Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

weekend getaway

A magical month of ordinary days: October round-up

October has felt like a magical month. The weather has been as close to fall perfect as I can remember in recent years, the colors of the trees eye-catching and gorgeous.

It’s been a busy month with a lot of ordinary days but not without its moments. Here are some of those moments in the form of What We Did, What We Ate, What We Watched and What We Read.

What We Did

I had the amazing opportunity to go away for a weekend with some friends from book club at the beginning of the month. We traveled about 3 hours away to the west and north into the mountains to a cabin on the creek. It was dark when we arrived, so it was morning before I set eyes on the beauty of the place. 

Coffee at the creek

I was in love at first sight. I kayaked (you can read more about that here), and we went to an overlook in the PA Grand Canyon.

Gorge.

Now I want to go back and hike some of the park. It was fun just to get away. It’s been a long time since I’ve gone somewhere without my family, and I didn’t realize how much I needed it.

Also that weekend, my friends encouraged me to bring some of my writing for them to read. I went overboard and printed three of my current works-in-progress.

The following weekend, my parents came to visit. We enjoyed the fall weather and the fall sports/activities the kids are in. They helped me with some yard work, too.

We consolidated the porch plants for the indoor season.

Band competitions, football games, and soccer games have been our lives this fall and October was no exception. During one of those soccer games, the boy got a mild concussion, which took him out of the physical activity world for a bit. He’s better now.

Soccer was on hold for almost two weeks but we’re finishing up the season.

One of the marching band activities was a Halloween parade in a small community in the school district. I haven’t been to a parade in a long time, and I don’t think I’ve ever been to a night parade. It was fun to watch kids running for candy in costume.

And we spent a quiet night in for Halloween watching shows and eating our own candy.

Lastly, there were costumes on Halloween for the school day.

“Bruh. This is so dumb.” (I’m a middle-schooler)
Elastigirl to the rescue!

What We Ate

Chellas. Peruvian food cooked basically on our block. We took my parents here for lunch during their visit because I like food I don’t have to make.

No pics of the food because it disappeared too quickly!

We also ate at the Nifty Fifties diner in the Philadelphia suburbs before attending a band competition.

It was well worth the experience and the food was delicious.

Crab fries
Holy milkshake, Batman!

To celebrate our girl and her band performance, we picked up some Crumbl cookies. We are newly obsessed with these cookies, so it’s good that we can’t get them super locally.

On the one Friday night we opted out of football, the three of us ordered from The Big Five African Cuisine … a smorgasbord of  beef stew, chicken stew, rice, cabbage, chapati, beef samosas, and ugali.

Maybe it’s not the flashiest looking food but it is tasty

And of course, we had some soups. Pot pie soup was a hit from the Cravings cookbook by Chrissy Teigen.

You can trust a supermodel with food recommendations

And winter vegetable stew was easy and yummy.

One night, we had Dino nuggets because if you’re going to have chicken nuggets, they might as well be dino-shaped, right?

While the kids were at a Halloween party at church, Phil and I went to brunch. I had shrimp and eggs.

He had biscuits and gravy and a virgin bloody Mary.

We’ve had so much time as a family lately but not enough couple time. It was nice to be reminded that we can still be a couple.

On Halloween night, I made this ultimate 7-layer dip from the Cook’s Country cookbook. It’s the second time we’ve had it this fall. It lives up to its name.

I can taste it just by looking at it

What We Watched

Shows that fill the time:

Richard Osman’s House of Games. Quiz show. British. Low-key. Fun.

Press Your Luck. The new one. I watch for nostalgia and because I’m personally risk-averse but like watching other people take risks.

Saturday Night Live clips. It’s the most wonderful time of the year when SNL returns.

Movies:

The Mighty Ducks. Hits different when you’re a parent/teacher of middle schoolers and our middle-schooler loved it.

Home Team, the story of Sean Payton’s one-year suspension from the NFL and his stint as a coach on his son’s football team. I had mixed feelings throughout but I think it turned out okay.

Shows in progress:

She-Hulk Attorney at Law. Six of nine episodes. Love it.

I Am Groot. We actually watched all of these shorts at once.

The Great British Baking Show. I read a book (fiction) about a baking show like this and since I’ve never seen one episode of it, I decided to start. It’s good company.

What We Read

Books I finished: 

All That We Carried by Erin Bartels. I bought this book on our anniversary trip to Michigan this summer. I liked the memories it brought up of our time in nature.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo. Out. Standing. I couldn’t put it down except when I had to. 

The Traitor’s Wife by Alison Pataki. Historical fiction about Benedict Arnold’s wife. Pataki is a new favorite historical fiction author.

