Davey & Oakley: March 2015

For part 2 of our 8th Anniversary weekend celebration we re-packed the car and headed south for a couple of nights in a place we have both never visited in our lives. We chuckled a bit, because this place bills itself as the "Grand Canyon of the South." Funny because its really more north than the actual Grand Canyon, and its really in the east... and that's a big thing to throw out there. Well, I will be the first to say this place lived up to it. Below is a picture of the valley where the Russell Fork "Breaks" the Pine Mountain. So on the left side of the map is Kentucky, and we are standing in Virginia. The park we stayed at is called Breaks Interstate Park. Oh, and I just found out Pine Mountain is called the Black Bear Capital of Kentucky... more on black bears later.

So first we drove south on a rainy Friday afternoon, couple of hours through Ohio, few hours through Kentucky and a very curvy road and I snapped the pic below (while Crystal was driving).

Crystal is a great driver, so I was comfortable, but I am not going to lie, all the rain looked like it was taking a toll on the sides of the roads heading into this area. The fog and mist were quite stunning.

The pic below is of the Russell Fork and the train track that ran along it.

(pic below) I snapped this picture after we had unloaded the car. Davey is standing in front of our cabin on the lake. It was on/off raining hard at the time we entered the park, so we couldn't really hike a lot. We did relax, eat a bit, and got ready to start a fire.

Across the gravel drive from our cabin there were these large covered picnic shelter areas. They had several tables, and two huge fireplaces. That is where Davey wanted to spend the evening starting a fire and roasting marshmallows. Little did I know that he really meant, he was going to lick marshmallows on a stick. I have never tried and I shouldn't knock it til I try it :)

Mommy was going to bathe the Oakmonster and put him to bed since it was a long day, and then we were going to have some enjoyable adult time (glass(es) of wine and talking...nothing x rated) on the screened in portion of the back deck in the hot tub. So it was just Monkey and I this night roasting mallows, and we built a 1 hour fire.

I really enjoyed my time outside, we ended up spending closer to 1.5-2 hours out there until Davey told me he had really missed being with Mommy. So we decided a few more roasted mallows, or licking mallows and we would head in. We were 100% that at 9pm (ish) Oakley would be asleep. Actually he wasn't.

So Oaks was super happy we were back in the cabin. Davey was happy to play with Oak, but we had to clean up and get the stink off ourselves. Long story short.... once we were clean, we proceeded to spend the next 90+ minutes attempting to get a crazy grumpy 18.5 month old, and a great 4.8 year old to sleep. I did the easy part, I laid next to Davey in his king sized bed and dozed off. Crystal actually fit herself into Oakley's travel crib to snuggle next to him. Its quite impressive, and was the only way to get that little Oak to sleep that evening. There is a window that opens up after Oak falls asleep where you could basically have a marching band play in front of him and he wont wake up. We left then :) We did get to enjoy the hot tub on the back porch for a while and then went to bed around 130-2am. Why should you care.... well Oakley woke up screaming, like crazy ass unhuman type screaming at 305am. Normally a quick mommy trip, and he back asleep in quick fashion....... enter OakMONSTER. Almost 3 hours later (around 6am), he finally fell asleep, with his crib in our room next to our bed. Crystal is a freaking amazing person to put up with that crap. Anyway, Davey was in our room at 8am, Oakley woke up.

***Recap of sleep Friday night***

Oakley 4 + 2 = 6 hours

Daddy/Mommy 3.5 hours

Knowing this, and I was already up, I told Crystal to go back to bed and I made the boys breakfast. I did this for two reasons. Crystal always lets me sleep when I need sleep, the favor has to be returned, and she went through hell last night with Oak, and my complaining about Oak's crying.

My morning was pretty good with the boys. We let mommy sleep, they ran around inside because it was still raining.

So new side story, the Park Ranger was helping replace gas for fireplace and told me about the Black Bear that lives in the park, and where to see him. We did not plan on telling Davey about it, but he saw him point across the lake, but never said anything. Then later, the crazy sounds at night on the lake of nature... Davey put two and two together and realized it was a ghost living across the lake. Ghosts > bears because they can pretty much do whatever they want. So we told him about the Bear that lives over there, and he had to look for it. So below he is looking for the Bear in the morning.

Of course, 4 eyes looking for the bear is better than two, so Davey got brozilla in on the action. Oak proved to be a most useless helper, but he was damn cute pretending he knew what the hell Davey was telling him.

Part of our porch was screened and covered the other part wasn't. Davey wanted a better view of the lake below from the deck. Yes, daddy didn't force a change of clothes for this :) He did put on his rain boots... Also, notice on the lake in the distance the very little bit of ice... this kept causing cool fog to form over there. Sadly we never saw the Black Bear.

