PB&J in NC

I've been looking forward to having my sister visit for a while.  The last time I saw her was over Christmas and New Year's in 2017.  My dad and family friends also came to visit.

On Wednesday, Jun 6, we went for a little swim after work.  Surprisingly, it was my first time at the subdivision pool, even though I've lived here for 2 years.  It's nice, though maybe too short for legit lap swimming.  You can still get in a workout, though, I suppose.

 

Thursday, my sister came.  We kicked off the long weekend with doing an Escape Room, my second ever.  With the help of some clues, we got through!  It had some fun and cool elements.

 

I took Friday off, and we went camping in Asheville, mostly for the experience of building a campfire and sleeping in a tent, and because I had secured us some tickets for a Sierra Nevada tour and tasting.  

We stayed at Lake Powhatan.  The campsites aren't on the lake, but it's a small walk to the lake, where there's a little beach area where kids can play.  It's a nice little getaway.  Not terribly far, like some other sites we were considering.

I was hoping to put my GORUCK Constellation + Expedition fire making lessons to use.  I started with my flint + steel striker, but that didn't catch on my pine straw and grass straw and leaves.  We could get sparks, but nothing would catch.  Plan B was waterproof matches.  There wasn't a working striker sandpaper thing from what we could see, though, so we broke a few matches before giving up on that.  Plan C was a lighter.  Even that took a few tries to get going, but we got the tinder to catch.  After that, I was able to use the Expedition skills to gradually add our prepared stacks of increasingly large pieces of wood.

With our hard-won fire, we made turkey hot dogs and marshmallows.  We also sipped beer.  I only brought 2 between the two of us.  It would've been nice to have a couple more.  I'll know for next time.

We set up our 4-person tent, with the luxury of having our car full of stuff next to us (vs. having to backpack our stuff in for miles).  There were bathrooms and even showers closeby, too. We were only there for one night, too, so water or tons of food options weren't a concern, either.

Temps were decent.  It was warm during the day, but not overwhelmingly so.  At night, it didn't get too cold, either.  The floor was hard because we were on asphalt with not much padding, but it didn't impede sleep too much, and I wasn't sore the next day.  My sister had wanted to play card games and stuff as it got dark, but I was ready to sleep.

The next morning, we didn't feel like trying to get a fire going again, and we had plans to meet my dad and the family friends at Sierra Nevada, so we cleaned up, packed up, and went off.  

It was my second time at Sierra Nevada.  It's an impressive facility.  Beautiful and thoughtfully made.  Lots to do and see.  I think the free pre-booked tours that they do these days are shorter than the ones they did a year ago, maybe to fit in more people.  Still pretty cool and worth the trip and up there on the free brew tour scale.  

 

You get to experience different kinds of hops.  You can see copper-covered kettles, and do a quick run-through of the rest of the brewery.  It ends with a guided tasting, though only for 4 beers now, not 8 like last time.  That's probably ok... 8 was kind of a lot to get through in a short time.  Maybe 6 is ideal.  4 doesn't give you as much breadth.

The wait for the restaurant for Sierra Nevada would've been more than an hour, so we drove out a little bit to the White Duck Taco Shop, which had all kinds of exotic taco flavors.  A tasty and fun little place.

 

 

 

We went for a little 2.9 mile hike at Dupont State Forest, on the Triple Falls & High Falls trail, with the 5 year old in tow.  She's ridiculously full of energy, though, so this was no issue at all for her.  I rucked it.

The next day, we went to the Whitewater Center, for rafting, zip lining, lunch, rock climbing, and ropes courses.  We packed the day full.

 

We finished the day with another escape room, with a different company.  My sister said that this was one of the best that she's seen in the 20-ish Escape Rooms that she's done.  The clues were reasonably intuitive.  It's an interesting night-time event, though... sure gets your adrenaline up right before you need to sleep.  The host was really nice and helped us through with clues when we got stuck, to make sure we had a good time.