Lurking Creatures

Ah, Family Vacations. Fun.

Isn't this the strangest picture you've seen in a while? I was just rummaging through my picture files for something and came upon this one and wondered if Stan could have gotten a worse snapshot of the moment. It was a year and a half ago in Luray Caverns. We look like cavern creatures, if I do say so myself. I wasn't actually angry...Seth doesn't usually have glowing eyeballs...Luke doesn't really resemble an arachnid. Then I started looking at the rest of the pictures from that weekend. Evidently, it was a bit stranger than memory serves.

We let Sean go into a rest stop in his pajamas. (My neighbors could tell you that this is not a rare site.)

Luke threw a candy bar into the car window and hit Stan in the head.

And "Jennie on the spot" photographed it!


The kids got lost in a giant maze and we stood above, pointed in opposite directions and photographed their confusion.

(Hey, you take time alone wherever you can find it. If you have to put the kids in a maze, you put the kids in a maze. We needed a vacation too.)

The scenery was evidently so breath-taking that I photographed the kids in a sleeping pile in the back seat. Lovely sock.
And there's the family on Walton's mountain with Ike Godsey and Cora Beth! We went in for a jar of turpentine and some thread. (Maybe you didn't know that we are closet Walton's watchers. We just received the 5th season in the mail yesterday - hot off the presses! - and all 5 of us were high-fivin' it.)

Sean-Bob, it's time for dinner!

He's giving the official Walton's gang member hand signal started by Mary Ellen in their tree house. 2nd or 3rd season, I forget.
Then we went on a hike in Shenandoah.
They climbed.

Sean really enjoys the outdoors. Mountain Man, we call 'em.

THEN - WAIT! I know this is getting silly and boring, but things really did turn around just as we were leaving the mountain! We actually saw a black bear right after a beautiful sunset (which I didn't photograph) around 5pm, in the woods on the side of the road chewing on an old dead log! People were stopping by the side of the road...fathers were zipping out their cameras...mothers were telling their children to stand back...I was telling Stan to get closer...GET CLOSER!!! We were laughing, imagining the headlines: Father of Three Mauled on the Hillside While Getting the Right Shot.

Well, don't worry. He didn't do that, and we have the pictures to prove it.

*Go to Rosemary's for some black bear that you can actually see...a little too closely.