Mommy got up, we got her full of food and coffee and the rain finally stopped (for a small time) and we were all ready to hike...

The picture below was snapped as we were heading out on our first trail to the tower overlook. There was no real tower, but a natural tower. And yes it was raining lightly

The cool thing about this park, is there was a lot of non-evergreen/pine green plant life in the park in March. You can see Crystal and Oaks standing in this forest of green. I think its mostly Rosebay Rhododendron and Mountain Laurel. Then again, you could tell me it was something else and I'd call it that too.... So how about "green bush"

In the pic below Crystal and Oaks are checking out the view from the tower overlook. I think the fall is somewhere in the 1000 foot range from here. Its amazing how frequently the views changed due to the rain and fog. At this point it was just misting a bit.

The pic below is another view.... the fog was just awesome.

It was raining on and off enough that my phone was pretty wet and the button to snap a pic wasn't working well.... so Davey's eyes are closed, and Oakley looks pissed off. Well, also at this point, Oak had 6 hours of sleep in 24 hours, so he was really tired. Maybe he shouldn't have been a giant poop head the night before... just a thought. I still love the kid like mad.

One more pic near the tower overlook. There actually is the highest point in the range out there, you cant see it from the fog.

This was another one of the overviews. This seemed at the time to be a bit of a challenge with the Monkey on my back, but it would turn out to be one of the easier areas.... We still were at about 1800' here, I think about 1100' above the river below with Kentucky out in the distance.

I could have stood there all day and soaked it in. It was amazing looking. Davey loved it too, the fog was so amazing.

Same area... I just thought Davey looked cute in this pic that Crystal snapped :)

Seriously, just amazing looking. Truthfully, this morning it was much more amazing with sunny skies and drier air, you could see forever. But the fog was still incredible rolling over the hills. You would turn your back, and the hills/mountains would disappear... really that fast.

The picture below was from the state line overlook. Way below is a river and train tracks.

Somewhere out there, were a lot of Coal mines. I almost wonder if when parents tell their kids in this area if they misbehave they will get coal in their stockings at Christmas, the kids cheer.

Little panoramic shot of the valley below

I am not a fan of selfies, but Davey is in it. Really, I love this picture because you can see how truly crappy it is outside at the time, (it was mild like 55-60 deg) but it was raining, we were quasi-wet, and all smiles. Davey never complained about the rain, he literally soaked up nature.

More Breaks :) (vertical pic was needed)

Valley and fog lifting

Wait... never mind, here comes the fog pouring back in.... I am not kidding.

and almost gone.......

We watched the fog cover the view in less than a minute, so then Crystal did a relaxing pose. I thought this picture looked neat. It looks like she is in Tibet.

We go to the next lookout and the fog is retreating into the hills.... just amazing.

Next it was time to take a longer hike. We decided to try this pair of trails that was marked off with 30 different self guided makers. We got the informational maps, and started out on the trail. The park ranger told us about the trail, and sold it well, but maybe didn't explain the difficultly... wait scary level of it.

To start the trail, we needed a good trail master... that's where Davey came in.

Below I am teaching Davey how to tell the difference between a Red Oak, White Oak, and Chestnut Oak tree. He seemed very interested, and he also passed his test by finding each of the leaves on the ground.

Oh here is a 40' drop off... a mini-canyon. No...40' in the city is 4 stories... aka a death fall. The picture is beautiful, but it does no justice for the actual depth or beauty.

The cliff above was the halfway point down a long medium to difficult part of the hike. Downhill on mushy mud wasn't easy, but we took it slow and used the roots to our advantage. It was totally worth it as we would find out. Below are Mommy and the boys (oak on back) enjoying one of many beautiful streams as we were on what we thought was a lower level... ha.

This was down near "The Notches" The bridge was between caves and giant rock overhangs. In my mind it was great cover if the rain started to pick up... Or if I was a Black Bear, it would be a killer den.

I believe this was the "Notches" with the stream running under it. That's what hundreds of millions of years of erosion will do.

Below Oak fought the good fight, but an 18 month old with little to no sleep eventually will lose to sleep... every time. Btw, remember when I said a marching band could play in front of him? I wanted to make sure he was ok, because it was hard to seem him breathing, so I nudged him, squeezed his hand, tapped his shoulder, called his name, and nothing.....I started to get scared, so I put my finger in his mouth... haha, and he just opened his one eye and gave me the best "what the hell are you doing" look. Good, he is breathing... just tired :)

Now that Oak was good, we continued on the tour.... you when you see 67" tall Crystal you kinda get the idea how big this stuff is.

Below you can see these tall straight trees... Yellow Poplar tree. These things can grow up to 200' if conditions allow. We felt like we were in a rainforest here.

