extremely shallow here too. 

i really enjoy the wildlife we see on the New River.  There are Great Blue Herons every where. 

We cross under a few bridges. i found it interesting that this tree was growing on the side of the pillar, out of a tiny crack. The water is calm enough that we can kayak in either direction, with very little work involved. Trying to paddle upstream on some of the other rivers we've kayaked is pretty much impossible. 

The river is really wide, and we passed a lot of other folks kayaking or tubing down it. Radford is a college town, so tubing down the river is very popular in the summer. 

i took so many pictures of Blue Herons. We saw so many of them, and they were not especially skittish being used to so many people always on the river. When we float the Little River or Big Reed island, we usually see at least one Heron, but they fly off before i even get my camera out. So it was really cool to see them and get pictures.

We several of these Cormorants up in the trees. i've seen these in Florida, but didn't realize they were also in Virginia. They are common around water, but i'm not sure how far north they go. 

i was thrilled to get a picture of this Green Heron. It's really hard to take a good picture from a moving kayak, and this guy was pretty skittish. i didn't know what he was and had to look him up when i got home. We also saw Kingfishers but it didn't get a photo. 

When we got to our ending place, we parked the kayaks and the kids went swimming while Kenan went back for his truck.  There is a little island here, and the water was less than 2 feet deep all the way across.

This Heron seemed to be following us, and he flew over to the island across from where i was standing and just watched us.  i'm really not sure how many herons we saw, or if it was just the same one following us down the River. The New River isn't as secluded as some of the other Rivers we've kayaked, but it's still a really nice float. i love all the unique birds and wildlife. We also saw a turtle, a snake, lots of fish, dragonflies and damselflies.  We did about a 3 hour float, but there are different places to put in and get out. Kenan wanted to do a 5 hour float, and i'm glad we didn't we were all pretty tired by the end of this one. Already looking forward to next weeks adventures!

Harry Potter Festival- Roanoke, VA

This year, we celebrated Mother's day a little different than usual. Typically MOther's day is spent hiking, stopping at the Farm markets in Cana to buy a hanging flower basket and perennial flowers, and then out to dinner.

This year we celebrated it, at the first ever Roanoke Harry Potter Festival. i first caught word of the festival months ago, and was able to snag some free tickets when they first offered them when the festival was still in it's planning stages.  

So you can imagine my dissapointmment when i printed up our free tickets and my husband pointed out that my daughter had a double header softball game the same day. i was pretty much devastated. 

The day before the festival it rained all day. My daughter's softball practice was canceled, so i had my fingers crossed that the games the next day would be canceled too. i kept checking the weather and there was zero percent chance of rain for Sat. So i may or may not have cast a little rain charn. ;) Friday night we recieved word that both games were cancelled due to rain. 

So Saturday we got up early and headed straight to Roanoke, dressed up in our best wizard robes ready to enjoy the festival. The sky was clear and sunny. Not a drop of rain all day. Perfect weather for an outside festival. We stood in line, behind many other witches and wizards waiting to exchange out tickets into wristbands that would give us access to the festival.  This is the offical festival map. Not being very familiar with downtown Roanoke, it was pretty hard to follow.  We actually missed seeing quite  lot, as the places that were participating we not really marked well. 

Being that this ws the first year of the festival, so we really didn't know what to except. In the past my experience with first time festivals is that there are usually a lot of kinks to work out, and it typically takes a couple of years to get it right. In orher words, they usually suck.

This one was no different, it was all volunteer run. We had a fun time, even though there wasn't much going on.   The best part of the festival for us, was seeing all the cosplay. There were so many recognizable characters hanging out for photo opts, and also tons of fans in full costume. Sometimes it was hard to tell who were the volunteers and who were just fans at the festival. 

They only had a couple food vendors, but we really enjoyed the butterbeer cupcakes.

They had a few different photo opts set up. We got these out of the way when we first arrived, so we didn't have to wait in too much of a line.

