Green Street Reunion

July 25th - July 27th

This weekend was our annual Green Street camping trip. This year we headed back to Claytor Lake State Park.

Friday night, most of us made it to the camp sites and we enjoyed hanging out, catching up and having dinner together. It wasn't long after dinner was over that the rain started. And it was a significant rain. We all took cover in our tents for a while. A little while later it cleared up and a few of the adults finished the evening around a camp fire.

Most of Saturday was your typical camping Saturday. Cooking breakfast, hanging out at the state park beach, relaxing around the camp site and hanging everything up to dry from the night before.

Saturday evening all was going great. Jeremy received a call from his dad letting us know that a large storm was headed our way. We check maps and forecasts and felt that we were safe for the night so we pack up the cars with the things we knew we weren't need again the next day and enjoyed our evening by the campfire.

EVERYONE that was camping on Saturday night was up stupid early, when the thunder and lightning woke up all of us at 4AM. The entire camp ground was in hurry to pack up and get out. We all woke to load up the last of what we could. One of the things we were loading was our cornhole set. You can imagine my surprise when we went to put it in our car and found a spider hanging out on the back. At first you think, "no big deal, it is just a spider." As Jed and Peter looked just a little closer, they realized it was a black widow spider and a huge sack of spider eggs! I freaked but Peter and Jed remained calm and took care of both mom and babies before finishing the packing.

Thankfully the storm passed beside us so all we got was thunder and lightning and we all kind of went back to sleep for a few more hours.

In the morning, we pull everything back out to make breakfast and right on cue, as soon as we finished the monsoon started. It was hilarious! We were all just soaked. But we weren't going to let a lot of rain stop us. We all headed to Blacksburg to hang out at Mill Mountain Coffee shop for a while before everyone headed home.

This years Green Street Reunion was full of fun, new, rain surprise but we all had a great time and this will definitely be a year we won't forget for a long time.

Random Road Trip Adventures (The Trip Home)

July 5th - 6th

After spending the 4th on the Navy Pier, we still had an entire day left to explore Chicago. We were both really excited to start Sunday morning with a tour of Wrigley Field. This year Wrigley is celebrating its 100th year. The surprising fact is the Chicago Cubs are celebrating there 98th year in Wrigley Field. This field is the second oldest ballpark behind Fenway Park in Boston.

We learned so much walking around the stadium and since there was no game that day, we got to go into locker rooms that normally people won't get to see. It was amazing the learn all the different sports, concerts, benefits and all kinds of weird and random events they have hosted in Wrigley Field. It continues to be my favorite stadium.

Since we had lots we wanted to do the rest of the day, we decided to go take care of the car so it was out of the way. Jed was only able to find 24 hour parking so we had to go re-up the parking for the next 24 hours. You can imagine our surprise when we returned to our car and our brand new tire was flat!

After some help from the parking guy, and air compressor, a full size spare in the truck and a few phone calls to both the place we purchased the tire as well as AAA, we got the car back on 4 "good" tires and the parking situation handled.

We still had too much to do and see to let a small hiccup like a third bad tire on the same road trip get us down. We were off to meet Jed's cousin and family for lunch at Havana Grill. We had the best time, hanging out, laughing, telling stories and eating fantastic food. It was so great to see them and I am so glad they were able to make it into the city for lunch.

Once lunch was over, it was time to go check out a few more of Chicago's main landmarks. I never get tired of all the fun, exciting things Millennium Park has to offer.

The Bean!

We didn't get nearly enough time before it was time to rush to meet up with our Untouchable Tour. Chicago has a lot of gang/mob history and this tour was going to show us all the ropes. It was a really fun tour. We had great tour guides but it was a bus tour so we just drove from place to place while they pointed out where things use to be. Apparently the city of Chicago doesn't like that they are linked to so much negative parts of history so they have destroyed many of the main landmarks know for mob activity.

The church where a mob boss what shot

A club the mob used to operate in.

An old mob building was here but was torn down

Our tour guides

The one thing that I loved about the tour is realizing just how large Chicago is. The few times I have been I have stayed in the same areas. I realized on this tour, there is so much more to explore! (Next time)

After the tour, we were off to the races again, this time headed back up to north Chicago, Wrigleyville, again to check out a comedy show at the Chicago Improv.

The show was so fun and we always enjoy going to comedy clubs.

After the show, we were so hungry and we had yet to have Chicago deep dish pizza. With the advice from a friend, Jed and I headed to Lou Malnati's instead of our favorite, Giordano's for a late night dinner.

Lou's was good but I think next time I will head back to Giordano's. I love that place.

Sunday morning we decided to start the drive home instead of taking one last tour that we were not able to fit into our schedule but not before we had a doughnut taste test between Glazed and Firecakes.

Firecakes won in our opinion

Bummed that it was already time to start the drive home, we decided to take a look at Roadside America again to see what fun adventures we could find on our drive home.

We were barely out of Chicago before we found our first stop at the Ultraviolet Apocalypse. I am not even sure how to describe this place but the one thing I will tell you is YOU HAVE TO CHECK THIS PLACE OUT! It is crazy!!! They have weird times when it is opened but thankfully since this is on church grounds, Sunday morning is a perfect time to check it out.

As we were making the drive south, we decided that we were going to give Albanese Candy Factory one more change to wow us. And as we were driving to the candy factory, we found the company that sold us the tire that was now flat in our truck so we dropped that off the flat tire and raided the candy store!

The madness inside

A very large chocolate fountain

We had one last Roadside America detour that we really wanted to check out. It is the largest leg sun dial. Weird, right? It gets weirder... this large sun dial is on a nudist resort. Tell me that isn't fantastic. Clearly, we had to check this place out and it was everything we had thought it would be. Everyone was super nice and allowed us to come take a few pictures. And yes, we did see naked people, it was a real, still operating nudist resort.

As we got back on the road, we had learned during our trip that our niece was just outside of Indianapolis visiting with friends. Ava lives in LA so for her to be so close, it was silly not to stop and see her so with a 5 lb bag of gummy bears, we headed to see Ava.

We were not able to stay long since we still had hours left to go to get home but we were all glad to get a few minutes to hang out and be silly.

By the time we got back on the road, we still had many hours left and the sun was settling so we had to forgo any other roadside adventure for the next road trip. But even with a few car hiccups, this was a super fun long weekend.