Well, Well, Well...

I know I said the next blog was going to be about how we chose the land and that whole process, but I thought I'd throw in a blog about a pretty big milestone first - our well.  It's bittersweet to be writing this because, while the well is in process, it isn't finished yet.  Let's start at the beginning though...

The sellers played a little bit of hardball towards the end of our negotiations with them on the contract for the land and before they drilled the well on the property, they wanted to make sure we secured financing first.  They also changed our requested two-week time frame to drill the well to 35 days.  We knew that would be putting the well drilling around the holidays, but we didn't think much of it when we agreed to give them extra time.  Hindsight tells me now we should have stuck to our guns about the two-week time frame.

As soon as we had a contract on the land with the sellers, Steve and I immediately got to work on getting the multitude of tasks done that we had to do.  This included lining up a surveyor, finishing all the final touches and making rushed decisions on the house so we could sign the builders contract, and securing financing.  There were so many moving parts to all of that and it felt like a full-time job for about two weeks so we could get everything done in the time frames we agreed to.  The longest time frame that was agreed to in the contract was drilling the well which is the only thing the sellers need to do before settlement.  Once we secured financing, we did the math and that meant the sellers had until December 29 to get the well done.

There was serious lack of communication from the sellers' agent for a few days and after finally hearing from him, he claimed he could not open the PDF document we sent over, which was the loan commitment letter from our bank proving we had financing.  I don't know many places of business that cannot open PDFs, so I don't believe him at all, if I'm being honest.  To speed things up, Steve hand delivered a copy of the loan commitment letter to the agent and, while there, the agent said the sellers already had the drilling company lined up to drill the well any day now.  This was before Thanksgiving.

Fast forward to December 22nd, after an entire month of us and our agent nagging the sellers' agent.  That's when we finally heard the rig to drill the well was actually on the property and they did work on it that day, however, they hit rock.  In Harford County, this is not shocking news at all.  They weren't able to finish that day, but they were going to go back on the 26th to finish.  We aren't sure why exactly, but they didn't finish on the 26th despite working on it all day.  Steve dropped by at the end of the day and he did see that they made progress, and he thinks they are close to finishing.  But, they haven't made any progress since then.  We had a very cold snap in Maryland with several days in a row below freezing and the weather messes with the drill.  So they've had to put the whole thing on a break until we get a few warmer days.

Sadly, the weather doesn't look like it's warming up before next weekend.  This is very bad news for settlement.  In order to settle, the well needs to be drilled and pass some tests, and those tests take 3 - 5 days.  The company that is doing the well, Barlow, has been wonderful to work with and has been staying in contact with Steve with updates and they know we are scheduled to settle on the 10th.   We really appreciate Barlow keeping us in the loop, because technically the sellers are their customer.  Fingers crossed Barlow can make miracles happen.  We know it's not Barlow's fault at all for us to be running into this issue, but I could just scream at the sellers for waiting until the last minute.  Not only did they wait until the last minute, but they also lied to us before Thanksgiving saying they were ready to go.

It will all be worth it in the end.  In the meantime, here are some pictures of the well progress.

Progress as of 12/25/17 - this was when they hit rock

Truck on property on 12/25

Me surveying our land.  The pink flag to the right designates the back left corner of the house.  I'm in the backyard looking toward the other lot we were deciding between.

The rig

Christmas morning with the rig

Progress on 12/26 - lots more of the "mess" on this day

The rig

More mess

Again, the pink flag is the back left corner of the house  Steve's car is parked at the top of the hill in the distance; that's about where the common driveway will end and turn into ours coming towards us in the picture.  This view is of our front yard.