The vendors were really sparse, and most didn't even have Harry Potter Merchandise. i did want to give a shout out to the Meckley Brooms who came all the way from Pennsylvania. Meckley Brooms has been crafting household brooms over 100 years, spanning 6 generations. Today our brooms are used as tools, décor & costume accessories. Their handmade brooms were absolutely gorgeous and a perfect fit for the festival. i do hope they did okay, to make the trip worthwhile so they come back next year.  You can purchase their fabulous brooms on etsy as well.  https://www.etsy.com/shop/meckleybrooms

This is me totally geeking out over the Snape impersonater. ha ha. My daughter told me i looked like a total fan girl, smiling from ear to ear.

We also tried out the butterbeer. The had both alcholic and non-alcholic butter beer for sale in the beer garden.

Many of the area business had special menus and decorations to 'transform' Roanoke into Hogsmeade. It was pretty sparse, and i would have liked to see more decorations, larger signs and i think all the downtown employees should have been in costume, The festival was definitely lacking when it came to an authentic Harry Potter feel. It was more like a very small street festival with a few people in costume.  Roanoke's Candy shop became HoneyDuke's, although it didn;t really. It always looks like this...tee hee, but it's a fun candy shop and seemed to be a very popular spot during the festival. 

We enjoy center of the square in down Roanoke, even when there isn't a festival going on. So we had a lot of fun just wandering around looking in the shops and farmer's market.  i'm sure anyone who traveled more than an hour or paid for tickets to the event were probably very dissapointed. There were a much of classes that required registration online, but every time i checked the classes were all full. So we were unable to register for anything.  Then according tot he reviews, a lot of classes were almost empty, because those who registered failed to show up. So hopefully next year, the classes will be first come first serve or handled a bit differently. 

 For the first year, it was fine for a free event. i hope that the folks putting it on, listen to some of the critiques and improve it for next year. i would LOVE to see it become an annual event. i think with just a few improvements, it could really be a fantastic festival.

Both kids really enjoyed seeing all the cosplay and getting their photos with the different characters. There was a scheduale of bands playing, but we never heard or saw any of them. We went into the Market building where they were sorting people into their houses, but it was so crowded the kids opted out of being sorted. i think all the official merchandise was being sold in the market building as well, but we never saw it.   We found one vender in the farmers market area, from Tink's place that was selling some Harry Potter themed items and both kids picked out a t-shirt. They has a really neat design and were pretty reasonable at $15 each. 

This was just a fan, but i thought he did a fantastic job with his Sirius Black costume.

The transportation Museum was supposed to 'transformed' into King's Cross station. You could see platform 9 3/4, and the Hogwarts express and i think Hagrid and Professor mcgonagall were supposed to be there. It was an additional $5 per person though, and after the lack of decorations downtown, we decided we didn't really need to pay $20 to see it.  If the kids had been interested in the transportation museum, it would have been one thing..but they weren't.

The science museum also had Harry Potter themed activities for the day, but at $15 a person, we decided to skip that too. 

There were some different paid activities that had to be registered for ahead of time, like the end of year feast, Yule Ball and Quidditch match, so we didn't get to do any of that either. 

We just stuck with the free stuff and had a fun time walking around Roanoke. i do understand how folks that traveled a long way to the festival would be disappointed, but for a first time festival run by volunteers, what did you really expect?   We are already excited about the next one....which we are hoping they will have. With just a few improvements, i really think this could become a new favorite annual tradition. 

Spring Break- Frida Kahlo at The Dali, St. Pete

One of the best and unplanned parts of our Spring break, was getting to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit at The Dali museum.  Kenan mentioned wanting to take the boy to the Dali, and having been there before many years ago i said i didn't need to go. i had no idea that they had a new building, and i was picturing the little museum i had visited probably 20 years ago. 

On the morning they planned to go, i decided completely last minute that i might as well go too. My girl was planning to stay home with Nana, but she too decided to come along.

So you can imagine my surprise when we walked up and i saw this gigantic museum! To add to the excitement, i comepltely freaked out when i saw that there was a Frida Kahlo exhibit on disply. i absolutely love Frida Kahlo and would have been so disappointed if i had stayed home and then found out her work was on exhibit! 

The new building is a work of art in itself. *The Dali’s stunning new building was designed by architect Yann Weymouth of HOK, it combines the rational with the fantastical: a simple rectangle with 18-inch thick hurricane-proof walls out of which erupts a large free-form geodesic glass bubble known as the “enigma”. The Enigma, which is made up of 1,062 triangular pieces of glass, stands 75 feet at its tallest point, a twenty-first century homage to the dome that adorns Dali’s museum in Spain.