Here is one of the stream crossings below and a nice pic of the forest bed. I should note, we are still probably 1400' above sea level here, and riverbed is at 600' so we are technically in the mountains here.

I have no idea how tall this rock face is. When you looked up it, you almost felt dizzy, it was so tall and straight. Quickly that feeling would go away when you noticed all the cracked rock around that must have fallen from it.

Crystal snapped the pic below of us hiking up this slanty hill. really this one had a lot more room for error than most of the rest of the trail

So I would estimate the rock formations below to be 55-60' tall. Beautiful Crystal is standing on the bottom right to give a bit of perspective. I think so many of the pics we took give no clue of how huge and vast everything was.. This pic does a decent job...

Below is a wide shot of the same rocks Crystal was standing by in the pic above. Really odd looking shapes on the left. Again, if you didn't know how big these were it wouldn't be as amazing.

Next we had to climb down these so called steps... well wait, first we had to climb up like 20 feet, then we saw this view between these rocks and rockwall. you basically attempt to go down between these were there was once a natural rock arch above. It was fun and kinda scary. I put them side by side so you can see what it looks like alone on left (kinda confusing) and the one on the right with crystal in it (neat looking) Its still way more amazing in person... these pictures are about a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10.... no photo would do this justice.

We were trying to be crazy between the rocks.... Davey has his arms open wide. Looks more like we are doing Yoga (by accident of course)

Here is where we were soaking up the view, I and I asked Davey if he was having fun. He said yes, so much fun, he even told me this was more fun than playing on his tablet thing, or going to the train museum. He said he wouldn't want to do this infinity 10 times. That's Davey-speak for a lot. He was such a great kid on this hike. His comments around this point made us (crystal and me) so happy we took the kids here, and realized how much his 4.8 year old brain absorbed and loved this outdoor vacation.

Next we decided that it would be fun to shake the tree and make it rain in the forest. Davey is a bit washed out in this picture, but he was laughing quite hard and the rain falling and the tree shaking like a wet noodle.

Time for a break from the tree shaking :)

Then we hike on to our next post....

And guess who is awake after a 40 minute power nap. Happy again and ready to help mommy get to the finish.

Here we were enjoying the view as we were getting close to the finish of the trail. The overlook was amazing, as it basically drops 1000+ feet down into the valley. It probably was a 50-60 degree angle on the hill in front of us. Which would be nothing when we walked up the stairs that I though were the finish. Nope. We get to the top of a lot of stairs (maybe 40 or more) and I think its going to turn and have more stairs to get us up to the overlook level. No instead there is a switchback and a sign that states something like dangerous fall. The entire trail didn't have one of these signs....and it had a lot of dangerous spots (in my mind). We knew this was legit. Well, we probably have a 500' hike on at most a 2 foot wide trail with a 30' plus straight drop and growing as we headed more uphill. I actually thought about climbing up the side of the hill on the right side of the path before we started but it was so muddy and steep, like 60-70 degree angle. So we just took it slow and did not look left. We shifted our weight right and showed no fear. Crystal wanted to go first, she would later tell me it was because she didn't want to see me hike first it would have made her too nervous. I was so concentrating on our steps that there could have been a giant bear to my left and I wouldn't have seen him. In fact, I almost felt like the drop off wasnt there. When we met at the top when we were finished, we felt such a great feeling of accomplishment. It was really great. We also needed a drink :)

Here we are up top looking from the State Scenic Overlook. We were also looking at the tunnel through the Mountain for the trains.

Here is a wider view.

Time to build a fire back at camp, and have a nice relaxing drink and some carb free smores (because we forgot the crackers). I was building a real fire this time... one that would last a few hours and heat the hell out of anything within a first down of the flames.

So It turns out Oaks likes licking marshmallows like big brother.... he also snuck a piece of chocolate... I don't know if he tried to eat it or smear it all over his face. We were outside near a fire, eating junk food.... which basically meant, let loose and eat how you want Oaks. He was our Chocolate Oak Monster

I actually think Davey took this pic below of the crazy blazing fire. It really was.

That night the skies cleared and this morning was amazing... blue skies, few fair weather clouds, and we had to check out :( Here is a pic from the back porch of our deck at our cabin.

Davey also found a piece of coal, which we agreed he would have to keep there at the park to stay with the other coal, but we would take a picture of what he found. Also he put his marble rock on top. We still have that... he smuggled it across state lines :)

That is a picture of our cabin before we left today. It was very nice on the inside and out. Quite large bedrooms, big family room, kitchen, and huge fireplace and back deck. We were very impressed and it exceeded our expectations.

