Dan's Boat

Here's a picture of the much acclaimed boat! She's a beauty!

Fall in the Smokies -- brrrr!

We wanted to see some fall leaves, so we took a trip last week to Smoky Mountain National Park. We took our time getting up there and saw some beautiful fall color on the way! The pictures can't capture the brilliancy of the colors. We decided that's the reason you have to go on trips...if you could experience it all through pictures, why leave home?

We noticed as we were driving north that people were more and more bundled up! That's when we began to get scared!The plan was to take a loop backpacking trip and spend two nights out on the trail. As usual, our hike began as the sun was going down!

The first night we stayed in a shelter on the Appalachian Trail. It had stone walls on three sides and a tarp covering the fourth. As you can see there was also a fireplace...thankfully our bunkmates already had a healthy fire going when we got there. There were about 6-7 other people staying in the shelter that night. Many of them had hiked over 1000 miles on the AT this year. This was the first time we'd met "thru-hikers" on one of our trips.
It got cold overnight. When we woke up in the morning our water bottles were frozen. One of the guys had a thermometer on his pack and it was 20 degrees inside the shelter! Dan and I were discussing what to do when it started snowing outside!

Can you believe this?

Dan said we were there to have fun, not to earn our Cold Weather Camping boyscout badges. I told him we'd already earned our badges the night before! The next night we'd be staying in our tent. It was supposed to remain cold for one more day, then it was supposed to start raining...can you say hypothermia? We felt like we'd done most of what we came to do -- we'd seen beautiful leaves on the way there -- so we hiked out and came back to the warm Florida sun!
There were more great views on our way out of the park!

Life at the beach...

Here are some pictures of our townhouse in Atlantic Beach! We have been adding to it a little each week with bargains from garage sales and end of summer clearance. The downstairs is mostly furnished, still want to add some pieces upstairs and hang up pictures, etc.

The lovely outside!

My new flowers...

FSU Mums!

The living room

Curtains I made one weekend out of pillow cases -- without sewing!

Our crazy spiral staircase

Dining room and kitchen

My very own washer and dryer! I have arrived! Bought for $100 at an estate sale! Dan is a great bargainer. (Also, a glimpse of Dan's surfboard)

I think the garage is Daniel's favorite place here, so it deserves a picture!

Now on to the upstairs...

Office/spare room -- we just bought this desk last week...it's huge! A big improvement from the one we had before (which we found on the curb!)

The deck walks out off the office...isn't the bistro set cute! I love it!

Bedroom

Life goes on...

Our hard drive and backup crashed a couple of months ago and all of our digital pictures have been lost...so, our blog will have to pick up with recent events! I've finally recovered from some of the sorrow and grief of the loss and have been able to look at computers again, so hopefully the site will be updated soon!

Yosemite

We honeymooned in beautiful Yosemite and San Diego, CA. Now that I have an outlet for our pictures, I can't resist sharing a few...
The third day we were there, we climbed Half Dome. It was an 18 mile hike and took us 12 hours. I think we climbed over one mile vertical. It was a challenge, but the view from the top was amazing and made every step worth it. There were no fights or tears, but it did get pretty quiet the last hour or so.
Looking over the top...one of the guys at the top with us told Daniel as I was leaning out to get a better view, "Yeah, I think your new wife would be okay, if you could just get her over her fear of heights!"