One last picture that I took on our boardwalk hike at Congaree National Park. This was one of our favorite spots. The reflection of the trees in that black swamp water just took my breath away. You really could barely tell where the trees stopped and the water started. It was such a beautiful, amazing place. I cannot wait to go back.

I dropped Mallory off in time for her to get ready to head to the baseball game she had tickets for that evening, and I ended up stopping in Rock Hill to catch the second half of Clara’s soccer game. Unfortunately I just missed her scoring – she plays midfield, so that doesn’t happen very often – but then I did get to see her play goalie, which also doesn’t happen very often :-). It was just a really good day all the way around.

Adam’s track meet last week was just the field events at the Top of the Rock Meet, between all of the high schools in Rock Hill. It was kind of weird, because the evening we were there was just the field events – track was the next day. So no runners anywhere, and way fewer people there to watch. I almost complete missed him in this picture – got mostly fence, cause I was trying to take it without standing up 🙂

I got this picture when he came over to chat with us, as he always does, after he was finished jumping. He hit 9′ again, which was his PR, so we were pretty happy about that.

…and as it turned out, it was his final track meet of the season. Jeff was in Indiana so missed watching him compete at York last week, when I made these pictures, but was home this past Wednesday for what was supposed to be the all-conference meet. But there was a bad storm in Rock Hill over the weekend & the kids there weren’t in school the first part of the week, so the meet was cancelled. Mase has had such a great season, and we expected him to place in the high jump for the whole county – and very possibly win – but the meet isn’t going to be rescheduled. His parents and grandparents were way more distraught about that than he was. He is playing AAU basketball now so is sort of ready to move on from track anyway. I did get this picture of him competing in the 4×400 relay last week.

One of his basketball coaches was there cheering him on at the high jump. It was fun watching them chatting together.

Last week I was at the stadium here in town to watch Clara and her JV Lady Blue Eagles take on Fort Mill in their soccer match. Clover lost 1-0, and Clara didn’t get in the game at all – she is still not playing like she did before her broken bone – but I did get this picture of her with her fellow player and good buddy Emery after the match.

A couple of weekends ago my buddies and I headed to the North Carolina mountains for a girls’ trip. It was a beautiful weekend. We stopped and had lunch at this establishment on the way to our B&B. It was originally the Empire Hotel in Canton, but now the only thing in it is the Southern Porch restaurant. The food was absolutely fabulous, and learning about the history of the place made it even more fun. Our table was right over the trap door that led down to the basement, where the speakeasy was located during Prohibition days. Very cool.

On our way home we made a quick stop at Lake Junaluska, and learned they were in the process of releasing some of the water from the lake. In all my years of going there I don’t remember ever going down to the bottom of the dam before, and it was pretty cool. Just a beautiful weekend all the way around.

It had been late when we checked into the hotel the night before, so I was very excited to notice when we got up the next morning that the hotel had a baseball theme to its decor, what with it being right next to the ballfield. There were pictures all over the lobby and hallways of players that were originally from Oklahoma. I thought that was so cool.

We spent a good part of the day that day touring the National Weather Service in Norman. Candice, the Schiele Museum employee who was the leader of this trip, is a meteorologist by training, and the other leader is finishing up her degree to literally be a rocket scientist – I cannot remember what the field was called – but this was a trip heavy on science, which was very different from anything I would have planned, and so much fun.

The National Weather Service is actually on the campus of University of Oklahoma, so we took time to drive around the campus before heading out. It was beautiful and impressive, as so many campuses are. Because they are such a big football school .

After we spent most of the day at the National Weather Service, we had a couple of hours at Science Museum Oklahoma. There were some great exhibits. Since we’d just been to the weather center, I especially enjoyed the cyclone exhibit. You could stick your hand in it to disrupt the cyclone, but then it didn’t take much time before the wind had it going again. Pretty cool.

Supper was at Toby Keith’s “I Love This Bar” and Grill. There were truck tailgates everywhere for folks to sit on – great photo op 🙂

That night we went on a boat tour down the canal in Oklahoma City. Our boat captain was very entertaining and it was a great way to end a special day.

On our trip we flew into the Will Rogers Airport, and there were these great displays about the Museum of Women Pilots that is there on the property near the airport. We didn’t get to stop and tour it on this trip – that will be for next time.

When we checked into our hotel for the first couple of days, we found that it was right next to the minor league ballpark there in Oklahoma City. We couldn’t see the scoreboard & had no idea what was going on, but it surely made for a cool view from our window.

It’s been almost two weeks since Meg & I flew into Oklahoma City with the Eclipse Explorers from the Schiele Museum in Gastonia, NC, to spend eight days visiting the area, and of course making sure we were in the Path of Totality for the eclipse. Our first stop was at the National Okahoma City Memorial, commemorating the bombing of the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in 1995. I didn’t get just a ton of pictures – it was just so moving and so emotional that I forgot to take them a lot of the time. I did get this list of some of the offices that were located in the building – there were two lists like this, with different offices, but of course the one with the day care center listed was so sad.

Just going back and looking at these pictures is bringing tears to my eyes again. We learned that every player for the Oklahoma City Thunder NBA team is required to tour the museum before they are signed, to learn what Oklahoma City is all about. It’s a pretty emotional place.