Shenandoah Caverns, Green Valley Book Fair, etc

Last month, my brother, Tim and I went on a little day trip one Saturday. The main point of the trip was to go to the Green Valley Book Fair and then to eat at Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint in Harrisonburg, VA. 

We stopped at Buc-ee’s on the way to get gas and use the restroom (it also happened to be close to the book fair). This is the first Buc-ee’s in Virginia and it had just opened a few weeks before this so it was super busy. (Although I think a lot of Buc-ee’s are super busy). It was quite overwhelming.

I didn’t get any pictures at the Green Valley Book Fair. But it’s a large old barn that was converted into a book fair. It’s fun to look around because there are so many books! Even though in the past I’ve often found multiple books to buy, this time I only bought one book. 

After the book fair, I wanted to go to Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint to try their burgers again. In case you didn’t know this is where me becoming a little bit of a burger snob started. 🤣

You can read, my initial post about visiting Jack Brown’s here. Then I wrote a follow up post a few years later with notes about burger places I’d visited. You can read about that here. 

I was really excited to try Jack Brown’s Beer and Burger Joint again to see if it was the same as I remember.

I must admit, I was quite disappointed by my burger this time. Jack Brown’s has definitely changed the way they make the burgers and it was not as juicy or as flavorful as the burger I had in 2014.

I know a lot can change for a restaurant in 11 years so it’s understandable. It was a little disappointing to me, though. Oh well, I still can dream about that one burger I had 11 years ago. 😋😂

I will say, though, their sweet potato fries were delicious!

After lunch, we got ice cream at a nearby ice cream shop, Kline’s Dairy Bar. This shop only has one to two flavors a week.

This week it was Honey Vanilla Crunch and I think Banana. I got Honey Vanilla Crunch and it was delicious! 

On our way to the book fair we kept on seeing signs for different caverns in the area. After lunch we had nothing else planned, so we decided to go to one of the caverns. 

We found this statue kind of creepy but still went ahead and visited the caverns. 😂

It cost a little bit to go in but it was a fun tour! This is a picture of cave bacon. 

These two structures are really close to touching, but are not yet touching. The tour guide said it will probably be another 10-15 years before they become one (even though they look so close now). 

A big boulder inside the cave. Pictures don’t really do the cave justice. It looks a lot cooler in real life. 

In front of the boulder from the picture above. 

The cave visitor's center had a mini post office. I bought some postcards from the gift shop and stamps from the post office and sent some postcards to a few family members from here. 

There was a little museum inside of the visitor's center and honestly it was a little creepy. These bears were the best part though. They actually moved and talked. 

The rest of the museum I could have done without. Oh well. I wanted to see everything since we were there and I probably won't go back again. 🤷😂

Some interesting statues close to the cave visitor's center. 

Tim had looked up things to do near the cave and found this cool covered bridge to visit, Meem's Bottom Covered Bridge. 

We parked near the bridge and this was the scenery around the bridge. 

So pretty!

Meem's Bottom Covered Bridge. 

I really enjoyed this day trip. It was a fun day and nice to have a change of scenery!

Photo Books

When I was a teenager I liked to scrapbook. I have multiple scrapbooks I made in my teens and early twenties. Honestly when I look at them now, I realize I was a very basic scrapbooker. All I did was tape or glue stick multiple pictures onto the front and back of cardstock and label who was in the picture, where it was located and the year. I didn’t have many pretty embellishments in my scrapbooks. 

An example of my basic scrapbooking from my early twenties. 

I stopped making scrapbooks in my twenties sometime, though, probably when digital photos became more of a thing and we didn’t have to take our rolls of film to be developed. The pictures were just on our camera or on a computer. 

Even though I have this blog (which I could consider an online scrapbook), during Covid I wanted to make physical photo books again. I didn’t want to buy all of the materials for actual scrapbooking, but I had heard about a couple of websites where you could upload your pictures, organize them in an online book and then they print it off and send it to you.