Barth Residence

Today we got the finalized plans back from our builder (Bob Ward).  I don't know what it is, but seeing "Barth Residence" on the plans was a great feeling!  I guess in my mind it solidified that Steve and I are really doing this and these plans are for our house.  There will be similar houses because they will build more Somersets, but this one is ours.  :-)

Now that you've seen the video of the house, let's talk about the design changes we made to it.  I'll start with the outside.  I've always dreamed of having a stone-front house and I'm getting that dream!  The model in the video has stone on the water table, but we'll have stone all the way up to the front porch roof and it will carry over to the front of the garage.  The garage on the model is front-load, but we will have a side-load three-car garage.  This changes the way the house looks a bit, so shown below is the drawing of what the front of our house will look like.  We'll have the same stone that you see on the model, but I'm going to leave the siding, shutter, and front door selections out of this blog so you can be surprised when it is built.  I wanted a pop of color on the front door and I'm beyond excited to see the color with the rest of the exterior choices.

Heading into the house, the first room you see in the video is the flex room.  In the video, it is staged as a home office.  That's initially what we were planning to use that room for, but Steve reminded me that we don't use our office at our current house at all.  Even when I work from home, I usually set up camp in the kitchen or dining room so I have a lot of space to spread out.  While I'm not 100% sold on Steve's proposed idea for the room, the front-running idea is to make this a bar.  I'm more and more convinced each day.  We figure we'll use a bar a lot more than an office, which shows where our priorities are.  :-)  We did add the French doors like you see in the video because I've always wanted French doors leading into an office...or a bar.

After the flex room, the video goes into the rooms that sell this house - the kitchen, dining room, and great room.  We did get the "gourmet kitchen" which is what you see in the video with the double oven and stainless appliances.  We also added a stainless apron hood over the stove on the back wall which means our microwave will go on the same wall as the fridge.  Steve is the cook in our household and he is great at it, so I let him go crazy with the upgrades in the kitchen.  The kitchen cabinets, handles, and granite are going to be different from what you see in the video.  Again, I'll try to keep that a surprise until it is built.

Steve is on the HOA Board for our current neighborhood and has been for a few years now.  Recently, Steve became the President of the HOA because our former President, Rob, stepped down since he moved out of the neighborhood.  Luckily for us, he moved to the neighborhood where the model home is located.  Steve asked him which model he and his wife built and they chose the Somerset as well.  We asked if we would be able to tour their house to see what changes they made and what changes they would recommend.  Since Rob and his wife were building in the neighborhood, a lot of the changes they wanted to make they either had to fight really hard for or they were just told no.  When we toured their house, Rob explained that once you get people seated at the dining room table, there isn't a lot of room between the people seated and the windows on the back wall and that he wished they were able to bump it out a foot.  We asked Clark and JoAnna for pricing on this and ultimately we did add it to our house.

In the great room, we kept the tray ceiling that you see in the video and we'll have the exact same stone fireplace in our house, only the actual fireplace will be a little smaller.  They wanted $8,000 extra for the larger fireplace; I responded with laughter!

This takes us upstairs.  The video starts with the master, but I'm going to save that for last.  We're only doing three things on the rest of the second floor, so I'll get that out of the way first.  The bedrooms are all staying the same as shown in the video.  We did not upgrade to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom that is shown after the first bedroom and before the second bedroom.  We will still have a bathroom there, but the entrance will be from the hallway.  The laundry room is a bit tight and when we saw Rob's house with the washer and dryer in it, we realized it was on the small side.  Rob suggested pushing the laundry room about a foot into the walk-in closet that is in the guest room next door.  We did that and there's still enough space for a small walk-in closet in that room.  We did add the optional bathroom to the last bedroom you see (shown in the video).  If we didn't add that, the master closet would keep going into that bathroom and the closet is already obnoxiously large; the bathroom is a much better use of space.

Okay, I saved the best for last - the master!  The only change to the room we made was we removed the tray ceiling.  That was going to be about a $1500 option and I would have much rather put that money somewhere else.  I hope when you saw the master bathroom you didn't fall in love because I pretty much hated the bathroom when we first saw it.  There were two things I hated - 1) the tub and 2) the shower.  The tub is enormous - so big that not only would I have trouble getting in and out of it, but I don't know how I'd clean it.  Also the tub surround uses up so much valuable space on either side of it that it's just wasted space.  The shower is tiny.  We use a stall shower every day at our current house and this one is only a matter of inches larger than the one we use now.  We spend a lot more time in the shower than we do in a tub, so I really thought the spacing on both of those needed to be reversed.

