The Cure For Anything

Day 29-sea

If I were to make a list of my top ten favorite words this three letter small big word would most assuredly be on it.  A word that needs no words.

Everyone feels something when they stand before the sea.

I feel small.

Grateful. 

And absolutely certain God exists.

What about you? How do you feel when you stand before the sea?

Hello Hodgepodge, My Old Friend...

100 random points to whoever gets my title today. Welcome to the Wednesday Hodgepodge! Please don't link today unless you've participated in the HP.  I'm sure your blog is fabulous, but Wednesdays round here are strictly Hodgepodge. Thanks for understanding. 

I'd love for you to play along though, and newcomers are always welcome. Answer the questions before adding your link at the end of my post. Then hop over and say hello to the blogger who linked before you, because that's what good neighbors do.

Also, if you're visiting here from the Write 31 Challenge, you'll find my thoughts on today's prompt by scrolling all the way down to #8.

Here we go-

1. Are you comfortable with silence? If you're home alone, do you like silence or do you need regular background noise? Do you seek out times and places to be silent? What's your favorite place to find silence/be silent?

I'm very comfortable with silence. Unless of course it's an uncomfortable silence, then not so much-ha! I tend to fill uncomfortable silences with excessive chatter, but silence for the sake of being quiet? Definitely.   

Hubs likes background noise, but if I'm home alone the house is generally quiet. Until recently my favorite place to find quiet space was the sun room in my NJ house. The room was all windows, with a super comfy couch, and I could see the woods around me, watch our mama fox tending her babies, the leaves changing color...so much quiet beauty right outside my window. It was such a cozy room and that's where I liked to take my coffee and my Bible and start my day. 

Finding silence in this space is a bit more challenging. There's only so many places I can go in the apartment, and if the TV is on or hubs is on the phone I can hear it, even if I'm down the hall. Probably the thing I'm most looking forward to in our new home are all the outdoor spaces. There will be no shortage of places to find a quiet corner. 

In the meantime, I love to walk in the mornings. I do some of my best thinking and most of my heavy-duty praying there. I like the silence of the great outdoors anytime really..sitting by the water, on a mountaintop, hiking a woody path through the forest. I actually wrote about this topic on Monday (click here) and a reader mentioned he finds silence in a snowfall. I feel the same. 

2. October 28th is National Chocolate Day. Can't let that go by without a mention now, can we? Will you celebrate? How? Let's say you can have one of the following right this very minute...a cup of hot chocolate, a strawberry dipped in chocolate, a bowl of plain chocolate ice cream, or a slice of chocolate pie...what's  your pleasure?

I think you have to celebrate, right? Isn't that the law? If I had to choose one of the chocolate treats listed to consume right this very minute I'd probably choose a cup of cocoa. With marshmallows please!

3. How do you feel about blue jeans? Favorite thing in the world to wear or nope, don't own a single pair? How often do you wear blue jeans in a typical week? Do you own a blue jean jacket?

Blue jeans are my love language and they're one of my favorite things in the world to wear. I can go the opposite way too, and say I love fancy dress and wearing a great pair of heels, but that's not an everyday thing. 

If I'm at home I'm usually wearing blue jeans, which means I wear them several times a week. I do own a jean jacket that I purchased at Kohl's several years ago for the bargain price of $10. It was one of those items that had been marked down about eight times, then I had a coupon, and they were having a promo, and how does Kohl's make money again? Whatever, it was a great purchase. I still love the jacket, and still wear it pretty often. 

4. Are you superstitious? If so, in what way?

I don't think I am superstitious. I tried to think of something, and came up with nothing. Chain letters, Friday the 13th, walking under ladders...none of that worries me. As a leftover habit from childhood I sometimes refrain from stepping on the sidewalk cracks, but I don't expect trouble if I hit one now and then. 

5. If you had to come up with a costume using only things you have on hand right now, what could you come up with?

Everything we own, including the costume box, is in storage right now, except for our clothing and just a few personal items. How about a fisherman? We have a couple of fishing poles here and a tackle box. I could wear hubs fishing shirt and my rubber boots. It wouldn't win any prizes, but would work in a pinch. 

6. What scares you a little? What do you do when you feel scared?

Just a little? Building a house. 

What do I do when I feel scared? I pray a lot. I listen to praise music. I move...go for a walk, run the vacuum, empty the dishwasher, bake, do something physical to get me out of my own head. 

