Saturday is known as the Sabbath. The day of rest for practicing jews around the world. It is a time to renew strength and spend time with their creator.I, however, am not Jewish. So what is a non-jew supposed to do on the Sabbath?
Whatever he wants.
This gentile decided to spend his day up in the mountains. So I packed up the family into the "Van Of Destiny" and took a right hand turn into the Blue Ridge Mountains for some geocaching adventures.
We turned our eyes northeast on this trip and explored the North Carolina counties of Watuga, Ashe, and Wilkes with a list of geocaches as our guide. As always we were not disappointed
We were treated to some spectacular views of mountain scapes, rolling high meadows, meandering mountain streams, cows, horses, craftsman, mountain folk, Christmas tree nurseries, and a series of old silos
Time for the Intermission: I present to you a one act play featuring Yours Truly and the Tonka Tyke, with special guest star, Bailey The Wonder Puppy.
=== ACT 1 Scene 1 ===
The scene: A tree nursery overlooking a wonderful mountain vista in North Carolina.
 "Where is the cache, Daddy?" |
 "I think its over there..." |
 "Come on, Daddy! Lets go get it!"=== THE END === |
Our morning was going so well that we actually had time to fit in a few more caches than we had originally planned on, so we got to act out this scene a whole heck of a lot.
We slowly worked our way down to Wilkesboro NC where we checked out the remains of an old NASCAR track. We have seen signs for the track ever since we moved to the area 3 years ago, and even saw it featured on Top Gear (UK) (as an side, if you are babysitting a toddler and don't want to watch Yo Gabba Gabba over and over, and want to murder Elmo in his sleep - Top Gear (UK) is a great show to watch with kids). It was nice to finally get around to checking out the track, at least the outside of it.
We then went from old to new and checked out
the brand new rest stop just of highway 421 (it even has that new Rest Stop smell!).
The rest stop is actually kinda cool and well worth resting at (there I go, tying in the "Day Of Rest" theme - see how clever that was?). They have engineered the surrounding landscape to be eco-friendly. One example of which is designing the landscape so water run-off flows into a series of low lands containing plants that filter the water before allowing it to flow into the local water ways. Interesting stuff.It also features a really nice nature walk (and a really nice blue ammo can - wink wink) that would be awesome if one needed to stretch their legs after a long drive.
We had lunch at Chick-Fil-A in Wilkesboro and found a few more caches on the way back home. Zeke enjoyed playing in one of the parks I cached at. We then finally started the 30 minute drive home in time for Zeke's nap (more resting!). It sounded like a great idea so I took a nap myself (oops, I did it again!).After we awokened we went to a local park for a church picnic, and ended the day on a date with the wife to see Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes.
We came home exhausted. Which is the exactly what one expects to do on a day of rest, right? :)