I don't know if any of our readers have glass doors on their shower, but if you do, you know what a pain in the ass it is to keep those damn doors clean!  I gave up on our current shower door years ago - it always looks gross to me no matter how much we clean it.  Quick funny story:  In October, I went to the meeting where we picked all the finishes in the house without Steve (I'm still shocked he gave me that much power!) and my best friend Amy came with me (who is also building her own house right now!).  Amy and I met with JoAnna and had a fun girls' day making all the selections.  We met at the model home so we could see all the options.  Katie is the sales person that usually is at the model and she knows Steve and me by name now since we go visit "our house" a lot.  Katie popped in to say hi while we were picking and we got on the subject of the master bath and how I was strongly opposed to doors on the shower, but Steve was fighting me tooth and nail on that.  He thought it would be too cold without doors.  Katie, JoAnna, and Amy were all backing me up on the no doors concept so Katie said the next time we came in, she'd tell Steve they stopped selling shower doors!  :-)

When we first met with Clark and JoAnna this summer about pricing for the house (our first meeting ever), we told them we didn't know what we wanted for the bathroom.  They agreed to redesign it once we had some ideas but we told them we definitely wanted a more luxurious shower and a smaller tub or no tub at all.  They came back with a drawing a few days later that I wasn't in love with and it still had just a stall shower.  Then I remembered the bathroom at the Keystone model.  I loved it - it had that spa-like feel that everyone looks for in a master bath and better yet, it had no doors to keep clean on the shower!  Steve and I took another Saturday to go back to the Keystone model and pretend we were still deciding on houses.  It's surprising to me how easily they recognize people who come back!  Anyway, while we were alone upstairs, I took several pictures of the bathroom and sent them to Clark and JoAnna.  JoAnna loved the look and let me know they could design something similar for us.

Fast forward to early November when we needed to hurry up and finalize the pricing on the house so that we could officially sign the builder contract (which we needed to apply for financing which had a strict deadline in our land contract).  We took an afternoon to meet with Clark and JoAnna for the bathroom and nail down a few other details, which was a really fun meeting!  All we said was that we wanted a bigger shower, a smaller tub, and no doors.  Clark grabbed his tracing paper (at first I didn't hear him and thought he said "crazy paper" haha!) and he started drawing away.  The plans are included below and I'm so excited with how this turned out.  We got a walk-through shower with no doors!  While the tub is still pretty big, it is free-standing which I'm hoping means it's easier to clean and get in/out of.  An extra bonus with the redesign is that we added a pocket door to the closet and sliding doors leading into the entire bathroom/closet area!  If this blog would let me, I'd have about a hundred heart-eyes emojis here!  Sliding doors are the standard doors that come with the house (shown in the video everywhere), but on barn door hardware so they slide.  One single barn door was $4,000 and we needed three total for the house (two for the bathroom, one for the pantry).  The hardware was only $500.  I found $12,000 in doors worthy of more laughter.

I should probably mention we did change a lot of the basement:  we are keeping it unfinished but we did get the plumbing rough-in for the bathroom.  We will eventually finish it on our own.  In order to finish the basement, Bob Ward wanted $40,000...and I thought an $8,000 fireplace and $4,000 doors were hilarious!

The next post will be about our land.  I already wrote the blog for it, but since the sellers aren't exactly my favorite people right now, I'm going to wait until after settlement to post that entry.  Currently, settlement is on track to happen on January 10, but it depends on when the sellers drill the well which is supposed to happen any day now.

Steve and I in front of the model

To Build or Not to Build

I know this blog is usually about our travels, but I'm going to shift that to making it about our adventures.  Steve and I are putting traveling on hold until April, but it's for a good reason - we are building a house!  Trust me, it's an adventure.  We are very excited about this and I do want to document the process.  I apologize that the posts for the next few months on this blog are going to be only about the house and not about traveling, but it's my blog and I do what I want.  :-)  Let me get you caught up from the events that have happened so far...

