While I was at home catching up on work and house projects, Jenn was putting another 1,987 miles on the car (not including all the excursions they took when they were visiting places).
Leg 1: New Hampshire continued:
Grammy & Pap-Pap met up with them in New Hampshire right after I left, and during this time they got to spend a lot of time hiking and playing in creeks. The kids were in their glory. They got to do many of the things that we missed out on while I was there and overall had a great second week in New Hampshire.
Leg 2: Buffalo New York
As they packed up and left beautiful New Hampshire, they made their way to Buffalo to visit Jenn’s brother and his family. Turns out that he had just sold his house in Pennsylvania and so Rich, Lori, Grammy & Pap-Pap left for a few days to clear out the remainder of the house. This left Jenn solo with our kids and two teenagers. I was definitely getting the easy end of the deal. But while they were there, our friend Jessica happened to be in town visiting, so they had some time to catch up too.
Leg 3: Back to the Bumpy Road House (sort of)
Grammy & Pap-Pap sold the bumpy road house at the end of last year, but the kids still got to go back to Pennsylvania and spend a few days catching up with friends in the area. The kids got to do what they love best in Pennsylvania…play outside.
Leg 4: New River Gorge National River
They spent one night here checking out all of the lookout points and went on a hike. They thought is was amazing. Unfortunately our kids were too young to hike the bridge over the river, but they had fun none-the-less.
Leg 5: The Great Smoky Mountains
This was their final destination. They were spending several days in a log cabin that slept 12 people. Jenn said 12 people was probably stretching it as there was really only one proper bedroom and everything else was loft style. They also had 14 people there.
They had a great time, and spent most of their time outdoors exploring. For as much fun as the trip was, Jenn was now ready very ready to get home. Almost 6 weeks living out of a car going from adventure to adventure was becoming a bit tiresome, and everyone was ready to get back into some type of routine.
Leg 6: The Tour:
My last weekend home, I had planned on going to two concerts. Friday night was Guns N’ Roses in Orlando. When Jenn and I first started dating I had center stage tickets in Row G for the Axl only Guns N’ Roses. I think they only sold to row H, so the show never happened. Jenn was almost as devastated as she was to be missing the show again this time. Anyway, I was excited and the show was great. They didn’t start until 9:45, but played until after 12:30…I was starting to feel a little old for late shows, especially since the next morning, I was driving down to West Palm to see Dave Matthews.
Dave Matthews was a blast, and a nice relaxing way to end my summer. But two concerts in one week would be amateur hour. I needed to round out the rock tri-fecta with one other concert…which actually happened earlier in the week.
There was still one more concert during that week. It was actually the concert that started the week, and was not one I had previously planned for. I won a radio contest for a $50 gift card to Bone Fish (one of Jenn & I’s favorite restaurants) and then found out I also won two tickets to a Tuesday night Gwen Stefani concert. I laughed, but thought it would be a production, so I threw it out there to see if any of my friends wanted to go. The kid’s Godfather Lee was all in, and then we found out it was in Tampa and lawn tickets.
Oh well…we were still in because it would make for a good story. Much like the Guns N’ Roses concert 12 years earlier, this show did not sell out, and so they were upgrading us to seats. Right as I got up to get the replacement tickets, they temporarily ran out. Awesome. While they were waiting for more tickets, they just gave Lee & I wrist bands to go into the pit center stage.
It was unexpectedly awesome.
Our Modern Family 