A Weekend at Home

June 16th

One of the many things that is so great about a weekend at home are all of the day trips we can take. There is always so much to see and do. This Saturday we traveled to Mountain Lake with the Kennington's and the Racek's. Mathis and Nicki have never been and Joe and Lisa hadn't been since we graduated from college. One of the most exciting parts of going this weekend was it was Dirty Dancing Weekend. In 1987, they filmed the movie here and it was so fun to go see the different places that they shot different parts of the movie.

On our way to Mountain Lake, we ran into a wine tasting on the side of the road. He had his SUV with cases of his local wine from Alta Vista Vineyards, a tailgating tent, table, chair and plastic wine glasses. It was such a beautiful view and such a fun and random road side stop.

We spent most of our time walking the lake's bed where all of the water has dried up. They say that one day it will come back, I hope they are right. It was so interesting to be able to see all the different stages of the shrinking lake as they continued to build different docks as the levels continued to drop. There is still water there and we made our way down to it. The kids walked half way around it in the water while the boys had an impromptu stone skipping competition. As we were walking around we learned that this is where Joe and Lisa got engagement! We had to have a photo op on the very rock that Joe proposed on. (At least they think it was the rock.)

We made our way to the overly large chess set. I think this is just so much fun and had to have a group picture of us with all the pieces. I think everyone had fun with it. There was a quick game of tether ball and then it was time to head home. Lisa and I made a quick trip to check out the inside of the hotel and see some of the Dirty Dance memorabilia and other historical things about the lake.

We had to hurry home because we had a very special pizza waiting for us back home. Mathis, Nicki, Jed and I had been talking about ordering a traditional Chicago deep dish pizza from Giordano's. They overnighted us the pizza and it was just as good as I remembered it. We ended our evening at Joe & Lisa's with her famous, homemade apple crisp.