In early Spring, we asked our realtor, Beth, to start sending us listings of houses because we were thinking we'd be ready to buy in the Fall.  Our must-haves included an open concept floorplan (we love to entertain), a garage, a fireplace, and at least an acre of land, but preferably two or more (I have a dream of one day having a party barn...not sure that's actually going to happen, but we'll see).  We also wanted land so that we could have space for our dog to run, have a giant garden, and just not be right on top of our neighbors like we are in our current townhouse.  In the areas we were looking, the pickings were very slim and each listing was nothing like what we wanted.  I was trying to keep an open mind because I know no house out there will have everything we want, but we were searching for our forever house, so I told Steve I was going to be extremely picky.  Fast forward to this summer when there were still no listings we were remotely interested in and I brought up building to Steve.  We talked to Beth about it and what that process would look like and she recommended a few builders to start researching and to go see their models.

One Saturday we visited several models from several builders.  I'll admit this was a lot of fun!  Walking into brand new, beautifully decorated houses makes it very easy to picture it as your forever house.  For our local followers, here are the builders we looked at:  Gemcraft, Korey, Keystone, and Bob Ward.

Gemcraft is probably the most affordable option, but their models never "wow-ed" us.  We actually looked at several different models of theirs because there were a couple floorplans we were interested in.  Ultimately, we didn't pick them because upon seeing the floorplans in model form, we really didn't care for the home.

I would give my right arm to have been able to build a Korey home.  Korey has such a great reputation in the area, he is a really nice guy, and he does include a lot of upgrades in his homes that normally you pay extra for with any other builder (better carpets, upgraded counters and cabinets, etc.).  We fell in love with a floorplan he had online (the Megan model), but when we saw it in person we thought it was not as open-concept as we wanted and the rooms were kind of small.  The plus side to Korey is that if you don't like his floorplans, you can bring one to him and he will build that too.  We did that with a house we had fallen in love with and his price was $100,000 over the starting price with another builder.  So we got priced out of being able to use Korey.

This meant our decision was coming down to Keystone and Bob Ward.  There is a Keystone model right behind our current house and we loved the house (especially the master bath in my case).  That specific model was a little out of budget, so they recommended a model that was the exact same floor plan but on a smaller scale.  We drove up to Pennsylvania to go see that model and it was pretty small - about the same size as our current house.  We didn't want a McMansion, but we did want more space.

This brings me to Bob Ward.  As we were driving home after walking through that second Keystone model, we were talking about one of the first models we looked at - the Somerset by Bob Ward.  When we first walked into that house, I went through the foyer which after a few steps opens up into a beautiful open kitchen, dining room, and great room with a gorgeous stone fireplace and a ton of windows and natural light.  My first thought was that our annual Christmas Eve get together would work perfectly in this space.  It wasn't love at first site for me though because I did want a separate, formal dining room (that is a compromise I am making, but I have since grown to love it).  As we walked through the rest of the house, it just got better and better - huge master with a huge closet and bathroom, laundry on the second floor, big kitchen pantry, and more.  When we first left that house, we thought for sure we were going to get priced out of that one too.  My mouth about hit the floor when Clark and JoAnna from Bob Ward told me what the starting price was for the Somerset - we could do this!  We could really build this house!!  We didn't officially decide on the house until we started to build it on paper and get pricing for all the things we wanted to add to it.  Even with as much as we wanted to add, it was still within our budget and ultimately we chose the Somerset and we were so excited once we made it the official decision.

If you're interested, here is a video of the model we walked through.  Don't worry - ours will have a garage instead of a sales center.  :-)  Since we are Bob Ward Trademark customers (meaning we are building on our own land instead of buying in a neighborhood Bob Ward is building), we are able to customize a lot of the house.  I'll make our customizations a separate blog though.  I have to say that there were a lot of people trying to talk us out of building because it is overwhelming, stressful, and builders tend to have bad reputations, etc.  I will admit overwhelming and stress have definitely played a part so far, but it's still been fun.  I know we are at the very beginning of the process, but so far we've been beyond pleased and excited to work with our team (Clark & JoAnna) at Bob Ward.  They have been so easy to work with and even went above and beyond on something that helped us out tremendously with our land.

