Last Wednesday I drove to my mom’s house to visit for several days. I had a beautiful sunny drive through the Shenandoah and Roanoke valleys, and today I’m making the return journey back home.

Mom’s Internet was down while I was there, so I could only get online when I drove into town and used my iPhone as a hotspot. I don’t have AT&T coverage at her house, so I was really living unplugged. Unfortunately, I had planned to catch up on a lot of things that I couldn’t.   Even worse, I didn’t have any good books with me so I ended up watching a Yard Crasher marathon during my spare time.

The country roads were calling for me to come run on them and of course I obliged. The roads are narrow sometimes causing me to jump in the ditch when a vehicle drives by, but I only saw three cars total while out on my runs.

GravelRoad

CountryRunMountains

On one of my runs, I heard a fox barking up in the woods near my mom’s house. Coyotes have moved into the area in the last ten years and I really would love to hear them howling, but never have. All I know is that I don’t want to run into either a fox or a coyote when I go on one of my very early still-dark-when-I-leave-the-house runs!

FarmFoxDen

I returned from one of my runs to find a bucket of wild raspberries next to Mom’s back door. Her neighbor had picked them in one of the fields on their farm and dropped them off.

WildRaspberriesInBucket

We put the wild raspberries to good use in Greek yogurt parfaits for dessert!

WildRaspberryYogurtParfait

On Saturday morning I met Meagan for a trail run at Hungry Mother State Park. I’ll share pictures and a little recap of our run together tomorrow, but I just can’t wait until then to show you what Agnes, Cecilia, Reba, Beatrice, Lady, and Dolores sent to Mom and me by Meagan! We had scrambled eggs yesterday for breakfast and the eggs were so good! Thank you again, Meagan and girls!

FreshEggsFromMeagansChickens

I’m about four hours into my six hour drive and stopped at Panera Bread for lunch and for a break from the tractor trailer traffic.  I don’t want to complain since I’m making such good time, but traffic has been heavy and fast… like 80 MPH; and I’m frazzled.

PaneraLunch

I’ll be home soon and looking forward to seeing Bill and the boys, and prepping for a fun Independence Day weekend!

 

  • Questions:
  • Do you ever have to run along busy roads?
  • Have you ever picked wild raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, etc?
  • Have you ever had fresh-from-the-chicken eggs? ~ When I was little, both sets of grandparents had chickens on their farms.