The Vacation

So I was going to make various entries about our vacation to NC/SC, but now that we’ve been back for almost a week I find I have little desire to type it all up. So here’s a recap of the middle part of the trip in one post:

Saturday: Went to the GWU homecoming game, hoping to see tons of people – almost no one was there. I dragged Denis to Quik Snak, the local diner that has AWESOME cheeseburgers at prices that haven’t changed in 15 years (read: dirt cheap). Cakes and Wifey showed up, which was cool. NM was there, and another treat was seeing CV, a girl that I hung out with the first two years of college until she graduated. She was always a blast and hasn’t changed a bit. she’s now a Ph.D. of psychiatry and living in Columbia, SC. The school’s new stadium is REALLY nice – I’m impressed. The only weird thing was that they had a section that was restricted to certain people that bought special tickets, to which Cakes responded, “My tuition wasn’t enough?” That night we drove back to the timeshare and had dinner at the resort restaurant. The food was fantastic even though we sat in the darkest corner of the entire joint and could barely see our plates. I was in bed by 9:30 p.m. that night, but Denis was up all night because he couldn’t sleep.

Sunday: We had a quiet morning just chilling at the timeshare and then made the drive to Etowah to have lunch with MG and her family. Her son is adorable and really tall. It was hard to remember that he was only 7 years old because he was the height of a 10 year old (apparently doctors think he’ll end up about 6′ 4″ tall, which matches with his 6’1″ mother and 6’3″ father). We then headed to the Flat Rock Playhouse to see “A Country Christmas Carol”, a fun musical production of the famous Scrooge story. We had third row seats which rocked. The funniest part of the play was when two females were singing this sad song while Scrooge and one of the spirits looked on. The song was slow and tender and sad and all of a sudden the spirit onstage sneezed. I about died. No one in the audience even reacted, but I got a case of the church giggles – it was all I could do to not laugh out loud and it just kept getting worse because I would look at the spirit and begin laughing again.

Monday: We drove to Fort Mill, SC and I quickly fell in love with the area. We drove around for a bit and then stopped in a local restaurant for some food. Then after some Maggie Moo’s ice cream we headed over to a local realtor office and then spent the next three hours with him. The first hour was at his office, going over the housing market in Ft. Mill and the chances of our finding land (he said most of the land had been bought be developers already). Then he drove us around for a couple hours showing us the various subdivisions that were already up or beginning to be built. It was impressive to be sure – that town is really experiencing major growth. We did take a tour of one house that was on the market – it was nice, but it wasn’t a house I’d buy. The kitchen was smaller than the one we have now, and I just didn’t like the layout. We then drove by another house that was on the market that was on the most beautiful acre of land I’ve ever seen. I would have bought the house without even going in if we were actually ready to move. That land alone was worth it. Once done in Fort Mill we drove into Charlotte and met up with MW and his adorable family. He has two daughters and a newborn son, and his daughters were beautiful. We had a nice time catching up – he hasn’t changed a bit in the past 15 years. He’s a lawyer in C’lotte while his wife is an ob-gyn, so obviously they are doing well. It was nice to catch up and hear the latest about the other mutual friends we have from school. When we were almost done with our 3-hour drive back to the timeshare, I said to Denis, “I’d love to come around one of these turns and see a bear in the road – that would be so cool.” Alas, we got back to the timeshare and turned in to the driveway. As we came over the hill a medium-sized bear came lumbering across the road! He was obviously digging around in the trash cans hoping to find something. I was thrilled, but sadly we didn’t get a picture because the camera wasn’t readily available.

More later….