This blog was all about choosing the house and the builder.  Stay tuned for blogs about our customizations to the house, finding and purchasing our land (boy was that stressful!), and progress on the house once we break ground in January.

New York Trip Continued

What is it about hotels that makes me toss and turn all night long?  That's what I've been doing this whole trip.  On top of that, we haven't heard anything about our land offer yet (we really thought we'd hear something today), so that has me too excited to sleep, too.  Anyway, I owe you a blog since I'm a day behind already, so here we go.

In addition to little sleep on this trip, we realized at Hopewell on Friday that we didn't pack the camera charger and the battery that was in the camera was dead.  We are pretty sure we left the backup battery charging at home.  After dinner Friday night, we stopped at Best Buy to buy a universal charger so we could use our real camera instead of cell phones.  We plugged the battery in that night, but the charger doesn't really work.  It charges for about 10 seconds and then goes into standby mode.  So that night, Steve plugged and unplugged the battery from the charger to get a charge on it.  That worked for Saturday's parks.  He tried it again Saturday night and it didn't take long for it to recharge.  However, on Sunday while we were at Vanderbilt National Historic Site (our first site of the day), the battery died.  I'm telling you this because I'm too tired to deal with transferring pictures from two cell phones onto the laptop to add to this blog.  :-)  I'll add pictures when we get home tomorrow.

Our first park on Sunday (10/8/17) was Vanderbilt NHS.  We chose an odd time to come to this park because they are near the end of a $3 million renovation to both the inside and the outside of the house.  So if you are looking forward to pictures of one of the Vanderbilt mansions, let me tell you now to set your expectations on the low side.  The outside of the house was covered in scaffolding on all sides and the furniture on the inside of the house was covered with sheets.  Because of the renovations, we were only able to tour about half the house.  I will say even though we didn't get the full experience, the house is really cool.  This is our second Vanderbilt house tour (the first was The Breakers in Newport, RI) and it's just crazy how much money they had and poured into their houses.  We had another fantastic ranger as our tour guide here which just adds to the experience!

We had lunch at Chatham Brewing Company where we had a yummy sampler.  It must be because it's the time of year and I love malty beers, but we've had some great Oktoberfests on this trip, and Chatham's was great!

Our last park on Sunday was Martin Van Buren National Historical Site.  We had another great tour here by a ranger who was so new to the park service that he didn't even have his uniform yet!  It was interesting to learn that MVB was not born into money - his father was a tavern owner, he didn't finish school, and he never served in the military.  In fact, he was only one of two presidents to not finish school and not serve the country (Grover Cleveland is the other president with the same statistic).  Instead, MVB made his money with his political career and bought the house this site features when he had the money.  It's an odd house because the Van Burens renovated it at one point and added a monstrosity of a tower to it (my opinion - I think it is hideous and doesn't really fit the house), purely for decoration.

We had dinner at Brown's Brewing where we had a really good beer sampler.  They had a whiskey porter that was my favorite beer of this trip!

That brings us to today, which was an easy day.  We started at Saratoga National Historical Park, aka a battlefield.  I haven't read my previous blog posts in a while, so I don't know if I have mentioned that forts and battlefields are generally not my favorite types of National Park sites.  Saratoga was pretty interesting though.  My favorite part was seeing the pheasant and deer.  :-)  I think my problem with battlefields is that we're literally looking at fields and I just can't visualize what happened there.  Also, I always mix up who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are which always throws me off when listening to the narrations for the stops along the driving tours.  Steve always does his best to get me through it though.  One interesting monument at Saratoga is one that doesn't name a specific person, however the symbolism on it represents Benedict Arnold.  While he was kind of a hero at Saratoga, he ended up being a traitor later.  Watch Drunk History to learn all about his treason.  :-)

After Saratoga, we had a three hour drive to the Finger Lakes where we stopped at two wineries near Cayuga Lake (the middle finger if you look at a map).  After wine we had dinner at Prison City Brewing Company where the beers were all hoppy, so Steve enjoyed his own sampler.