Last of Her Name by Jessica Khoury. This is YA sci-fi that reminded me of Veronica Roth, and since I love Veronica Roth, I loved this as well.

The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida. A memoir written by a 13-year-old Japanese boy with autism about what it’s like inside his brain. Fascinating.

Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall. This is the book that led to me watching The Great British Baking Show. Features a bisexual single mom on a baking competition and the love she finds along the way. So much fun.

Books in progress:

Here For It by R. Eric Thomas. Book club read. Has led to some interesting discussion.

Spy School At Sea by Stuart Gibbs. Reading with my son.

A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny. I started this then had to return it to the library, so Inspector Gamace is in limbo.

Portrait of a Thief by Grace Li. I’m only about a third of the way through. It’s like Ocean’s 11 meets Sneakers. I’m loving it.

May was a beast of a month; and we celebrated some things

May is always a bit brutal. The last month of school is both encouraging because the end is near and a slog because there is still so much to do and not enough energy to do it. I made it all school year until the last week before I got a cold. (COVID test was negative.) On top of the usual end-of-school-year stress, we had a death in the family, some car issues, and some health issues. I’m hoping June is a bit calmer on all of us.

We did have a fun getaway at the end of May. I’m going to start with that. I had signed up for a writing retreat near Charlottesville, Virginia, so we planned a little family getaway around that. The Friday before the retreat, I got word that it was cancelled due to illness. We decided to still keep our plans; this just meant that I could be with the family for the whole weekend on our explorations.

Here’s the round-up of What We Did and What We Ate in Charlottesville:

We left Friday night after work and school were out and headed towards Charlottesville where we had a hotel room booked at the Econolodge. (We’re not fancy right now.) We stopped at a Wendy’s for dinner. I ordered a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger for nostalgia’s sake. In high school, there was a Wendy’s across the street and we had an open lunch, so on Fridays my friends and I would cross the road to Wendy’s and order off the cheap menu (which was $1 or less back then). Our family doesn’t eat at your typical fast food restaurants often so sometimes it feels like an ordeal when we walk in. But we managed to order food and Frosties. It was almost 10 p.m. by the time we arrived at the Econolodge.

Saturday morning we slept in a little and took our time getting going. We had no plans for the morning, so we took some time to figure out what we wanted to do. Since it was Saturday morning, we headed to downtown Cville for the City Market, an outdoor farmers market with plenty of food options.

We’d had some muffins and bananas at the hotel but we weren’t planning to eat out again until dinner, so we perused the offerings for something brunch-y. I zeroed in on a sausage and egg English muffin sandwich. The kids picked empanadas, which I also couldn’t resist. Mine was portobello. The kids has a chorizo one and a bacon one. Phil found a stand offering a hot hatch brat topped with fire-roasted chiles and a pimento cheese spread. (When in the South …)

Worth the wait

Our son ate some tacos and the kids had smoothies.

I’d eat those for breakfast, too

Then we picked out some food for later: apple cider donuts, strawberries and some English peas and purple snow peas for later snacking. The vegetable stands were inspiring because the growing season is far ahead of ours.

I don’t love shopping but an outdoor mall could make me try.

Cville has a pedestrian mall in its downtown and it was a block up from the City Market, so we headed there next mostly because two bookstores are in the mall. Plus it’s fun to walk through an outdoor mall. This is what I love about the South. We stopped first at New Dominion Bookshop, a store full of new books in a charming storefront. (I think all bookstores are magical.) I picked up a local author’s work of fiction about Monticello (we were headed there later in the day). Our son found signed copies of John Grisham’s Theodore Boone series and while he wanted to buy them all, I limited him to two. Our daughter picked out a World War 2 book. It is her special obsession. We sat under a magnolia tree and read some of the local art on a public chalkboard.

We didn’t bring any chalk with us. Take note: BYOC.

On our way back down the other side of the mall, we stopped at Rock, Paper, Scissors to buy some cards and gifts for upcoming occasions. Our last stop was Blue Whale Books, a used bookstore that is exactly the kind of space I would imagine for a used bookstore. If we’d had more time, we would have found something to take home.

But we had tickets for a tour at Monticello, so we needed to go there next. Phil and I visited Monticello on our honeymoon but I didn’t remember much about it. (Our photos are buried deep somewhere on an external hard drive.) Our tour was booked for 12:30 p.m. We took the shuttle up to the house and wandered the grounds a bit before our tour.

