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Hopefully, Today is Better

Yesterday didn’t start off so well.

I think I got up on the wrong side of the bed. Either that or it really isn’t irrational to get extremely pissed off after accidentally sticking your finger in a large, squishy pile of dog poo. It wasn’t the act itself that set me off as much as knowing the poo, one of three piles found in my backyard, didn’t belong to either of my dogs. Getting poo on my hand when cleaning up after my own dogs is bad enough…

I was in the middle of writing a post to express my frustration, ranting about people not cleaning up after their dogs when Hubby showed up. He’d left work early because he was very dizzy (to the point that he could not walk straight), nauseous and vomiting. It was scary.

To make a long story short, after a visit to our favorite doctor, we found out he has vertigo, also known as labyrinthitis. Basically, it’s an inflammation of the inner ear that screws up your balance. Lucky for him, it wasn’t severe.

Worrying about my sick Hubby prior to the diagnosis sort of put things in perspective. My anger over the foreign, squishy poo was the least of my worries. My Superhubby was ill!

I promptly made an appointment with the doctor. While we waited for the designated time to roll around, Hubby laid down on the sofa. He wasn’t even completely settled when Belle joined him.

Isn’t she is just the cutest little dog? Her Daddy wasn’t feeling well and she wanted to make him better. She may be a killer, but she’s also quite the little snuggle bunny.

Belle wasn’t the only concerned one.

Meg wanted to help make Dad feel better, too.

Our kids say we spoil our dogs. We don’t agree. Of course we love our dogs. Who wouldn’t when they do stuff like this? But they’re not spoiled. They’re just well taken care of.

Dealing with poo on a daily basis may be gross, but it’s worth it. (The reason I have to be diligent about cleaning up poo is even grosser; if I don’t, Meg will!)

When’s the last time a kid cuddled up with you like this to make you feel better?

As an aside, in case you’re wondering if Hubby knew I was taking these pics, the answer is yes. Did he know I’d post them on my blog for the whole world to see? Of course! Hubby’s quite the good sport about providing material for my blog. Just another one of the many reasons why I love him.

As another aside, while I’m pretty sure he’ll be sort of touched by this post, he’ll be the first to point out that I started and coincidentally ended it by talking about poop.

Oh well. He’ll still love me back. I think…

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Motorcycling At Its Finest

One of our goals for this long weekend was to get some ride time in on our motorcycles. I am happy to report, we accomplished our goal.

On Saturday, we went to visit our friends’ new property. We did more visiting than riding. But we took the long way back to our place to make up for it. Then Sunday, that was the best day, we did a 160-mile loop north into Maryland, then Pennsylvania, then back into Maryland and finally to our place in West Virginia.

It was a fabulous ride, if I do say so myself. I got to do all the route planning this weekend ’cause Hubby left his GPS at our Maryland home. That’s one difference between Hubby and I… he’s more than happy to use nothing but electronic maps for route planning. I like good old, ordinary, paper maps. There’s just something about having a map in hand, Plus it gives you a wider picture.

Anyway…

We left our place in Romney and headed north on Route 28. At Springfield, we continued north on CR-1, which took us across that cool old toll bridge and into Oldtown, Maryland. That’s where we got onto Bear Hill Road then Town Creek Road, which took us to Flintstone, Maryland. From Flintstone, we got on Black Valley Road, which quickly becomes PA-326 at the Pennsylvania line.

PA-326 runs along Warrior Ridge, at the base of which is Bedford County Bridge #29, better known as the Hewitt Bridge.

The bridge, originally constructed in 1879, was refurbished in 2000. So it’s in pretty good shape. There are 14 covered bridges in Bedford County, PA. We’ve seen a few of them previously. But maybe in the Spring we can do a bridge tour where we see them all in one day.

From the bridge, we continued north on 326 to Bedford, through Buchanan State Forest. We did stop at Sportsman’s Lake, just north of Charlesville, for a picnic lunch. At first glance (from the highway with my head in my helmet and earplugs playing tunes), it looked peaceful. I mean, it was a tiny mountain lake.