Let the Ranger Do Their Job

Today we toured Franklin's and Eleanor's houses in Hyde Park, NY.  We started at Franklin Delano Roosevelt National Historic Site and had about 15 minutes to kill before our tour started.  We used that time wisely and went into the FDR Museum and Presidential Library which is a great museum full of info and exhibits throughout FDR's life.  The tour was even better!  I always recommend a ranger-led tour whenever you can at any park because they are always chock-full of information!  Even better if you can pull him or her aside at some point to ask a question - sometimes you get really cool information you would never expect to get.  This happened today with Ranger John Foraker.  We were talking about how many parks we have been to so far and he was telling us he needs to get to Alaska before the end of next year.  There is a mountain out there named after one of his distant relatives that will likely be renamed to the original name of the mountain (along the lines of Mt. McKinley being renamed to Denali).  Then he told us about why his relative was important other than some sort of government job along the way - Joe Foraker is the only person to ever have punched Teddy Roosevelt in the nose.  This got a good laugh out of us especially since the squabble was over a football game!

Ranger Foraker was incredibly knowledgeable of all things Roosevelt and Steve and I learned a whole bunch of new tidbits of information today.  I knew Teddy and Franklin were distant cousins, but I never knew that Teddy was actually Eleanor's uncle and he walked her down the aisle at her wedding to Franklin while Teddy was president!  Eleanor's maiden name was Roosevelt already, so she didn't even need to change her name.  When Franklin was born he was 10 pounds, and all six of his children with Eleanor were 10+ pounds as well!

During the tour the ranger spoke about how Franklin emulated a lot of his life after Teddy (literally followed every one of his footsteps throughout life and his career).  One of the many things they shared in common was that they were both the Assistant Secretary of the Navy.  The first keel FDR commissioned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy was the USS Arizona.  As soon as the ranger mentioned this I had chills and goosebumps down my arms.  If you don't know why I had this reaction let me remind you that December 7, 1941, is "a day that will live in infamy" when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and sank the USS Arizona during FDR's presidency.  Pretty strange how that all came full circle.

The house itself was beautiful and it was the house FDR was born in, he grew up there, and then spent his married life there and raised children at that house all with his mother right down the hall.  Mama's boy, much??  Eleanor never owned a house of her own until Val-Kill was built, but I'll talk more about that later.  One of the rooms in FDR's house was where he met with Winston Churchill while they reviewed a letter from Albert Einstein about the atomic bomb.  Also, King George VI and the Queen Mother visited this home.  The ranger told us a funny story about that visit - FDR had several political cartoons hanging in the foyer right outside the dining room that were from the Revolution and the War of 1812, so they weren't favorable to the British.  Sara, FDR's mother (who owned the house), asked him to take the cartoons down before the royals arrived.  Long story short, they ended up arriving sooner than anticipated and he didn't take the cartoons down.  King George did see them and read each one for about 10 minutes and it was dead silent in the room while he did it.  Afterwards, he says with a smile to FDR in front of Eleanor and Sara that it looks an awful lot like his collection at home.  Turns out FDR and King George bonded quite a bit and that could have been partially due to both of them having disabilities (FDR was paralyzed by this time and King George VI was a stutterer).

One last story to share about Fala, FDR's beloved scottie.  Fala and Franklin bonded instantly and were inseparable as soon as they bonded.  Because of this, Fala became a celebrity too.  Before Fala came along, you would have no idea where the president was unless you were secret service or in the "need-to-know" circle.  Once Fala acquired his own fame, and people recognized his name being said by secret service, people would just follow the dog to see the president.  This created a security issue, so they gave Fala a code name:  The Informer.

Dining Room

Study

Political Cartoons

Wheelchair lift

FDR's bedroom - the chair at the foot of the bed is where Fala would sleep

FDR's house, called Springhill

The final resting places of Franklin and Eleanor

Fala's final resting place

Sorry the FDR blog is so long, but it really was a cool house and rangers always have a way of making a site more interesting especially when they are as passionate as Ranger Foraker was!

After FDR's site we had lunch at Hyde Park Brewing Company.  The food was great, the beer was mediocre.

