next month will mark 23 years of marriage for derek and me. it’s wild.
since may is notoriously packed with mayhem, we celebrated a little bit early, escaping for a long weekend in abingdon, virginia, just outside of bristol. we have never really explored this area, so it was all new and exciting.
our plan was pretty laid back. antique shops. some thrifting. a few fabric shops. local food. a hike. a play at a local theater. farmers market. all of the standard faves.
we probably hit up six or eight antique shops over the course of the weekend. some were weird and sketchy. some where fancypants and carefully curated. all of them were interesting and fun in their own way. at one, derek found a bin of buffalo themed stickers, so we bought all of them of course. we passed on so much. but i didn’t want to.
my best find was a green members only jacket for the low low price of $12(!!!). there was no way i wasn’t bringing it home. and i am always on the quest to rescue old quilts and afghans, but not at the prices we were finding them on this weekend.
on saturday morning, we hit up the abingdon farmers market. even though i had already had like 7 (tiny) cups of terrible hotel coffee, it was our first order of business upon arrival. except the coffee guy was late. and then, he was like a fancy pour over guy. so. it was a lengthy process. but, we waited patiently and it was worth it. with coffees in hand we were ready to properly experience the market.
since we were in a regular old hotel, we didn’t get much. but it IS strawbs season, so we determined a gallon was a necessary amount for the two of us for the weekend.
even though my sewing has essentially come to a crawl, we stopped into a few fabric shops. one was a dud, one was ok, and the last one was pretty great, but i got there 20 minutes before they closed, so i was pulling down bolts like i was on supermarket sweep. derek just waits patiently in the car while i spend his money.
um. we ate. a lot.
like. we were in a hotel. we had to. right?
we had a super delicious greek meal in abingdon. i mean. greek nachos???
this meal at the girl and the raven was probably my favorite. sweet potato hash and eggs over arugula with a zesty sauce. derek had an equally tasty reuben.
i don’t even know where this other pic was. but the second is from a sports bar where we set up camp to watch the sabres game. priorities.
we had a big night out on saturday, first hitting up jacks 128 pecan. we were seated near a table of patsy clines. i pretended to photograph Derek, in an attempt to capture the patsies…
why all the patsy clines, you ask? well, abingdon virginia is home to the barter theater, where every single night there’s a patsy cline show. i think it’s called always patsy cline.
but. there’s a second theater. and that one was showing a pickleball play written by jeff daniels. so we went to see that one. it was pretty funny. maybe would have been more funny if we were pickleballers.
we were pretty close to the “largest flea market in virginia” and since i like thrifting and antiquing, it seemed likely i would enjoy flea marketing, so we decided to check it out. our first order of business was procuring boiled peanuts for derek. he also bought many other nut themed items, while i made nut themed jokes.
so. my feedback on flea markets. i’m not a fan. they are kind of gross. and the stuff people sell is just so weird. and the demographic and characteristics of most shoppers and sellers was decidedly sad. we did pick up quite a few cds for our analoggy middle kid. but i was very quickly mostly over it and i hope to never go to a flea market ever again.
for the grand finale of our anniversary-ish weekend-ish, we woke up monday morning, checked out of the hotel, and trekked a long and winding road to the 10 car parking area at the trailhead for “the channels”. (this was strategic, because we assumed monday morning would be very low traffic time).
we scored a spot and hit the trail. on the way up, i stopped for all of the flowers. otherwise, the trail was pretty boring and meh.
the hike was about three miles in/up and ended a huge maze of rock formations. we settled in and began exploring, squeezing, ducking, climbing our way through the slots and tunnels.
ok. i lied. the actual “top” of the hike was up above the channels, on the tops of the giant rock formations. and on top of that, there was a firetower that we were not allowed to climb.
the hike back down was the worst.
as it turns out, i’m maybe not as healed up as i thought. the 3 miles down was terrible. and, well, this was the last hike i’ll be doing for awhile.
at least it was pretty cool, i guess.
we had some lunch at a mexican establishment in the first small town we happened upon and then cruised on home to be reunited with our family and relieve the grandlidboms of their duties. 🙂