So we pulled into the boat launch area and parked. As soon as I cut my engine and the tunes, I heard it. Gunfire. Lots of gunfire. It seems Sportsman’s Lake is home to a pretty active hunting and fishing club. And there were about 20 men there at their range shooting. Said range was only a couple hundred yards from where we parked. So we ate lunch surrounded by gnats and serenaded by gunfire. Lovely, eh? It really wasn’t bad. And the quality of the roads more than made up for that.

Just outside of Bedford, we headed east on US-30, then south on PA-26, which eventually became PA-484. All three of those roads were amazing. Smooth surface, hills, sweeping curves, lots of twisties. A motorcyclists wet dream.

From PA-484, we dropped into Hancock, Maryland. We made a quick stop at the C&O Canal then headed south across the Potomac River on US-522 into Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. In Berkeley Springs, we headed west on WV-9. That’s another awesome motorcycle road. Especially the 25-mile section between Berkeley Springs and WV-29, just south of Paw Paw. From there it was south on WV-29 then west on CR-3, which is the Springfield-Millesons Mill Road. That brought us back to WV-28, just a few miles from home.

We were gone for about 4.5 hours. It was a lovely ride. One we’ll definitely have to do again. Maybe we can even convince some of our biker friends to join us.

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It’s Coming…

Fall is in the air. The nights have gotten cool. Crisp.

I can see it, too. Last weekend, I saw my first fallen, colorful leaf. This weekend, I can see the trees starting to turn.

You can see it, too, if you just look closely.

Here are some leaves on the ground. An isolated incident? Nope. Check this out…

The ground was littered with them.

I call this shot, “Last Daisy Standing.” It’s only about 8 inches tall. Standing alone. Struggling to survive. Reaching for the light.

As the days get shorter, the sunlight becomes less intense. Which makes for fabulous pink-sky sunsets. I’ll have to try and catch an image or two of those. It’s hard in the mountains, being surrounded by trees and all. But I’ll do my best.

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Enjoying the Long Weekend

It’s Labor Day weekend here in the US. The unofficial end of Summer. Boy, has this summer flown! The best thing about Labor Day weekend is that Monday is a holiday. Three-day weekends are always, ALWAYS welcome.

Today, we set out on our motorcycles from the WV Place to visit some new neighbors/old friends.

Our long-time buds, Kathy and Barry Spice, bought a chunk of land a bit north and west of Cumberland, MD. It’s only about a 35-mile drive from us. Which is cool. I call it the Spice Mountain Retreat. In my head anyway. I’m not sure what they’ll call it. But I think Spice Mountain Retreat has a nice ring to it. Sort of like they own a mountain on which they built (or are going to build) a retreat.

They have just started clearing a “driveway.” They have their work cut out for them. It’s a great piece of land in a very nice location, but it is a bit overgrown.

They spent the morning using weed whackers to clear a path. They’d like to be able to access the place easily enough to camp there this Fall. That’s Hubby waving in the above picture.

There’s a nice view from their driveway, too.

Here’s the happy couple with their faithful pal, Max. Since we rode our motorcycles to visit, we didn’t get to take Meg and Belle along.

Max would have enjoyed their company. He was happy enough hanging out with us humans, but nothing beats canine companions. Especially when they’re girls.

Speaking of girls… Hubby snapped this shot of Kathy Spice (on the left) and me. We don’t have many pics of the two of us together. It isn’t bad, either. Especially considering that I have helmet head and she’d been weed whacking all morning.

We’re hoping to do some more riding tomorrow. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous. We need to take advantage of it while we can.

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ToadMama Capitol Tours? Um, No.

If you read yesterday’s post, you might have been expecting to see a very detailed post about our visit to Washington, DC. You know, where I show you a picture of a building and tell you all about its history, what goes on there, etc.

Well, sorry to disappoint you, but that’s not what you’re going to see. Because I know diddly about Washington, DC. I did take lots of nice snapshots, though.