After lunch, we headed over to Val-Kill (Valley + Kill means "Stream" in Dutch), which is the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site.  We hopped on to a tour here where we learned that the home Eleanor built was the old factory for the Val-Kill Furniture company.  We also learned that Eleanor was Val-Kill's number one customer and many of the furniture pieces in her house were from the factory.  Her house was so cozy and had such a warm, "homey" feeling to it - so different from the home she shared with Franklin and his mother that seemed to spare no expense.

Here's where the title of the blog post comes up.  This tour drove Steve and I bonkers!  We take ranger-led tours to hear what the ranger has to say, not what the know-it-all people have to say.  Additionally, a tour is not a chance to play "Stump the Ranger."  I exercised so much patience on this tour for the people that were on it even though I would have taken much pleasure taking duct tape to their mouths.  To give you an idea of how bad this was, remember, we are at a site dedicated to Eleanor.  The minute the tour started, four people on the tour immediately asked questions about FDR and his political career.  This ranger didn't know everything about it, nor did I expect her to since this was a site for ELEANOR!  The FDR site is two miles down the road people, go learn about him there!  I get that there might be some side questions about FDR at this site, but this monopolized quite a bit of the tour.  When we got into the house, the questions continued.  At least this time they were about Eleanor.  "Did she write her books in long hand?"  "Oh, she typed her books?  Was she a touch typist?"  "Was that where she would have stored the silver pieces when she lived here?"  "How did Sara treat her?"  "Was that the chair she read in?"  OH MY GOD!  Yes, she probably did read in that chair.  Yes, she and Sara got along.  Yes, she typed her books, who the heck cares if she could touch type?!  I'm not exaggerating, those were actual questions asked on this tour.   I love ranger-led tours, but I think my favorites are the ones where it is just Steve and me.  :-)

Inside the house - the table and chairs in the back is where Eleanor and JFK met for 2 and a half hours before she endorsed him for President.

Val-Kill House

Pretty flowers in the garden

Pretty stream on the property

The study - this desk is where she did all of her work.  The couch is where she read.  ;-)

These are framed Christmas cards she received while in the White House.

How You Like Dem Apples?

Remember in my last post I mentioned that Steve has very little vacation and we were saving for a house?  Well, Steve has finally built up a few vacation days and as far as the house stuff goes, we're waiting to hear back on an offer we just put in this evening on some land!  That would be a whole separate blog, but my point for saying those things is that we are on a little trip to take advantage of Steve's long weekend with Columbus Day off on Monday.  We've actually had this trip planned long before we thought it was even possible to put in an offer on something, so here we are!

We were able to get an earlier start than we initially planned for today, so Steve looked into what we could do around the area where we had booked our hotel for the night in Quakertown, PA.  I'll give you a hint, there isn't much to do...the movie theater is the #4 rated item on Trip Advisor.  Steve realized (without telling me so he could surprise me) that Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site was on our way to Quakertown.  Hopewell is a neat little site, especially if you go in the Fall.  They have an apple orchard right by the visitor's center and you are able to pick your own apples for $1.00 a pound.  The first time we came here a few years ago, we picked a couple pounds of apples.  This time, we spent a grand total of two minutes because the mosquitoes were swarming us.  We now have four apples that we'll have as a snack later on this trip.

Steven picking apples

Hopewell Furnace is called such because the furnace made iron.  There are buildings around the property that you are able to walk into and learn about, and there are a few farm buildings and fields of sheep and horses to visit.  There are several hiking trails which we didn't do the last time we were here.  Today, we hiked to the dam at Hopewell Lake and took in some of the pretty scenery.  We aren't here at peak time for the leaves, but they are starting to change, which was pretty to see reflected on the lake.

Hopewell Lake

Hopewell Lake

Sheep

Our next stop was to Manatawny Still Works where we stopped in for a sampler of their three whiskeys, including a honey whiskey that hasn't even been released yet.  All three were very good!  We had dinner at The Proper Brewing Company where the food and beer did not disappoint.  My favorite beer was the Irish Red and Steve's favorite was the Tall, Dark, and Steve.  Tomorrow, we are off to Hyde Park to hang out at Eleanor's and Franklin's houses.

