A little gathering spot: Fairy Stone

Our family enjoyed a really fun get-a-way for a couple days last week. We drove up to Fairy Stone National Park near Stuart, Virginia and stayed in a log cabin. As in an Abraham Lincoln-kind of log cabin. As in no phone service, no internet, no t.v. (except for the Netflix we sneaked in to watch on his laptop - as if it were contraband!). And let me just tell you, I am not complaining about being disconnected for a couple days! But there are a few things we learned while we were gone. Things like...

1. Husbands (the one of you that is out there, somewhere, reading this), take your cell phone with you when you decide to go on a three-hour hike with two little boys... in the drizzling weather....that's in the 40's. Even though it may not have service, you can at least can climb to the top of a mountain and call your wife if you get lost. Or you can call for help if you get a flat tire while driving to another trail. Not that any of those things happened, but your wife might worry that they ARE happening... while you are gone for three hours (near dark) in cold, rainy weather with two little boys.

Just take the phone.

2. Or, don't take the phone. Then when you come back with two little boys who are soaked from the shins down from crossing creeks by jumping from rock to rock, she won't fuss at you. She'll just be glad that you're alive! And then she can tell the park rangers that there's no need to keep all that descriptive information that she gave them. (When she and the toddler hitched a ride up to the ranger station to see if they had "heard" anything.)

No, I'm not making this up.

3. Moving on, Bluegrass will grow on you if you check out the Floyd Country Store Jamboree on a Friday night. Getting orange cream soda in a glass bottle and a bag of nickel candy was fun for us and the kids!

4. Read carefully. In the guest journal in the cabin, a prior guest wrote about a "skunk" living on the porch. She also said she saw several of them. A family of skunks living around the cabin seemed pretty doggone exciting! Well, that was enough for the kids and me to be at the door every time we heard the slightest creak outside. Daniel was bound and determined to get close to a skunk. I had to talk him down from making that happen. But upon re-reading her journal entry the next day, I saw that she had written "skink," as in a small lizard. Whoop-dee-do. She saw a lizard. Well, as I said, read carefully!

5. A couple of days away does wonders, doesn't it? Relaxing and having fun with the family is definitely worth the trouble of planning and saving!