Inside, the Museum houses another unique architectural feature – a helical staircase – recalling Dali’s obsession with spirals and the double helical shape of the DNA molecule.

The museum offers self guided, audio tours. they provide an ipod and headset, and as you move from piece to piece, you click on the picture on the ipod and it narrates the corresponding story.  It was interesting, but i honestly found it a little distracting. i would have rather just read the info myself. i suppose it's helpful for when the museum is very busy, you don't have to wait for your chance to get close enough to read the info about each painting.

As we were getting our headsets from the front counter i asked the woman working if we were allowed to take pictures. Often times cameras are not aloud in museums. She told me that no pictures were aloowed inside the Frida Kahlo exhibit, and you could take photos (no flash) in the Salvador Dali exhibit.  So we snapped pictures on the outside before entering the exhibit.

Once inside the Frida exhibit, i immediately noticed that EVERYONE was taking pictures. There were museum staff standing right there, and smiling and seemed to have no problem with it. Several people were even using their flash and the museum staff, standing right there,  didn't say a thing. There were also no signs anywhere saying not to take photos.

So after we finished the Frida Exhibit, i went back and took one photo. :) 

The Salvador Dali exhibit was amazing. i was surprised how small some of the paintings were, and how large others were. He detail work on the small painting is just unbelievable. 

The audio tour does provide a lot of information about the Dali's life and work. It was a very enjoyable museum to visit for the entire family. For kids, there is the Mustache tour treasure hunt.  It's the family friendly version of the audio tour, and they win a prize for completing the treasure hunt. The only downside of it, is that the mustache tour didn't include all the paintings, and my daughter wanted to rush through the treasure hunt to get her prize, so i ended up missing some of the information from the regular tour trying to keep up with her.

After we finished up in the museum, we went outside to the gardens. There is a tree with ropes hanging down that are covered in admission bracelets. So we took ours off and added them to the tree. There is also a hedge maze and there was a tribute garden for Frida Kahlo.

They also have a nice gift shop, with souvenirs in all price ranges. The Dali Museum was a really neat experience. i'm so glad i decided to tag along last minute. i would have been devastated to miss the Frida exhibit, and see the new museum. Definitely add it to your to do list next time you visit the St. Pete area! 

*See more at: http://thedali.org/about-the-museum/the-building/#sthash.iXdWOMon.dpuf

Spring Break 2017- Bradenton/Anna Marie Island

Spring break in Florida!  This year we decided to take a quick trip down to Florida to visit with my parents over the kids spring break. They ony get 2 days off for spring break, the Friday before and the Monday after Easter. We took them out of school Thursday and Tues, so we had a little more time to enjoy the break. It still ended up being a very quick trip.

 The first day we drove around 6 hours, and stayed the night in Savannah. The next morning we headed to Leesburg to visit my 79 year old Grandma.

Since we were just stopping for a few hours we brought pizza and pie, so she didn't have to worry about cooking. After eating we went down to the pool house and the kids spent an hour enjoying the pool while we sat around a visited. It was great to see my grandma and a nice break from all the driving. After leaving my grandmother's we headed on to Bradenton, where my parents live 6 months of the year.  It's only about 2 hours from my grandma, so we arrived Thursday evening.

The next morning we got up early and headed to the beach! Anna Marie Island is just across the bridge from Bradenton. We like to go to Coquina beach.  If you get there in the morning, it's really not that busy. 

The water is crystal clear and quite shallow, so i could let the kids play in the water without worrying too much. While they were swimming, a school of fish came close to them and then pelicans began diving all around them scooping up the fish.  It was a pretty neat thing to observe.

We spent a few hours on the beach with my mom, then headed back to their house for lunch. The kids enjoyed the pool at the clubhouse, while Kenan and i tried to recover from the drive. After dinner, we headed back to Anna Marie Island to enjoy the sunset.

This was taken at Bradenton beach. There are beaches all down this strip and fun little shell shops and touristy stuff. We were looking for a relaxing low key vacation, and the beach was just what we needed.