7. Perhaps today will be the day I _____________________.

Finish the great closet switch I began last weekend. Not my favorite task. Obviously. 

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Using this space today for my Write 31 Challenge one-word prompt. 

Day 28-hope

I almost skipped today's prompt, because the word  felt a little deep for the Hodgepodge. By the time I come up with the questions and then answer them and then live life I'm pretty much running on fumes. But that's why I signed up for the Challenge. To make me think, and nudge me to write when I'd rather be napping. 

I started thinking about what I'm hoping for right now. Today. Quite a lot actually, and if I were to put it in list form it would run the gamut from unimportant in the grand scheme of things to quite important in the grand scheme of things. I mean I hope it quits raining so work on our build can continue, but I also hope the babies in South Sudan had food for their bellies this morning. 

Hope has become one of those words we use perhaps more casually than we should. 

The dictionary defines hope as a feeling of expectation and a desire for a certain thing to happen. I'm a hopeful person. I live with a feeling of expectation that tomorrow will be better than today. That an hour from now something can happen to change circumstances that are currently not great. 

I'm often told I see life through rose colored glasses, and I guess there are times that's true. But not all my hopes are simply wishful thinking. My greatest hopes, my heart's desire, the hopes nestled into the deepest recesses of my being are based on something far more powerful, more real, than wishful thinking. 

They're based on what I know about God, and what I know He can do. 

Anything. That's what. He can move mountains and calm the seas. God can make a way when I can't see a way. He can do immeasurably more than I ask or imagine so yes, I hope. Not baseless, unfounded, pie-in-the-sky hope, but real hope. Hope based in the knowledge that God knows and cares about my hearts desires. 

Live expecting friends because He.is.able. 

Hodgepodge Questions-Volume 241

Here are the questions for this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge. Answer on your own blog, then hop back here tomorrow to share answers with the universe. See you there!

1. Are you comfortable with silence? If you're home alone, do you like silence or do you need regular background noise? Do you seek out times and places to be silent? What's your favorite place to find silence/be silent?

2. October 28th is National Chocolate Day. Can't let that go by without a mention now, can we? Will you celebrate? How? Let's say you can have one of the following right this very minute... a cup of hot chocolate, a strawberry dipped in chocolate, a bowl of plain chocolate ice cream, or a slice of chocolate pie...what's your pleasure?

3. How do you feel about blue jeans? Favorite thing in the world to wear or nope, don't own a single pair? How often do you wear blue jeans in a typical week? Do you own a blue jean jacket?

4. Are you superstitious? If so, in what way?

5. If you had to come up with a costume using only things you have on hand right now, what could you come up with?

6. What scares you a little? What do you do when you feel scared?

7. Perhaps today will be the day I ______________________________.

8.  Insert your own random thought here.

The Sound of Silence

Day 26-whisper

Long ago I taught reading, writing, and 'rithmetic to a room full of bright-eyed, eager-beaver, five-year old cuties. If I were pressed to pick my favorite age five would most definitely be it. School is fun! I love my teacher! Watch what I can do! Tell me everything about everything because the world's amazing! Look a butterfly!

I've never been someone who yells, and there's nothing that makes me want to curl up in a corner faster than when I'm the recipient of someone else's raised voice. I was not a yell-er at home, and I never ever yelled in my classroom.

Yelling into a room full of crickets does you absolutely no good, even if they're adorable human crickets cheerfully chirping and hopping their way round your class.

When the noise level rose too high and I needed everyone's attention, raising my voice would have gotten me nowhere. Whispering though? Whispering got my student's attention. It piqued their curiosity. What's happening? Is something good happening? Why is she whispering? What's she saying? Gradually chatter would cease, and you could feel a hush sweep across the room like a soft summer wind. Bodies in motion became still and soon all eyes were on me, ready to hear something that surely must be important. When I whispered into the noise they tuned in and really listened to what I was telling them or instructing them to do.

In 2015 the world is noisy. Can I get an amen? Holy moly, we are full to the brim with sounds and devices and angry voices that distract us and irritate us and eat away at our good intentions. Why is everybody suddenly shouting? When did we become such a short-tempered, angry nation? If I'm not intentional about seeking quiet space in my day I can drown in the world's noise and confusion.

