2022 Life Logs, Day 159: Enjoying Roberts Mountain
Date: Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Weather: Mostly Sunny with Periods of Rain; High 85, Low 66 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Gate House at the Monroe Institute, Faber, VA
Today was our day to enjoy our home base here on Roberts Mountain. Ziggy, Coco, and I started our day with a nature walk. On our first day here, Justin discovered a patch of black raspberries growing across the road from the Gate House property, but the berries were not quite ripe. When we walked by them today, Coco immediately saw that many had ripened, so we picked what we could without climbing through the poison ivy surrounding the bushes. Each kid got only a handful and I only a taste. Oh, so good! We also looked carefully at the leaves from some of the trees. There are about four trees that all have similar leaves, leaves arranged in rows on either side of the central stem.
They could be black walnut, hickory, ash, butternut, or ???. The kids weren’t really interested in deciding which, but they did start seeing the details and noticing that they have trees in Puerto Rico with the same growing pattern.
In the afternoon, we met Justin, Jo, and Caz, a young woman attending the conference from England, at the lake. We all jumped in, and all but Coco and I swam most of the way across the lake.
It had rained earlier but was sunny when we got into the water. But before the crew swam back to the dock, Coco and I started hearing thunder. Just as they got out of the water, the sky opened and it poured. By the time we walked back out to the van, the rain had slowed considerably. We decided we could dry ourselves off enough to put dry clothes over our wet bathing suits and go to the main campus to the bookstore. We did that and then we walked to the top of the observation tower attached to one of the buildings and walked down to the once again hug the huge crystal sitting in the expansive lawn behind the main campus buildings.
Then we hurried back to the Retreat Center so Justin, Jo, and Caz could attend the 4 pm session. Ziggy, Coco, and I went home, took nice hot showers, and wrote in our travel journals before heading back to the Retreat Center for dinner and more time with mommy and daddy. Justin will not be leaving on Friday with the rest of us. He is here for two more weeks and the kids, particularly Ziggy, wants to spend as much time with him as possible.
While at the Retreat Center tonight, I took advantage of having cell service to make some phone calls. My niece, Jennifer, in North Carolina, had emergency brain surgery yesterday morning and I needed to talk to my sister. Jennifer came through the surgery just fine and seems to be doing well. I was supposed to go visit my sister on Friday, but due to my flight screw up on the way here, I have to fly home on Friday. I will wait to see how Jennifer is doing before planning my next trip down to see my sister. My thoughts are with her and with Jennifer.