Lucky for us, the weather was gorgeous. See for yourself in the pics posted below…

Annelies and Yves in front of the Washington Monument. I should have asked them how tired they were of my asking, “Do you want me to take a picture of the two of you here?” And saying, “Come on, this is the White House, the Washington Monument, the body of water where Forrest Gump was filmed, etc. You have to get a picture of the two of you in front of it.”

They were actually very good sports. About the pushy picture thing and the fact that I really don’t know much at all about Washington, DC. Despite the fact that, according to Google Maps, I live just over 31 miles, by car, from The White House. Pathetic eh? Wanna know what’s worse? I am 42 years old. I have lived in Maryland pretty much all of my life. I like to travel and see stuff. Yet Tuesday was the very first time I EVER saw The White House in person.

It’s a pretty building.

I am also 95% sure I’d never been inside the US Capitol.

We got lucky and happened into the Capitol a mere eight minutes before the last tour of the day. We actually got to go inside, stand in the rotunda, and look up at the underbelly of the infamous dome. It was magnificent.

And, as much as I hate politics and history (as evidenced by the fact that I didn’t know if Ulysses S. Grant was ever a US president), it was really kind of cool to be inside the actual building where so much history has taken place. Where so many monumental decisions have been made.

The highlight of the day for me was the Library of Congress. As we were leaving the Capitol, Annelies either saw the sign for or heard someone mention a tunnel that takes you from the Capitol to the Library of Congress.

“Wanna go?” she asked. Neither Yves nor I really wanted to. After all, we’d already walked the 700 kilometers from the Lincoln Memorial at one end of the Mall to the Capitol (I’m an idiot when it comes to metric units of measure, too). But we agreed. And I am so very glad we did. I had no idea the place was so incredibly cool on the inside…

I mean, really. Look at this.

I have never seen so much colorful marble in one place in my life. And the ceilings and walls were covered with frescos and mosaics.

Just look at all the cool color and architectural details. Amazing…

There’s Yves, on the bench at bottom center, waiting for Annelies and I yet again.

It really was a fun day. On the way home, we stopped at my favorite gargantuan liquor store. I just had to show them how ridiculously large it is. After that, we made a quick stop at the house to get Hubby then went out for a very tasty dinner of Mexican food. We all got fajitas. As usual, the service was poor, but the food was well worth it.

Hubby and I both really enjoyed having Annelies and Yves visit. Eric got to meet them both, too, and hang out with us two nights in a row while we chatted and laughed about various things.

Hubby couldn’t stop saying nice stuff about the two of them. For someone who usually doesn’t like people, that says a lot. He noted that Annelies and I are alike in a lot of way and said we could almost be sisters. He also pointed out that she and I both talk kind of fast. Yves and Hubby both talk sort of slow. As you can imagine, the boys had trouble getting those periodic words in while we chattered on and on.

All in all, it was a great time. We were all disappointed to see them go. I have never been so sad to see house guests leave before. Now we need to hurry up and plan a trip to Europe so we can visit them on their home turf. To see the rest of my pictures from our visit, you can go to my Picasa picture sharing site.

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ToadMama the Tour Guide

Hi all. Sorry it’s been a few days since my last post. The weekend at the WV Place was pretty uneventful. Monday I was busy getting ready for some out-of-town guests to arrive. And Tuesday, yesterday, I was showing said out-of-town guests the beauty of Washington, DC.

The guests I am speaking of are Annelies, a coworker friend, and her boyfriend, Yves. They are from Belgium. They’ve been touring the northeastern corner of the US for a few weeks. They stopped here for a couple of nights to visit. And because I promised to take them to DC.

As you can see from the above image, it was a gorgeous day. We could not have prescribed better weather. We got to see lots of stuff, too.

I’ll give you more details later. I actually have to work today (BOO!). I have lots of pics to share. And some stories, of course.

I just wanted to post a quick update so you wouldn’t be too worried.

Hubby and I have enjoyed their visit immensely. More to come later…