There have been circumstances in my life where God has shouted and I need that sometimes. More often though, He whispers. He speaks softly into the silent spaces that are present in every single day I'm given.

He's present in the beautiful places He spoke into existence like the early morning sunrise or the changing of leaves from green to red. He whispers into all the pockets of time and space where I make room to be quiet and still.

And that's the magic of a whisper.
The only way to hear is to draw near the speaker.

To cease the chatter in your head and let the hush sweep across your heart like a soft summer wind.

What's Up Dock?

Brace yourselves. Our dock is in and I have words and pictures. 

Probably too many of both, but our dock is in! 

It was actually a really interesting process, one that took all day. Plus a couple of months in the shop beforehand. The dock floats, but we'll have pilings too. Please don't ask me to explain, suffice it to say it floats.

And has pilings. 

We met our dock guy at a boat launch on the lake. They actually construct the pieces in their shop, assemble it on the water, then pull it by barge over to our lot. It must feel really satisfying to build something so well that people enjoy so very much.

Our dock guy (Bobby at Carolina Dock) has been so nice to deal with from start to finish. His crew is great too, and they enjoyed teasing hubs by showing him half the walkway and telling him that was the whole thing. Hubs tried to act like no big deal, but he was sweating on the inside thinking they'd made it only half as long as it needed to be. They were kidding of course, and I say high five to the dock build crew. It's hard to pull a fast one on hubs. 

Back to Tuesday. We pulled our camp chairs out of the trunk and plopped ourselves beside the lake to watch the dock come together. When we arrived fog was lifting from the water, and the crew was floating around in the cove, setting the roof frame in place. Before I go any further let me state for the record I'm going to make up my own words for some of the dock parts. 

Lucky for you I've got pictures. 

Eventually the guys floated over to the shoreline and cabled the barge and dock to the land. I asked the roof man if he'd ever slid off one of these things and he assured me he hadn't.  

Our dock build motto is go big or go home. Residents on the lake spend a lot of time hanging out on their docks and we want to have plenty of room for friends and family to hang there too. If you build it they will come-ha! 

But really they will so let's make room.  

Essentially it's a deck on one side of the boat lift and a 'sidewalk' on the other side of the lift. I bet hubs is shaking his head reading this because I'm not using proper boating terminology, but he loves me anyway.  

We covered the entire dock because this is South Carolina people. We'll probably add a ceiling fan under there too because July mid-afternoons on the water beg for someone to please move some air.

While all the assembling was happening we passed the time taking selfies-

...dashing across the parking lot to snap photos of the mountain backdrop-

...and feeling dazzled by the glorious October sun dancing on the water-

He is not happy at all. 

We spent a few more hours chillaxin'...

...admiring the crew's handiwork-

...and worrying about this guy sliding into the water-

Rest assured he remained securely on the roof.

I had no idea so much would be done on site, and it was a fun thing to see happen. There are a few 'parts' to connect, beginning with the dock itself or the deck as I like to call it or the swim platform as the experts call it. Then you've got the boat lift, which we'll add later. We don't have our boat yet and we don't have power on the shoreline yet, so we had the builder install brackets now and he'll come back when we're ready to add the lift.

If you're going to swim, and we're definitely going to swim, then you need a way to get yourself out of the water. We opted for what they call swim stairs which look like a ladder, but they're angled because we're not getting any younger.

Besides the dock and the roof and the stairs and the storage box, there's a walkway connecting your floating dock to your land. That's important. The lake honchos dictate where on the shoreline your dock can sit. Not precisely, but every lot has an area called the pier zone, and included in that is how far out in the water you can take your dock. Almost everyone goes out as far as their permit allows because you want to be in deep water and also you want as wide a view as possible.

We'll have another small 'pier' that fits between the walkway and shoreline but they haven't set that yet, because we need the inspector to give the okay on where we've placed the dock. We're well within our zone, so it should be just a matter of ticking a box. Once that's done the dock team will come back and drop pilings to hold the dock in place and they'll remove the cables currently holding it to the land. Everything's a process when you're building. 

After the dock, roof, walkway, stairs, and box were connected our crew pulled the barge away from the shoreline and started the ride across the lake to our lot. There she goes...

 And here she comes...

There are not enough words to describe how specific hubs was we were in directing the barge operator to the exact precise correct spot we needed him to hit.