Because it was a holiday weekend, our guide for the tour was a VP at Monticello. All hands on deck. Our daughter “wowed” the guide with her knowledge about Thomas Jefferson because of her love for Hamilton, the musical. It was an informative tour and we appreciated the attention to telling the entire American story, including one of enslaved people. The guide did not downplay or ignore any of the uncomfortable history.

Jefferson slept here. And died here.

After the tour, we explored more of the grounds–the under-house rooms and the garden. We took the walking path back to the visitor center, stopping at Jefferson’s grave and finishing at the gift shop where we purchased a lot of souvenirs.

Then it was back to the hotel to regroup before dinner.

Phil wanted barbecue because we were in the South and had a place all picked out if I had been at my writing retreat. Since I wasn’t, it would have been a 30-minute drive and none of us wanted to do that. He chose instead Moe’s Original BBQ and we ate A LOT of Southern food: fried catfish, pulled pork, ribs, smoked wings, mac and cheese, collard greens, cole slaw, cornbread, hush puppies, brisket stroganoff and banana puddin’. Plus sweet tea and Cheerwine to drink.

Can a picture make you hungry? This one does!

We also wanted ice cream but needed some time to let our dinner settle, so we checked out Atlas Obscura to see what weird and unusual things we could see in Cville. Boy, did we find the unusual!

We drove over to the University of Virginia (UVA) campus to see Edgar Allan Poe’s dorm room (room 13 because of course it is).

Coincidence?

You can walk right up to the building and view the room through a glass partition from the outside looking in.

This would probably freak me out

The school’s Raven Society still uses the room for inductions. Pretty neat. I’m not the world’s biggest Poe fan but I like to see things like this. Since we were already on campus, we walked over to the Rotunda, probably the most well-known structure on the campus. It’s a massive and impressive building and Atlas Obscura also told us about secret societies at UVA.

I miss college. Kind of.

Letters representing these societies are painted on the ground or steps of the Rotunda area, and I felt like Nic Cage in National Treasure when I found the “Z.”

But what does it all mean???

The Seven Society intrigued us the most and we went down a rabbit-hole of Google research on our way to ice cream and after. 

The Dairy Market was our choice for ice cream at a stand called Moo-Thru. Our son chose a huge banana split that he didn’t finish.

Our daughter had a lemon sorbet sundae with raspberry syrup. I went with Holstein ice cream in a waffle cone (vanilla with chocolate chunks) and Phil had a double scoop of cake batter with cookie pieces in a dish.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at Trader Joe’s to pick up some snacks for our drive the next day.

Sunday morning, we packed up and checked out then headed back downtown for breakfast at Iron Paffles and Coffee. They serve puff pastry waffles in sandwich form. I had a TBALT (turkey, bacon, avocado, arugula, tomato and housemade aioli); our daughter had a cannoli paffle; our son had an Iron Glory (egg, bacon, sausage, cheddar and sriracha mayo); and Phil had a paffle with chicken and grits.

Delicious!

We had some fancy coffee drinks, as well.

Phil’s coffee had ube, which apparently is a trend headed our way.

Then it was off to Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. I could not be that close to mountains all weekend and not get closer. Our plan was to drive all 105 miles of the scenic byway. We started our journey around 9:15 a.m. at the southern end of Skyline Drive. (Pro tip: the southern end of the drive is less crowded at the overlooks.)

There are 75 overlooks throughout the park. We stopped to get out and look at 29 of them and at least drove through most of the rest of them.

This is somewhere near the highest point on Skyline Drive in the middle of the park.

I took almost 100 pictures because I can’t get enough of the mountains. By 1 o’clock we had made it to the Byrd Visitor Center halfway through the park. We put some gas in the car, used the restroom and shopped the gift shop. The park was getting busier. It was a holiday weekend, after all. I would have loved to do some hiking, but we are still leery of major hiking outings far from home what with Phil’s episode back in September in the Poconos. Someday we’ll get back to hike.

I could have posted a billion photos …

We finally exited the park at Front Royal, Virginia around 5 p.m. By this time we were tired and hangry and my phone’s GPS was not working well. Phil drove us into Front Royal and we found a place to eat called Spelunker’s–a burger and custard joint that reminded us of one of our Midwestern favorites, Culver’s. I had a chicken philly sandwich with hand-cut fries and malt vinegar. The boys had burgers. Our daughter had chicken strips. We all had custard to go, then headed home via the interstate.

Now, I’m hungry

It was nice to be home with a buffer day on Monday to get ourselves sorted for the rest of the week.

For the rest of the month, here’s the roundup:

What We Did

Birthday celebration. Since my birthday fell in the middle of the week, we celebrated the Sunday before, which also happened to be the first day of May. I asked my family to take me out to breakfast. They gave me gifts in the afternoon and we took cake and ice cream to our small group at church to celebrate with them. (Small group sang to me, twice.)

