Last Tuesday afternoon I took my last walk on the beach in Newport Oregon. Half a week of cleaning, sorting and packing and a week of driving later and we are there.
We really had planned to rest all day. I had imagined sleeping in, we have been in four different time zones this week. 7:00am here is 4:00am in Salem so if we keep the curtains pulled the kids will sleep in and I can feel rested for my first day of work tomorrow. I’m sure the kids are behind a few hours too. Yeah, that was just a pipe dream. At about 7:00am the kids were all three up and had the bright bathroom light on and the door wide open to light the room. Seriously. We tried to keep sleeping, but by 7:30am we realized how futile our efforts were and so Chad suggested we drive to Charlotteville where we will actually be living. About a 30 min. drive from the hotel where we are staying until our apartment will be ready on the 10th. We showered and ate breakfast, straitened up the room a little and then piled into the car. We found our apartment easily enough. It looks like a nice community with in walking distance of a lot of amminities and entertainment. The kids are most excited about its proximity to Toys R Us. We need to do more research, but it looks like from our drive by at least the church choices may be limited to Lutheran and Methodist. We did see a Baptist church yesterday (a long way from Charlotteville) so we are hopeful that there will be another. With it being still so early in the day we noted that it was only three hours to Virginia Beach and the Atlantic Ocean. Three hours seems like nothing these days, a good Sunday drive. So we set out in that direction. We drove past the first Shenandoah Valley overlook and decided if given another opportunity we would pull off and take in the view. I have a feeling the first overlook might have been better. We will check it out next time we go by. But isn’t it just breath taking?!?
http://youtu.be/0NmKp5A8i3M this link is to YouTube and an A Capella version of the song Oh Shenandoah that I heard for the first time today, so amazing. We saw a ton of signs for things that we can’t wait to go see. But for today we had the sight of the Atlantic waves as our only retinal craving.
I kind of can’t believe we made it! 😊 there were no tears but there easily could have been. I am humbled but the opportunities we have been given to see so many beautiful places.
Caleb wrote our name in the sand ❤️
It is kind of chilly. I didn’t look at the temp while we were there, but we had to dig our coats out of one of the tubs. It was 36 degrees out this morning when we headed to breakfast, brrrr. We stopped and looked at a gift shop in an old coast gaurd building built in 1903. We will have to do the museum another day.
We walked along the boardwalk for a while then walked the shops on the way back to the car. With it being off season everything was discounted. I found some cute shoes for $3.
One of the shops (a few actually, but the first one we saw) was selling hermit crabs. They had cute shells that were all painted. The kids were amazed. They spent quite a while checking out the hermit crabs and all the cool shells.
We have talked about getting an ant farm or something for the kids to have a travel friendly pet. This was perfect. We picked out a hermit crab and a smiley shell one size bigger than his current shell so when he grows he will have a new home ready for him. We named him Trip for the adventure we are on. Virginia just didn’t seem fitting since we already had started calling it a him.
We headed back down to the beach and got him a little sand. Then back to finish the row of shops. We also enjoyed the National Aviation Monument.
We had fun playing a card game on our way out of town, a travel I Spy game from Grandma Sherman. The sunset was beautiful and as we were still a ways from home it has me wondering if we pushed a little too hard today on our “day of rest”. Much prayers would be appreciated as I stick my foot out there, my nose too, tomorrow on the first day of this assignment.
Oh, and in case anyone here was wondering. We took pictures of our odometer in our drive way and in Virginia Beach. We have traveled a whole whooping lot of miles this week.
Owens Endeavors 