Last night Jeff and I headed over to watch Charlie compete. He did GREAT. Came in first in his first moto, and came in first in the main. Here he is lining up at the starting line for that first race – he’s right in the middle, with the big star on his helmet.
Hydrating before the main. It must’ve worked!
Yesterday I picked Emma up, and we drove to Rutherfordton to meet the rest of the Forever Young group at the Green River Plantation for a tour and lunch. It really was very cool – but no pictures were allowed in the house. This is the view from the front porch looking out across the front lawn. And the lunch was absolutely delicious.
Tuesday afternoon Clara was her usual great helper self. The staff at church was in charge of the meal the following evening at church, and as always, my job was slicing up the three gallons of strawberries to use for the shortcake. Clara cored all of them with a straw for me!
Sunday afternoon our church hosted the cluster Bible Fair for kids ages 4 – 12. It was a huge hit. Different churches in the cluster presented different Bible stories, and I was the adult who shepherded the 4 & 5 year olds around. Here is the story of David and Goliath. All of the churches just did such a good job.
As hard as it is to believe, on our final day of vacation Jeff and I made one last visit to the Space Center. I got this picture of Jeff with the Mercury Seven at the Hall of Fame.
We only stayed there about half the day, and then headed into downtown Titusville to check it our before we left for home the next morning. We found a very nice park, and there was also a tribute to the Mercury Seven there. Great way to end a great week.
When we went to the visitors center at Canaveral National Seashore, we watched a movie about the park that was very interesting. It mentioned that you could see dolphins and manatees at the park during the right season. I was asking the ranger about that afterwards, and she said manatees would come into the lagoon once the water temperature was about 68 degrees, which it was. And then she told me about a place right outside the park, at the end of a city street in New Smyrna Beach, where the manatees really liked to gather. So after we left the park we went and found it, and sure enough, there must’ve been eight or ten manatees all rolling around together in the water just right there. I wish the pictures had turned out better, but it was absolutely amazing. Definitely a highlight of our trip!
Thursday when we were on vacation we headed north to check this place out. It actually was very near where we were staying as the crow flies, but we (meaning I) wanted to go to the Visitors Center, so we drove about an hour up the road to that end of the beach. And this was kind of crazy. When we pulled in at the gate to use our pass – I love my old people’s national park pass – the ranger there said, We’re getting pretty full. We were bummed, because Lindee and the girls had spent some time there on their way down on Saturday, and said they’d only seen two other people the whole time they were there. BUT, we figured we weren’t going to spend that much time on the beach anyway, because even with sunscreen we knew we’d end up getting sunburned, so we headed to check it out. And then when we got to the end of the boardwalk over the dunes, this was the sight that greeted us. Obviously we have very different views on what a full beach is. One more reason I love a national park (and seashore.)
We ended up staying way longer than we meant to on the beach – how could we not with that kind of atmosphere? – and then headed to the visitors center. It was small, but we watched the movie, and then had lunch at the picnic tables out back, where we had this beautiful view of the Mosquito Lagoon. Gorgeous.