Hike and Grilling

A large park near us called Umstead Park has lots of trails, and we had never been before, so we loaded up our two dogs in the back of our car and headed 5 miles over to the entrance to the park:

The park is very "leafy" and we decided to do a 5 mile unpaved trail.


In many areas we had to follow the trail by finding the markers/blazers on the trees, it was a nice remote get-away just a few miles from our house. The dogs really loved being out hiking too!

Then we got home and cooked up some chicken on our new grill!
We even took a zuchinni--from our garden!!!-- and steamed it on the side burner of our grill!

It was a yummy dinner and nice relaxing Saturday!

Ted and Deb Visit

We had a nice visit from Jim's mom (Debbie) and his step-dad (Ted)!!! While Jim was at work one day, Colleen gave them a tour of town. She showed them NC State where she goes to school, she showed them North Hills near where we live, and other areas of town. She even cooked a great lunch for Ted, pesto pasta made from basil in Colleen's garden. Ted ate all of it, he really loved it! Then on Thursday night we went to North Hills to the Beach Music Festival that plays every Thursday night in the summer. Here we are sitting in our chairs in the crowd:

The band that week was a great entertaining group! They even danced out on the dance floor and they were really funny when they were talking to the crowd between songs. It was really hot that day, about 92 degrees, they had to be really hot in those cool outfits:

We danced for a little bit too, here are pictures of us dancing!

The next day we went to Cameron Village, a neat outdoot shopping area in the heart of the city not too far from downtown and NCSU. At an antique store we found a cool red flyer wagon that we bought for Julie's shower gift:

We all enjoyed shopping there and almost bought more kids toys! And we found some neat things at the Bargain Box, a thrift store that sells some nice higher end items! Then we had a tasty lunch at Noodles & Company in Cameron Village:

The next morning we had breakfast at a really fancy McDonalds. (yes we are dorks!) It has stone walls, granite counter tops at the register, and even touch screen games at the tables. We played trivia while we ate!

Then as a nice surprise, we were given a new grill by them for an early anniversary gift! Here we are with our new grill!!!

We used it the first night, we had all of our in-town cousins over. Colleen's cousins Christine and Charlene, and Jim's cousin Johnny and his wife Merideth. We grilled up and ate on our patio:
Then we got the fire pit going. It took two people to get the fire going, the wood in the backyard was all wet:

Eventually we got the fire going and we had some beers, s'mores, and enjoyed sitting out by the fire in out backyard!

Beach day!

Living here in Raleigh we are about 110 miles away from the beach that is a quick drive on I-40 the whole way there. We went to Wrightsville Beach near historic Wilmington.

The water in the ocean there was warm, unlike San Diego, and was a lot of fun to swim in. We were there on Friday July 3rd, which was really crowded from the holiday vacationers like us:

The water was blue-green and it reminded us of the ocean in the Florida Keys or bahamas because of the cool color and warm water temperature:
We even got a neat picture of Colleen with a sailboat right behind her:
After spending all day at the beach, we drove into downtown Wilmington (5 miles from the beach). Downtown Wilmington reminded us a lot of downtown Portsmouth, NH with lots of brick buildings having restaurants, shops, cafes, etc. There was also a river through town right at the coast, and they even have a lift bridge just like Portsmouth, the resemblance was amazing:
They have a boardwalk along the river and we were lucky enough to eat dinner on a deck right next to the water. Then we walked along the boardwalk back towards downtown:

One thing that was neat about driving out of Wilmington was on I-40. I-40 begins near the coast in Wilmington and goes west to Barstow, California. We have been on the beginning on of I-40 in Barstow, California in November when we were going canoeing on the Colorado River and we took this picture of a neat sign:

Well in Wilmington they have an identical sign! (We passed by it too quick for a picture, but later that night we found this pic on the web of that sign)
It was neat to know we've seen each sign in the last 8 months!