I mean you can't have the dock sitting crooked in the water and the barge operator was so patient moving it 1/32 of an inch left, no right, no go back left, wait that's too much...bless his heart. We're not annoying at all.

There's a small island within view of our lot, and we're doing our best to put this little island in our line of sight. We rewarded the crew with Gatorade and Snickers because they earned it.

Once they got the dock in place there was still more to do, namely cabling it to the land so it doesn't float away before the pilings are dug. Details, pssht. When everything was secure hubs and I put up a couple of chairs and had us a little party.

Actually, one of our neighbors walked over and brought us a beer to toast the occasion. We chatted for a bit, and he ended up inviting us to dinner, which was so nice. His wife served us melt in your mouth roast beef and fried green tomatoes and I already told them we'd return the favor.

I also told them if it was spontaneous they'd likely not get a roast beef dinner. Wow. It was awesome. And we're happy to have neighbors who are up for last minute entertaining. We love that.

And for anyone who's wondering...here's my house-

See that mountain of red dirt? Well, right behind it you'll find the makings of our house.

Hubs likes to have me stand where four of those posts are sitting and tell me I'm at the front door, except on the lower level. Okay. Whatever...the dock is in and I don't even need a house.

How 'bout we pitch a tent and live right here?

Back to the Hodgepodge

Hello Hodgepodgers! We had a full and busy day on Tuesday, so I'm writing my responses to this week's questions at a ridiculous (for me) hour. Better late than never, right? I've even managed to squeeze in something relating to today's one-word prompt from the Write 31 Challenge, so whoohoo! Add your link at the end of my post, IF you've played along too. Here we go-

1.  October 21, 2015 is Back to the Future Day. Did you see the movie? The sequels? In the second film, Doc takes Marty into the future to prevent Marty's future son from making a mistake. They leave 1985 and land on a 'skyway' on October 21st, 2015. So tell us, what were you doing in the fall of 1985?

I did see the movies, and loved the first and third. The second was just okay. 

Back in 1985 I was a fresh-faced newlywed, married just over a year. Hubs and I had moved from Knoxville Tennessee to Richmond Virginia in March of that year, and in September I'd started working as a Speech Pathologist for the Richmond City Schools. We were living in a rented townhouse and feeling very grown up. I have a picture somewhere, but it's been a long day and I don't have what it would take to find it on my computer. 

2. If time travel were possible, would you want to go to the future? The past?

While I think it would be fun to meet my future great greats I'm sure there are things about the future that would also worry or upset me. And I'd love to go back in time if I could skip any sadness, and just relive the good stuff. 

I'd think twice about traveling either direction. The future and the past are both filled with highs and lows, love and loss, joy and sorrow. I feel a huge sense of relief knowing I'm not in charge of time.  

3. We're not flying cars, but some of the technology imagined in the 80's film has indeed come to pass in real life 2015-flat screen TVs on the wall, tablets, fingerprint recognition, video conferencing, online banking, 3-D movies, motion controlled video games, drone cameras, and smart glasses (Google glass). Do you worry technology is growing at a rate so fast we'll soon be unable to keep up with it's demands? Do you think the Internet does more harm than good?

I think it's safe to say there is no un-doing the Internet. In general I think it's done more good than harm, but of course there is always that one bad apple (or ten) who like to spoil things.  

I don't worry too much about whether we'll keep up with the demands of all this ever-evolving technology. I'm sure the future will bring more and more new, but with that will likely come ways of managing it all. 

In 1985 if someone had declared that in 20 years we'd all be carrying around computers and cameras in hand held 'cordless' telephones we'd have wondered how in the world we'd manage. But look at us! We rock! 

Also, it is past time for us to be flying cars, don't you think?

4. Your favorite dish prepared in a slow-cooker? Your favorite fast food?

A pork roast with sauerkraut or else shredded with BBQ sauce would be my favorite dish prepared in a slow cooker. We try not to eat 'fast food', but now that we're back in the land of Chick-fil-A that's sometimes easier said than done. Since they list the calories on their menu I think twice about my order. I love their original sandwich with extra pickle, but their Asian salad is also delish. I don't eat Chick-fil-A very often. 

5. No time like the present, down time, face time, pressed for time, in the nick of time, make time, mark time or just in time...which timely saying most relates to your life right now?