During Covid, I made a few photo books of previous trips I’d been on using mixbook.com. I sent copies of those photo books to the people I went on those trips with too. 

But then I stopped making photo books for a couple of years. But just a few weeks ago I had the urge to make another photo book, a book of my Europe trip last year that I went on with my brother, Tim. 

I love the way it turned out and wanted to share a few pages of the book!

The front cover

The back cover

Some Copenhagen pictures

More Copenhagen pictures

Kinderdijk pictures

Luxembourg pictures

The photo book has over 130 pages. But since it’s a printed book, the book is definitely slimmer than a scrapbook would have been with the same amount of pictures.

I like the photo books I have made online (especially my most recent one)! I find making the photo books online easier (once I got used to the website) and a little less time consuming than regular scrapbooking. I’m glad for these online services that are user friendly and will print the photo books for me. 

 

Food

This blogpost will be dedicated to delicious food I’ve eaten in the past month or so (that I actually remembered to take pictures of).  

I went to a couple of restaurants that I hadn’t been to before in the last month and I wanted to share about them. 

I met my sister-in-law, Karey, near Dupont Circle one Saturday a few weeks ago. We visited a cool used book store and then ate at Chiko, a Chinese Korean restaurant. I really enjoyed the food! 

Karey ordered Orange-ish Chicken (in the picture above). (Delicious!)

I ordered the Spicy Bulgogi Stir Fry. (So good!)

We also both ordered dumplings. (Yummy!)

We got our food and shared it so that we could both have a taste of the multiple items. I think both Karey and I enjoyed everything that we ate there! 

My friends, Cat and Rachel, invited me over for dinner on the 4th of July. I was in charge of bringing the dessert. I decided to make Oreo truffles. I really wanted to make the truffles a little festive so I set out to find some 4th of July sprinkles. Finding those sprinkles was a lot harder than I thought it would be. 

I had to visit five stores before finding 4th of July sprinkles. A lot of places had 4th of July decorations and sparklers and cupcakes and cookies, but not candy or sprinkles. I finally found them at Hobby Lobby. 

I really like the way my truffles turned out (both how they looked and tasted)!

A couple of Saturdays ago, I ate at Torchy’s Tacos for the first time. I got the Hogfather and the Chicken Fajita taco. I enjoyed both of them although I think I liked the Chicken Fajita taco slightly better. I would happily eat there again!

On the same day I got Torchy’s Tacos, I went to Mimi’s Handmade Ice Cream. I loved this ice cream! 

I got Butterscotch which is butterscotch flavored ice cream with candied pecans (I think pecans) in it. It was so good! The waffle cone was also fresh and delicious!

I just really wanted to share about some food I’ve eaten recently and I hope you’ve been able to eat some delicious food recently.

Randomness

This post will have some random photos from my camera roll that I wanted to share but I didn’t need a whole blogpost for them. 

Sometimes I like to go to trails near my house to walk. This picture was from May 31. 

It had been windy and rainy the couple of days before this so there were some large tree limbs and water on parts of the trail. 

This picture was taken from the trail on the same day as above.

I really like this trail. It has a nice paved path with pretty scenery. 

Ash is a cute cat! Look at that sweet kitty. I have more photos of Ash on my phone than I’d like to admit. 😂

A storm came on suddenly on June 19. I decided to take a short video of it. 

It has been especially hot and humid here recently. Sometimes this weather makes it really hard to motivate myself to go on walks but I do still go some days even if grudgingly and often shorter than normal walks. 🤷😂 

When I do go on walks I tend to get really red and sweaty. This was me after one of my walks. 

My friend, Rachel, had her birthday a week or so ago. She decided she wanted to go bowling for her birthday. This was the group that was at her birthday bowling. It was a fun time!

My niece, Cami, and her husband, Garrett and their two adorable kiddos were in town very briefly. They were driving from Alabama to Rhode Island and stopped by on their way through town.