I wanted to snap a picture with my beautiful wife on our back deck. It was sunny... so you take what you can get. Her face is the more important one anyways

There wasnt a Cracker Barrel nearby, so Crystal decided this was the next best place. Haha, actually she was just enjoying a little rocking chair time on one of the 6 chairs on our front porch of our Cabin (#2).

A little family picnic from the back deck of the welcome center. Cool views of the valley and mountains from the restaurant too.

We did do a little more hiking before we left. In the pic below of the valley, the Russell Fork in in the middle bottom. That little road looking thing is actually a train track. If you think these are hills in the picture. Look on that train track down there, that little dot on the white looking section of track is a train maintenance truck. If you look up from that rock near the track that's where the truck is. There was a land/rock slide near that area about 10 days ago.

Just another stunning view.

Another view down to the valley below. That rock in the picture that looks like it is hanging on that ledge is probably 10-12' tall. Again, the picture is hard to show depth. If you notice the train track in the middle of the picture.... that little dot on the track is that truck that's on the track working on it.

I love this picture of Crystal soaking up the beauty and Oakley, lookin all chill too..

Neat shot of Mommy and her little boy.

The gun show was making a stop at the Breaks :) Davey loved it so much here.

How could he not love it? It was amazing, the views were just incredible at every turn. We will be back here again soon. Davey wanted to stay much longer. What was crazy is he never got to play on the multiple playgrounds, on the lake in the boats, or at the water park/splash pad/pool area.

Another view of the fork and the higher parts of the mountains in the distance

Panoramic shot of the area

8 years later, and I am happier every day that I married my best friend, and we do the things we do together. These adventures we take the kids on, are something we have created together that we share with our boys. I hope these memories will last with them forever. I know they will for me. I cannot thank Crystal enough for helping to provide our boys and me with these great adventures and wonderful memories.

Finally, I put this pic.... if you crop out the tower on the top, change this to black and white... this would make a pretty cool looking canvas pic. You will never guess where I snapped this picture... from a gas station parking lot :) Until next time... we will always have new memories from our new favorite Interstate Park.

Warning.... don't read this part if you don't want to be grossed out a bit

I probably should note, on the way back home, we decided to take a different way home through West Virginia instead. It was like 25 miles farther than the way through Kentucky, but we looked forward to the scenery. This story only is being added because of the craziness of it. It was so curvy and hilly that Crystals motion sickness kicked up and we traded seats in the car so she could drive. We weaved between Kentucky and Virginia for a while, and then started to meander north. At some point I think we had finally entered into West Virginia and as we were going up a great big hill I did something I had never done before in my life, and probably something on my top 5 grossest things of my life. Davey told me, "I feel like I am going to throw up" and which point I turn around from the passenger seat to help Davey with the window as Crystal is trying to drive us up this massive hill/mountain to a safe place to pull off the highway. Its at that moment that Davey burps and I know its about to happen, seeing as there is nothing for him to throw up in, except his toy basket (and I know that would upset him and brother to no end). I decide to cup my hands, and he it comes. Everything he ate in the car, in my hands in hot liquid form.... this is bad, especially since I have the worst motion sickness of all of us in the car. I am turned around, with two hands full of puke while driving 65-70mph, and I my nose is close enough to smell it all. It was a bad, or so I thought, then round two came, and filled my cupped hands, and when the last burp came with round three, I figured I was going throw up any minute.... I had to keep calm and not freak our scared little boy out. As he finished off, I took my hands and tossed it all out of the window.... at 65 mph. 30% of it was left in/on my hands, 1% dripped on the seat, and about 50% on the side of Crystals car :)

We pull into a gas station, and Davey tells me he feels better, I started laughing, and I think Crystal was still laughing in shock of what had just happened. Davey then tells me he is hungry for food. 12 hours later, I am still not hungry for food, especially not cottage cheese, yogurt, cheese sticks, red grapes, or milk. After a long pit stop to clean Davey, my hands, and get a car wash... we proceeded through West Virginia, with our eyes straight ahead, and no more snacks :) Thank you for checking that off my list of things to do in life... catch a bunch of my sons puke in my hands and we all walk away clean. When I think about what a disaster that should have been.... stupid quick thinking worked :) Adam made the joke that our kids would be allergic to gravity... well, he isn't off, Davey's motion sickness is like his mommy and daddy's.

Davey & Oakley

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

WATCH: Bubble bath buds

Bathtub rockstars

Beautiful day

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Circus Clown

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Seeing animals with my two little animals

Monday, March 23, 2015

Air Force museum tour

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Story time with daddy

Friday, March 20, 2015

Hello? Hello?

Monday, March 16, 2015

My walking buds

Our Family Mountain Adventure (Lots of Pics)!!