We snuck out of town and drove to Julia’s Friday. We drove down in one day, taking the I-95 route around DC, Richmond, Greensborough, and Durham. This is the shortest but most stressful route. All those driver aids proved to be a big help. The trip down was uneventful.

We had a few misses this weekend but also had a lot of fun. The weather was perfect.

We started our Saturday watching Bryon at fencing class. Even the warmup exercises were interesting. We learned a lot about fencing. This time the class was organized as a mini-tournament. Bryon came in second in his group. (There’s more pics in the website. Bryon has his back to us in the pic.) Elizabeth wanted to come along. She spent her time entertaining herself.

While visiting, we like to take grandkids on adventures. Saturday we wanted to take the kids to a really nice mini-golf course and then pick some strawberries on the way home. The afternoon was a complete bust. The drive to the mini-golf took closer to an hour than a half-hour. The mini-golf looked great, but it was completely packed. There were long lines of people everywhere. We decided it wouldn’t be fun and didn’t stay. I even had trouble getting out of the parking lot. On the way home, we stopped at the strawberry farm. In spite of their website, they did not have pick-your-own. They had some great looking strawberries, but the only had huge buckets — far more than we could use before they went bad.

After dinner we made a recovery of sorts. We made some comments comparing Bryon to Zorro, only to learn that neither Bryon nor Elizabeth knew anything at all about Zorro. Saturday evening, we watched the 1998 version of “The Mask of Zorro” with Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Everybody enjoyed the flick.

Sunday was better. We drove to a place called 40 acre rock. They have some very rare red plants that only grow in a few places around the world. Bryon got to show off his Boy Scout skills, identifying several types of plants and critters. He even sighted a dung beetle. It was the first time any of us had actually seen one.

We decided to break up the trip home. We’re in Burlington, NC tonight. We’ll make it home tomorrow.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.