I bet I’m not the only one out there who’s still scratching their head wondering what happened to August, or the whole summer for that matter! School is back in session, football has started, and although I haven’t had either yet, discussions of pumpkin lattes and pumpkin beer are frequent. Hello autumn! Honestly, the fall is my favorite season and now that I’m not in school anymore, I’m not ashamed to admit it. This summer in particular was too hot to enjoy most outdoorsy seasonal celebrations. (Did I mention how sweaty those outdoor weddings were?!?) I’m hoping for a fabulous fall to make up for that. But I won’t complain about the summer too much, there were still a lot of great times.

If you’re curious what happened to Challahbear during August, the answer is a lot! I’ve been visited by my Mom and my Dad (separately – they had business trips on different weeks), and Kirios and I went away for three long weekends! Work has been busy too, and the weeknights have been a struggle to keep up with all the packing and unpacking, laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. It’s been a fun month, but it wouldn’t hurt to stay in one place for a little longer! I’ll be packing up again in just over a week to head home for Rosh HaShana, so I can’t say things will be calming down too much just yet. Oh well!

Here’s a recap of the first trip Kirios and I took to Wintergreen Mountain, VA. (True fact, I’ve been reading A Song of Ice and Fire, the first Game of Thrones Book, and wrote Winterfell the first time around. Oops.)

Kirios and I spent two nights at Wintergreen Mountain Resort in early August.  It was a little over three hours from where we live, and the temperature was much cooler up the mountain, thankfully!  We arrived Friday evening and visited Wild Wolf Brewery for live music and beer sampling. I was a big fan of their beer, even their hoppier brews went down smoothly with nice flavor.

The next morning we had breakfast outside on the porch before heading over to the Nelson County Farmers’ Market. We sampled cheese and fruit and jams. We decided to buy some jams, mostly because we found blackberry and hot pepper to be such a fun flavor. We also got crabapple jam and “bluebarb.” Kirios negotiated with the nice old man who sold it to us and was satisfied he was getting a good deal. Following the farmer’s market, we prepared large turkey sandwiches with lots of veggies for lunch, but not before trying more of our new jam. Then we went to the resort’s lake at the bottom of the mountain. We rented bikes by the lake and I had a bit of a meltdown…  I never really rode a bike as a kid and Kirios made it his mission to get me riding again over the past few summers. Because it was so hot this summer, we hadn’t had a chance to take our bikes out this year and I was quite nervous. To make matters worse, this bike had one hand break, but really stopped by pedaling backwards. I was only used to hand-breaks. Anyway, I screamed a lot going downhill, and struggled for the hour we had the bikes, but I did keep riding. It wasn’t my favorite part of the trip, but I’m glad I got back on the bike. At the very least, it made my other trips a bit easier! I rewarded myself by jumping into the lake for a swim. Kirios and I jumped on a huge lake trampoline which was fun, but super disorienting. He also climbed up an inflatable rock wall and then slid down it. It looked hard to pull yourself up and I was tired from the bike ride, so I cheered him on from below.

After the lake we attended a lovely wedding for Kirios’ friend and former coworker, the reason for our excursion in the first place. The ceremony on top of the mountain was beautiful and intimate. The reception was in a big tent by another brewery at the bottom of the mountain. There was a colorful sunset above the mountain during the cocktail hour. There were sentimental speeches, silly photo ops, and fun dancing. The evening ended with the bride and groom exiting through a line of guests holding sparklers.

When Sunday morning came around, we weren’t ready to end our trip just yet. We packed up the car and checked out of our room, but then we stopped at the resort’s mini golf course! After mini golf, we headed to Delfosse Vineyards for their French Crepe Day. Kirios and I love crepes, and I was especially excited to have found out about this event. I’d like to say doing research in advance pays off when planning a getaway, but this was a big disappointment. The vineyard was beautiful, I had high expectations. But the dining room/tasting area was madness. Our waitress ignored us most of the time, and gave Kirios mean looks from time to time. We ordered a cheese platter, two savory crepes, and one sweet crêpe for dessert. She was unable to accommodate our request to have the cheese first. While we enjoyed the cheese platter and it was quite large, it only featured cheeses available at Trader Joe’s. We had tried most of them before. It also looked like the fruit wasn’t washed.  Since we still needed to drive home, we shared one glass of wine. We prefer red and ordered the Cuvee Laurent. Neither of us liked it. Mom always complained about the Virginia wines. I guess we’ll have to try white next time. Although I wouldn’t mind skipping the VA wineries and heading straight for Napa Valley…  Anyway, the whole thing was a fiasco. But we were full when we left and satisfied that we had made the most of our weekend.

Besides, we had another trip waiting the following weekend!