Fall Travelers and Travels

Summer ended sooner than we would have liked, but not without a few final visitors. As we enjoyed our first real Fall season after years of living in LA we set out on a few adventures to visit family and friends.

West Coast Visitors

In September we got our first visitors from LA! We hosted some friends who were making their way through Virginia from DC to a concert in Virginia Beach. It was still warm enough to float in the lake and drink some cold beer and cider. We also went out on a pontoon boat with them one day and got to see a ton of different landmark spots on the lake! With six people you get tons of opportunities to make great food and we were happy to have someone break in our southern kitchen with its first breakfast of home cooked biscuits and gravy.

Emily’s sister visited from Oregon toward the end of the month (also on her way to Virginia Beach) and we got to have  relaxing week with her despite everyone working remotely during the day from the office downstairs. To burn off some energy in the afternoon we set up a pickleball court in the driveway and took turns playing cross-court! The Black IPA was tapped and we all got to sample it just before leaving town to drive East (and pick up some apple cider doughnuts for the car).

New York Weekend

Even though Emily had gone to LA for a week of work we were able to meet in Brooklyn for a wedding (one of Andrew’s college friends). It was an awesome opportunity to catch up with friends from Carnegie Mellon that we hadn’t seen since the last wedding!

While in town we stayed with Emily’s Brother’s family and got to spend some quality time with them before the family expands again this winter.

Fall Decorations

It is amazing to live in a location with seasons again. While we aren’t looking forward to the cold dark winters, seeing all of the leaves change color in Virginia this fall has been awesome. We had a few unseasonably warm days toward the end of October and were able to take advantage of them by walking around Booker T. Washington park and going for a Kayak. Who knows when we will get another chance to do that again!

We put up some Halloween decorations this year, but we didn’t end up getting any trick-or-treaters. This is very different from the 400 kids that used to stop by our house in LA!

Gone to Oregon

Now that people had stopped coming to visit us it was our turn to visit them! We started by visiting Emily’s sister in Baker City for a long weekend at the end of October. This was our first trip to eastern Oregon despite Jess having visited us several times during the summer. We had a great time with her and her husband both relaxing in the hot tub (‘troll cauldron’) and hiking through the mountains. We were able to try both breweries in Baker city, but the best evening activity by far was the trip through the haunted house that the town had put together for Halloween.

To round out the week we drove across the mountains to Hood River where we visited our friends Sam and Casey. They are working on building a house in the mountains north of White Salmon and were happy to have our help! We cut and nailed a lot of boards over four days which were used to reinforce the exterior walls, fill out the attic floor, and frame the master bedroom. There were also plenty of opportunities to ride in and operate all of the awesome construction equipment! We both learned a ton while having a blast helping them out. Each day of hard worked was flanked by a delicious breakfast on one end (often from the dangerously close by hood river bakery) and some fantastic local beers on the other. We can’t wait to see the final product from their amazing project!

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