Manatawny Still Works Sampler

The Proper Brewing Company Sampler

Fun sign at Proper

Get to the Choppa!!

It's been a while...
With Steve starting his new job in January, he hasn't been able to build up a lot of PTO.  Also, if you don't already know this, we are in the market for a new house which means financially we shouldn't be planning any parks and beer-in-small-glasses trips for a little while.  But we've done a couple small things I wanted to blog about.

We celebrated our 11th anniversary on August 6.  Due to a family obligation, we actually couldn't do anything that day.  But the day before, we went to DC to do more of a park we've already been to and we went to one of the more recently named sites, which was a new park site for us.  We started by going to Prince William Forest Park.  We were actually here a few years ago, but only had time for the scenic drive.  The scenic drive is really just a drive through a forest with spots to park for hikes, so there isn't much at all to see on the scenic drive.  When we did this, we didn't really feel like we gave the park a fair shake so I'm really glad we went back and did some hiking.

Our first hike was a 1.5ish mile loop (Laurel Loop Trail) to South Fork Quantico Creek.  It was a really easy, relatively flat hike and the creek views were nice.  After that we also did the Quantico Cascades Trail to little baby waterfalls.  This is about 1.4 miles round trip and pretty easy, but a lot of uphill on the way back.

South Fork Quantico Creek selfie

South Fork Quantico Creek

Quantico Cascade Falls

We grabbed some lunch and then went to Belmont-Paul National Historic Site for the ranger-led tour.  This was such an interesting tour!  I found myself silently thanking Alva Belmont and Alice Paul (and many other women) quite a bit for fighting for and earning my right to vote.  The National Women's Party is still active and is hopefully working on that 70% issue.  To my female readers, please go VOTE VOTE VOTE!  These women went through horrendous experiences (jail time and forced feeding through a nasal tube, for example) while fighting for this right.  If you aren't voting, you are letting these women down.  An interesting tidbit about Alva Belmont (not politically related) is that she grew up in a wealthy family and then was married to a Vanderbilt.  They divorced, which was unheard of back in this time.  After the divorce though, she married into the Belmont family (as in Belmont Stakes).  Quite the rich lady she was!

One of the original protest signs from in front of the White House

Pretty door

Joan of Arc statue - this was a gift to Alva Belmont from Mr. Belmont.  There is a huge steel column all the way to the basement just to support this marble statue.

Belmont-Paul House

Fast forward a week and we get to the title of the blog post.  Steve celebrated his birthday on July 12.  I had planned a surprise for him with a few of our friends to go on a helicopter tour through Charm City Helicopters around Baltimore.  Despite the murder rate and skyrocketing drug issues, Baltimore really is a beautiful city.  I wish the city could be cleaned up so that those aren't issues anymore, but I don't think that will be in my lifetime.  Regardless, the city was just as beautiful from the air and we had the most perfect day for flying!  After Steve opened his certificate telling him what I had planned, he immediately went online and found the shirts we are all wearing.  We spent all afternoon yelling this in Arnold's voice and the CCH crew got a kick out of our shirts!  If you're in the Baltimore area, I highly recommend a tour, whether you live here or not!

Baltimore skyline (Photo cred:  T.R.)

Inner Harbor (Photo cred:  T.R.)

Where Sagamore Rye Whiskey (owned by Kevin Plank from Under Armour) is born.  YUM!  (Photo cred:  T.R.)

Fort McHenry - we were so lucky to see them out folding the flag as we flew over!  (Photo cred:  T.R.)

Patterson Park

Johns Hopkins University (booo!!! - since Steve went to Loyola)

Another Fort McHenry picture

GO RAVENS!!

GO O's!  Even from the air, the warehouse is too big for the camera!

The new Pendry hotel (owned by Kevin Plank of Under Armour)

Domino Sugars sign (supposedly the largest neon sign on the East Coast)

Carnival Pride

The party people with Freddie, our pilot.  SO. MUCH. FUN!