Probably mark time. We're building a house so in a sense, we're marking time until completion. 

6.  Tell us about a place you went as a child or younger person that's no longer there or is now something else. How does that make you feel?

Lots of things aren't what they once were, but the thing I miss the most is the church I grew up in. There's been so much change and turnover through the years, and while I think the building itself is still there, it's not the church I once called home. Makes me long for what once was.

7.  Describe your comfort zone.

I do believe Dorothy said it best, 'There's no place like home.' 

No matter where in this world we roam, no matter where in this world we set down roots, if my people are there it's home. We were away last weekend, and hubs asked why I was anxious to get home when we're living in temporary quarters. I really couldn't explain it other than to say, 'It's home, that's why.' 

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Day 21-wave

Hi Everyone! 

Yesterday was a big day in our little corner of the world, as our dock was officially installed almost. We are so excited. Before the builders do the last little bit (dig the pilings) we need an official stamp of approval saying yes our dock is within our designated dock zone. It is, but we still need Mr. Inspector to sign off. 

I'm going to post some words and pics here later today or tomorrow, but in the meantime we have a couple of chairs, blue skies, a fabulous view, and...

...a serious case of the happies! 



                                                                          

Hodgepodge Questions-Volume 240

Here are the questions to this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge. Answer on your own blog, then hop back here (on Wednesday) and add your link to the random. Here ya go-

1. October 21, 2015 is Back to the Future Day. Did you see the movie? The sequels? In the second film, Doc takes Marty into the future to prevent Marty's future son from making a mistake. They leave 1985 and land on a 'skyway' on October 21st, 2015. So tell us, what were you doing in the fall of 1985?

2.  If time travel were possible, would you want to go to the future? The past?

3. We're not flying cars, but some of the technology imagined in the 80's film has indeed come to pass in real life 2015-flat screen TVs on the wall, tablets, fingerprint recognition, video conferencing, online banking, 3-D movies, motion controlled video games, drone cameras, and smart glasses (Google glass).  Do you worry technology is growing at a rate so fast we'll soon be unable to keep up with it's demands? Do you think the Internet does more harm than good?

4. Your favorite dish prepared in a slow-cooker? Your favorite fast food?

5. No time like the present, down time, face time, pressed for time, in the nick of time, make time, mark time, or just in time...which timely saying most relates to your life right now?

6. Tell us about a place you went as a child or younger person that's no longer there or is now something else. How does that make you feel?

7. Describe your comfort zone.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Monday's Laundry

Hello Monday! I missed posting on Saturday as we ended up having a travel day, and I think I already told you I'm not posting on Sundays. Essentially this whole Write 31 is filled with rules of my own making. I like it that way.

I'm not going to be on topic today either, because I don't feel like being tied to the word prompt. I feel like catching up.

Day 19-catchup

We've had positively glorious weather the past several days. Hubs and I both said we'd forgotten how gorgeous fall feels in this part of the country. A couple of my northern NJ friends posted pics of snowflakes falling over the weekend, and do you know I was not even the teeniest bit jealous?

Late Friday afternoon Daughter2 joined hubs and I at the movies. We saw Bridge of Spies which we all thoroughly enjoyed. The film is based on a true story, and the casting is excellent. When is Tom Hanks not believable in something? He's wonderful in this flick too, and Mark Rylance is fabulous as the spy Rudolf Abel.

After the film ended we dropped Daughter2 off to meet her honey, and since it was such a beautiful evening hubs and I decided to watch some of the university women's soccer match. Our girl's Alma mater was playing our own Alma mater, which made choosing sides a little hard for me. Hubs settled the question by wearing our own team shirt, but bringing stadium seats bearing the hometown team logo. I cheered when either side scored so Go Team!

The sky had such lovely variation in color as the sun sank, and hubs pointed out it looked exactly like our state license plate. Ha! It did! Crescent moon and all. There's nothing like an October sky, is there?

Saturday we got on the road bright and early as we needed to be in TN by 11. The road from our little corner of SC over to TN crosses the mountains of North Carolina and it's stunning, especially this time of year. We cranked up the tunes and enjoyed the ride.

We had a Memorial Service to attend in the morning, then spent the rest of the day relaxing with family in the Smokies. The peaceful side for those in the know.