It was so good to see them! I hadn’t seen them in person in a couple of years.

It was my first time meeting this little cutie pie, my great nephew! Isn’t he adorable?!

I was so happy Cami and Garrett and family stopped by even if it was only a short time! 

I know this is a very random blogpost but I wanted to share these photos and video. :) 

Berkeley Springs, WV- Day 2 and 3

Day 2

I didn’t sleep very well this morning and I still woke up earlier than I wanted to. Oh well. 

This day was Sunday so we took it easy this morning. I was up early and made myself breakfast and ate it outside on the deck and enjoyed being in and listening to the sounds of nature. It was lovely. 

In the late morning we watched church on YouTube (they still record our sacrament meetings.) Then we made lunch on the grill and then got ready for our first outing of the day. 

Cat had done some research on hikes and this was one that looked interesting to all of us. It was in Cacapon State Park!

At the beginning of our hike!

Isn’t the butterfly pretty?!

This was a pretty easy trail with a little bit of elevation gain (not much though) and nice scenery!

Pretty!

We ran into this water and bridge on the hike and we had to stop and take photos here because it was so picturesque.

We finished our hike and headed back to Berkeley Springs. 

There were a couple of things we had missed in town the previous day, mainly the George Washington Bath Tub. We had walked passed it the day before and didn’t even notice it. 😂 

Apparently George Washington visited Berkeley Springs multiple times to bathe in the springs. The bath tub in the picture is just a replica of what it might have looked like when he visited. 

I had to get a picture here. I find it so random but I kind of love it too. It’s a piece of history. 

Apparently part of the reason the springs became so popular was because of George Washington visiting there often and also the springs were said to have healing properties. 

There was a part of the springs that ran through town and people were allowed to put their feet in or play in it. 

We did take off our shoes and socks and put our feet in the water. 

After we were done in town, we went back to the house to get ready to go out to eat for dinner. 

We ate at Berkeley Springs Brewing Company for dinner. The atmosphere was fun and the food was delicious!

We stopped at this beautiful viewpoint again. It was just so lovely and the lighting was different than the day before. 

When we got back to the house we made s’mores on the grill for dessert! 

This was the end of our second day of our trip. It was a lovely day with great weather!

Day 3

I slept a lot better this morning. Yay! I woke up early again and made myself breakfast and sat outside on the deck. 

This morning we got ready to leave to head back to our respective homes.  We still had a couple of stops before we headed home though.

We stopped at this viewpoint one last time. The lighting was once again different than the two previous days we had stopped there. 

It was a lot brighter this day. ☀

I could barely keep my eyes open for this picture. ☀😂

Rachel or Cat had done some research on another pretty viewpoint that they wanted to visit. But no one on the internet said anything about how the road to get there was narrow, long, gravel/dirt and sometimes steep.

We got a little ways on the road and it got so steep and gravelly that Rachel said she had the gas pedal to the floor and we were barely moving because it was slippery. At that point we decided it was best to find a safe place to turn around.

We never saw the view point but we were okay with that because we wanted to stay safe and we had no idea what the road ahead would have been like.

But we did see this view (in the picture above and below) on the way down.

We got out and took pictures here and said we saw the viewpoint.

After our little off roading experience we headed to Cacapon State Park again and hiked another trail in the park. 

This trail was a little more moderate but shorter than the one the day before. But I think we all also liked it slightly better than our previous hike. The trail was beautiful and rocky and more up and down but also had some flat spots too. 

The pictures don’t really do it justice. It was beautiful!

Some pretty flowering trees along the way! We actually saw quite a few of these trees along the path.

This was at the end of the trail. It was a lovely trail!

I really liked this hike! It was an interesting trail with some variety and beautiful scenery. 

After our hike we got lunch and then headed home. I am so glad I was able to go on this trip with Rachel and Cat. It was a nice trip with good company, beautiful scenery, delicious food, and fun activities!