October 6 - 19
It's Fall and time to enjoy the mountain house.
Clara and 5 friends went up to the house on Thursday for a girls weekend.
I stayed at home to see if Hurricane Matthew would provide some excitement. Saturday night we did get some wind (70 mph) and rain, but basically, and thankfully nothing more.
I drove up Sunday (after all the ladies left).
The weather was beautiful almost the whole time we were there, with fog in the valley in the morning and mostly clear evenings with quiet sunsets.
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| We always enjoy spending an afternoon listening to good music at The Orchard |
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| Sunrise in October often includes a cloud layer in the valley. This morning I got up early enough to see the shadow of the mountain on the top of the clouds. |
We enjoyed visiting with friends and just enjoying the view. In the afternoons it was warm enough to sit on the porch and read. Temperatures were comfortably in the 40's in the evening and low 70's by mid-afternoon. Great sleeeping.
The leaves are changing rapidly. When I arrived, everything was green. By the time we left, it was becoming multi-colored and beautiful.
For exercise, I joined the Fitness Express just a few miles from the house. Getting my regular swimming and exercise has become one of the major detriments of staying up here. But now, with the fitness club I can work out and only drive to the Marion YMCA a couple times a week to swim.
Jorge came up and spent an afternoon weed eating the lower property, which has grown up quite quickly since our major clearing a couple of years ago. If we let it go to long, the trees quickly grow up into the view. We had quite a pile of brush so we spent another day burning all of that down to nothing. It looks great when cleaned up. We're finding new laurel and rhododendron coming up and hopefully some day it will cover the whole cleared area.
We left the house on Tuesday and spent the night with the kids. This is the first time we've seen Anna and Evan since saying goodbye in Salt Lake City. They seem to change over night. They're growing up entirely too fast.