Sunday morning hubs and I met his parents for early church, and then breakfast after which was so nice. At one point during church hubs put his arm around his mama, and she got a little teary eyed. It's so special to have your kids seated beside you in a pew, no matter your age or theirs.

Later we met hubs brother and sister-in-law for a drive out to their lake lot. They're building on a lake in Tennessee, and we're both at about the same stage of construction. That would be the lot-is-mostly clear, septic-in, no-house-yet stage.

But we're both getting there!

Hubs and I headed home, but had plans for a fun little surprise en route. We've been back and forth to TN three times since moving south in August, and every time we pass the exit for a little town in NC we say we're going to stop.

Sweet, sweet friends of ours from the UK years bought a B&B in a really charming NC town back in June. If you've been reading here a while, these are the friends we met up with in Hong Kong when we were there in 2012.

They were living in China at the time, but have changed geography just a little since then, ahem, and are now the proud owners of a lovely B&B, less than two hours from our home. It was about 4 PM, and as we were approaching the area we mapped it, saw the inn was not a ridiculous drive from the highway, and decided to go for it.

Yes, we are those friends who drop in unannounced, but sometimes that is the most fun thing in the world.

We pulled around the side of the building and noticed the kitchen door was open.

Yes, we are those friends who let themselves in through your kitchen door just to see the look on your face and hear your excited shout.

Totally worth it. Made my heart happy and I know they'd say the same. We didn't stay long as they had guests coming and going, but we did get a tour of their fantastic new home, and we can't wait to go back and stay the night. We'll book the regular way next time.

And now it's Monday and I'm finally catching up on the mountain of laundry and grocery shopping and bill pay and other general nonsense that Monday calls for.  Also, know that when you're building in a state with red clay dirt, you're going to have some ridiculous laundry.

Hoping to get back in the swing of the one-word prompt challenge tomorrow, but I'm outta the box when it comes to writing this month, so we'll see. In the meantime, I hope your Monday is filled with all the colors of fall!

It Ain't Easy Being Green

It's Friday, which means today's word prompt is posted the day of, and we set our timers for five minutes of unedited writing for sheer love of the written word.  For more five minute posts on today's prompt visit Kate at Heading Home. Here we go-

Day 16- green

It's Fall y'all. And it's my favorite. I love the color and the light and the coolness in the air. I love jeans and fleece jackets and the way the earth yields to God's grand design. Hubs and I enjoy hiking and we're excited to explore the many parks and trails around our new home state. I wrote about our visit to Pretty Place here, and yesterday we headed back up the mountain for a hike to Raven Cliff Falls.

I know, more Dramamine, but we do what we must.
Plus this weather is sheer perfection.

We stopped first at the Visitor Center at Caesar's Head State Park, and took in the magnificent view from the overlook there.

Talk about green. That's Table Rock in the distance, and it's on our list too. As hubs says every time we see it in the distance, 'I've got to get over there. It looks high and dangerous.' And of course I say 'Me too. I love me some high danger.' Ha!

We've had an abundance of rain in the Upstate this fall, so I don't think the colors are going to be as vibrant as they might be otherwise.

Still lovely though.

I'd read in our handy hiking handbook that the hike to the falls was about 2 miles in and 2 miles out, and rated not strenuous, but that's if you take the guidebook with you and read the directions. We left the guidebook in the car, because it seemed simple enough...cross the road, hop on the trail, hike two miles in, see beautiful falls.

There were a few problems with this plan. The short version is pretty much my modus operandi whenever I go hiking in the woods with hubs. I leave the car park feeling jubilant, energized, ready to take on the world. At some point we realize we're either a) not on the right trail or b) taking the long way round instead of the direct route we intended, and I end up on the verge of frustrated tears.

Sometimes I might even fall right on over the verge.

The gentleman at the visitor's center said yes, cross the road, hop on the trail to the left and follow it around. It will take about an hour. So that's what we did. Except we were first supposed to drive down the road another mile, park there, cross that road, and hop on that trail to the left.

Bother.

What's an extra four miles on a beautiful autumn afternoon? Well it might just be the thing that sends me over the verge. Also, it was steep aka strenuous. Whatever. I got over myself, we found the right entry point, and off we went feeling almost jubilant again.

The trail was lovely and high and so serene. We were anxious to reach the falls because we'd read they're the most visited falls in the state of South Carolina.