Husband sent me flowers on my actual birthday after he’d already left. (See below.)

So pretty. And they lasted a while.

Band concert. Our daughter plays flute, and it’s fun to watch all her hard work in action.

She’s the redhead flute in front facing away from the camera.

Phil flew to Illinois to be with his family as his dad was taken off life support. A week later, the kids and I flew home for the funeral to be with family. On our way back to Lancaster, we discovered low pressure in one of our tires and had to put the spare on in a gas station parking lot at 10 o’clock at night in Philadelphia. 

Lacrosse tournament. In the rain. With gusting wind. We made the best of it and the boys placed 4th in their division, playing their hearts out in every game even though they were chilled and soggy and tired. We also wrapped up the lacrosse season with a final home game in the stadium, and an away game. Solid wins all around.

Minecraft. The kids and I played the night we got home from the tournament.

Book sale/book fair. I bought books. This maybe shouldn’t be “news” but it makes May even more of a wonderful month.

Cape Henlopen field trip. Our daughter was chosen to go on this 3-day/2-night science excursion with her school, and she had a blast. We missed her, and we’re thankful for the opportunities she has.

What We Ate

For my birthday meal out, we went to Rachel’s Creperie.

I had the Rodeo crepe with a nutella mocha and my daughter and I split a strawberry cheesecake crepe for dessert. 

My coffee is seldom this fancy, but birthdays, you know

While Phil was gone, the kids and I ate a lot of takeout because I couldn’t muster up a lot of energy to cook and we had some generous friends who sent some money our way. One night we ate Chellas from the Peruvian food truck a short walk from our house. My favorite is the yuca fries.

I’m salivating just thinking about it.

Another night, after picking up a few groceries, we got Wegman’s takeout: sushi, pierogies, lobster bisque, pulled pork with mac and cheese and green beans, egg rolls. Then we had Chipotle after the all-day lacrosse tournament and ice cream from Good Life for Mother’s Day. We ended our takeout frenzy with a bunch of fried food from Sheetz.

This kid and his faces. His dad went through this phase. As an adult.

At the tournament, I ate teriyaki chicken noodles from a food truck. Highly recommend.

Mmmmm….

The day we left for Illinois, I took the day off work and took myself out for lunch. I ordered from Gracie’s on West Main. Southwest salad (with pulled pork!), banana bread, and an iced white chocolate chai latte.

Because we were back home in Illinois and my birthday and Mother’s Day were close, I got to pick some food for a bit of a celebration. We ate from Arthur’s Garden Deli, of course, and had Boston Cream Pie for dessert.

On Mother’s Day, Phil made beef stroganoff for his mom.

The lacrosse team went for Rita’s custard and ice after the last home game.

Primanti Brothers. We took our friend David out for his birthday and this is where he wanted to go.

Our anniversary dinner was at Southern Market. We chose Flavors of Morocco: chicken shawarma, Moroccan chicken and baklava.

What We Watched

Space Force. Still funny in the second season. I will always love Steve Carell.

Outlander. The finale of season 6. It gutted me and also left me hopeful for the next season.

Supermarket Sweep. Always a good use of time.

Sanditon. I finished season 2. Darn it. It’s keeping me hooked even though I disagree with some storylines.

Nailed It. Never not funny.

Grace and Frankie. Trying to finish the final season.

SNL clips. Saying goodbye to some of our favorite cast members as we watch the final episodes of the season.

Richard Osman’s House of Games. A British TV show that Phil and the kids (and I, occasionally) are really into. Clips on YouTube.

Moon Knight. Finished it finally and am more confused than ever but also in awe.

What We Read

I’m coming into a season where a lot of my reading is for some freelance work I pick up during the summer, and I can’t share what I’m reading nor do I have a bunch of time to read what I want. (I know, that’s like sacrilegious for summer. So, there might be fewer books in my monthly lists.)

Books I finished:

The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien. Yep. I’m reading this series for the first time. So much more about the movies makes sense now.

A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole. A spicy romance featuring an African prince. I got the next two books in the series after I finished this one.

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett. I finished this for book club and now I am a big fan of Patchett.

Books in progress:

Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. Reading this on my lunch break at work. It’s about a girl with dyslexia who has fooled her teachers for years until a new teacher comes to her class.

Subpar Parks by Amber Share. Always good for a laugh. And for dreaming of parks to visit. It’s not really the kind of book I want to read cover-to-cover so this might be “in progress” for a while.

Spy School British Invasion by Stuart Gibbs. Our latest installment of the Spy School series with the kids.