Shenandoah Crossing Vacation

This area of Virginia is beautiful!

We just got home today from Gordonsville VA.  We had to modify our vacation because of the district tournament, but things worked out pretty good.  We went up on Tuesday when the weather barely got above 79 degrees and yesterday and today it was well over 100 degrees.  WOW what a change from the beginning of the vacation.  Me and the kids spent a lot of time at he pool.  Brandon spent a lot of time in the yurt in front of the TV.  I am so glad that both girls can swim and play so well together.  I read 1 book in less than 2 days and had a decent time by the pool relaxing. 

Back yard view

From the front.  I would LOVE to live here!

It's hard to tell, but to the left of Brandon is a trench built during Civil War. This was really neat to see...at least the first 1/2 mile of them, the last 1 1/2 miles of them was a little much. We had a good hike though.

We took 1 day to go Civil War tromping.  Not the best of times, but not the worst either.  We actually found an old home (Elwood) that was used by the Confederates and the Union soldiers and it actually was the only home in the area that survived the war and fires caused by the war.  It was surrounded by The Battle of the Wilderness historical sites.   We toured it and its grounds and actually "stumbled" across the fact that this was the place that Stonewall Jackson's arm was buried after he lost it in the war.  Another neat fact was that we saw a little boy in an old picture with the house and the volunteer there told us that he ended up being a obstetrician and his daughter actually volunteers at the house too.  A few minutes later he pointed out that woman from an upstairs window.  She was outside weeding around the outbuildings!  I don't know why, but that was interesting!  It's like the picture came to life.  Haha!  Then later outside we said hello to her. 


The last night in Gordonsville we took the kids down to the lodge and went to the arcade. A storm came up and there were umbrellas floating in the pool and the lights were flickering. We waited till the rain stopped and hopped in the car to drive back across the property to the yurt and it looked like a tornado had came through. We had to wait for a guy with chainsaw to get out of the road, we had to dodge tree limbs in the road, and then when we reached our yurt and I realized that neither one of us picked up a key to the yurt before we left. Here it was 10:30pm and I was going to have to drive back throught that mess to go get another key. Lucky me mentioned this to one of the maintenance guys that was out in the street trying to get a tree cut off of another yurts' walkway and he came over and let us in. We got inside and the storm picked back up and we could hear limbs hitting the canvas roof and the walls were starting to flap and "wave" around the support structures. I took the portable DVD player and put it under the kitchen table and made the kids gets under there until the storm let up.

Kids under kitchen table during Severe Weather Warning.  Thought my mom would be proud I was protecting her babies. Haha!

 I checked the weather channel and we were under a severe thunderstorm warning and it said to take cover in a safe place. Here we are sitting out in the woods in a glorified tent! I packed a small bag of important stuff and sat by the door and kitchen table. It finally let up and we let the kids go back to the bedroom to watch TV. Today on the way home a lot of places didn't have power (so you couldn't get gas) and we saw huge trees downs for at least the first 2 hours of our trip. Then I get home and see that the death toll was 12 due to those wind storms and to think we were in a yurt! Gosh!

Look who I found cuddliing in my bed!!!  They liked our room because it had a huge TV...go figure



This is Brandon on vacation-in front of TV