We hiked a while before coming to this-

Hmmm....looks like police tape. Danger. Do Not Enter. Which is exactly what it was. Apparently there are a series of bridges you need to cross to get to the falls and with all the recent storms one of the bridges made the route impossible.

Unless you want to hike an additional four hours around them, but do not attempt it without food, water, and plenty of daylight.

He is seriously thinking about it y'all.

I was not.

We carried on anyway, along the un-waterfall trail, because we'd read there was an overlook that would allow you a glimpse of them. I'm zoomed in, and if you look hard you'll see there's a fabulous waterfall waaaaay across the valley.

I read the falls plunge over four hundred feet, so we definitely didn't get to appreciate the full effect, and we'll want to come back another time.

As hubs and I are standing alone on this wooden platform about three miles into the woods in the middle of nowhere admiring the far off falls, a group of seven or eight college boys hiked in. They were so polite, and really friendly, and we chatted for a bit. Turns out one of them went to high school with my brother-in-law's niece and nephew.

Oh don't you just love this big small beautiful world?

Pretty Place

Day 15-laugh
But I'm going with the word pretty instead. No kidding.

Day 15-pretty

For the past few years I've periodically taken note of the most gorgeous online photographs people post of a chapel in the woods called Pretty Place.

Let's just discuss the name for a minute. How can you hear about a chapel in the woods called Pretty Place, and not want to see it for yourself?

You can't.

The chapel is officially the Fred W. Symmes Chapel, but everyone I know calls it Pretty Place. It's part of the YMCA Camp Greenville, which is not technically in Greenville, but GPS got us there anyway. More or less. The chapel was built in 1941, and improvements have been made through the years.

Not to the view though...

The view cannot be improved.

I was really curious about Mr. Symmes, and looked him up when we got home. He was an accomplished businessman and a generous soul. As I sat in the chapel bearing his name, I thought about his legacy. I thought about all the men, women and children who'd sat in this very spot and been moved to tears by the staggering beauty of God's creation.

I thought about all the prayers lifted up in this sacred space and marveled at how sometimes all we need to remember the greatness of God is a front row seat to His magnificent handiwork. A place to turn off the noise and soak in the wonder.

The chapel itself is a simple building, open on three sides, with benches set in rows before a plain wooden cross.

The building is stone, but it's not really about the building. It's about this...

It's about sitting in this quiet space set deep in the woods on the side of a mountain, and feeling like you've glimpsed a tiny piece of heaven. It's about the way your soul sings when you enter here.

We live only about 30 miles from Pretty Place, but it takes nearly an hour to get up there. I'd asked several people I know here in town if they'd ever been, and those who'd seen it said we should absolutely go, do not miss it. They also added prepare to be carsick.

But still go because Pretty Place is a pretty special place.
 

I read a lot of reviews online, and every single reviewer spoke about the chapel with reverence. Most suggested you try to get there for the sunrise, and when I mentioned this to hubs he was all in. I told him about the wind-y, curvy mountain road up, and he said we could take our time, and that's what we did.

Bless him, because I know he would have so loved to whip the car around some of the hairpin turns we met en route.

The weather people said the sun would rise at precisely 7:34 AM, and since we didn't know where we were going precisely, and it was going to be dark, and we weren't going to fly up the mountain, we decided to leave home at 5:30.

We packed coffee and bagels and hard boiled eggs, and I took my Dramamine and off we went. I was wearing a fleece, and at the last minute hubs suggested I grab my heavier coat. Shout out to hubs, because do you know what it's like on a mountainside at o'dark thirty in mid-October?

It's windy! And cold!
But Pretty Place is so pretty you don't even care.

We didn't see any signs pointing the way until we were on the camp property. Even then it was just a single simple marker saying Pretty Place with an arrow aimed towards the road. We followed it to the end, and came to a locked gate.

It was really dark and we were anxious that we'd made the trip up and were going to miss what we came for, so we turned around and went back to the main camp area to see if we'd missed something. No, the locked gate was the way in.

We parked on the side of the road, and walked up a short distance before coming to a parking lot which is where you'd normally park. I was glad I'd read beforehand that you drove to the end of the road, and that the building doesn't look like much until you're right up on it.

No worries though...

We didn't miss a minute.

"And one called to another and said: 

"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: 

the whole earth is full of His glory!" Isaiah 6:3