Wordless Wednesday

 

Reading Rainbow Trip day 3

 Wow! It’s been a couple of days since I got back, so I am finally posting about our final day. I had so much fun but I’m so sad that it’s over! I didn’t read as much as I thought I would, but we did some fun activities and each finished one book, so I’m calling it a win! The pics are in no certain order, but I’ll do my best to describe everything!

This is my stack of purchased books. I bought one book at each of the stores we visited except Daedalus. I got the Nancy Drew books there! The rest were gifts. 

Thomas Jefferson’s grave. The area was really beautiful but also under construction, so we didn’t take many pics.

Um. Self explanatory pic of awesome socks...

These are the books that Morgan gave me on loan! 

 Curious George liked New Dominion Book Shop, it was the only bookstore we visited that sold new books.

IX Art Park. There are a lot of pics from here, and I definitely didn’t take a pic of everything we saw. This is a must see in Charlottesville. Also, one of these pics is where we found a geocache. Hmmmm....

Told you they were random. Another pic of the New Dominion store, with tables dedicated to the Virginia Festival of Books, which is online this year. 

More art. There was a whole courtyard area dedicated to it, as well as the surrounding buildings. So so cool.

The gate to Thomas Jefferson’s grave. 

More art. This arch led to a place where little kids can play. 

Little Free Library? Art? Both? You decide. 

Monticello. This is as close as we got for our $60. The line was so long, even though we bought tickets for a certain time period. I highly suggest a visit.... after Covid! Their system is seriously flawed. 

We are already planning our next Reading Rainbow Retreat, this time in New England. What would you add to our itinerary?

Reading Rainbow Road Trip day 2

 What a fun day yesterday was! We started day 2 with complimentary breakfast... I mean, it’s a bed and breakfast, so I’m sure we paid for it somewhere, but anyway... 

Everything was delicious! We decided to visit Monticello, only to find that you had to buy tickets in advance and they were already sold out for the day! We bought tickets for today instead and yesterday we hiked the trail. We did about 3.7 miles, and stopped to read at about mile 2. We tried geocaching but failed epically. Maybe they were all muggled, but might have just really sucked.

It was definitely time for lunch. There was a very historic looking place called Miche’s and we couldn’t wait to try it out. It was a southern buffet, with fried chicken, black eyed peas, biscuits, Cole slaw, and more. The plate and cup were tin. It was amazing. It was very dimly lit, and very fun! 

We shopped at the General Store and then went out hunting for Little Free Libraries. We found two and couldn’t find two. The two we did find both had great books in them, and I found 1 and Morgan found 2! After that, we decided to geocache before picking up some salads at Wegmans for dinner. We managed to find all 3, and one had a Travel Bug with it! Morgan is taking it back to Jersey with her.

I won’t say much about how we found the caches, but I will say to wasn’t easy and made us feel a lot better about the ones we couldn’t find at Monticello!

We came back and both read the Steamy Romance book from the Once Upon a Book Club special collection. I won’t post the gifts here, since it’s a spoiler, but I will be posting them on Insta with a spoiler warning! It was a great book, I highly recommend it!

Would you go on a Reading Retreat? What kind of activities would you want to do? Stay tuned for today’s activities! I will be posting tomorrow, and probably also on Instagram at @BarkingMadAboutReading 

Reading Rainbow Road Trip

 One of the reading challenges I’m doing this year suggested that I organize a Reading Retreat, so my daughter and I decided we needed to do it. We haven’t seen each other since December 2019 thanks to Covid, so we met up halfway between Jersey and SC in Charlottesville, VA. 

We are staying in a cute B&B and visiting all of the bookstores and little free libraries we can find, as well as some geocaching (because it’s fun) and visiting local sights. 

Yesterday we arrived, and we had some daylight left, so we decided to squeeze in one bookstore between the inevitable trip to Target and dinner. Plus, we needed to do some reading!

We ended up finding three bookstores in one small area, which was amazing, plus a geocache and a fun vintage shop! 

Oh, and we have a mascot. His name is George, and he has been with us for all of our adventures so far. In no particular order...

Thursday Training Update

It’s been a lazy week for the most part, with the traveling I’ve been doing it’s been hard to get into a good groove. I still managed to lose two pounds this week, which I’m thrilled about!

Here’s a quick breakdown anyway, in no particular order:

I hosted a 5k in my neighborhood last Saturday. With all of the setting up and breaking down, plus dashing about (as fast as my gimpy knees allowed it) to take finisher photos I ended up with something like 12,000 steps that day!

I did a tour midweek, and I let social media decide for me. I also had to pair my Aftershokz to my Peloton because after one year of working at home, the hubs finally admitted it disturbs his work day!

This is how I have to prep for a run.....

This was from today! I made myself an upper body/core stack on the Peloton.

We ended the night with a dog walk 

Ahhhhh the Tour. CDE won the poll easily! It was a great tour! 

Yoga yesterday morning started with cat kisses. There was also some drool involved and she sat on my face during Savasana. Oh. And I was teaching via Zoom so there were witnesses! 

Randi and I ran 3.1 miles yesterday! It’s the most I’ve done since the Fall. Our intervals were short but we still managed to keep it under 15 minutes per mile. 

Not a terrible week! I’m off to Charlottesville for the weekend with my daughter, and we are planning on some yoga and hiking in between lots of reading!