As soon as I get home from work, Blake and I head up to Richmond for a date night. Our first stop of the night is at Green Top shooting range.
After shooting 100 rounds we head out to see some of the houses on Richmond’s Tacky Light tour. We did this last year and had a blast. This year we went to different houses than the year prior.
We drive back to Ty’s apartment for the night and get up the next morning and drive to Skyline Drive to hike South River Falls.
South River Falls
Distance: 3.3 mile loop
Elevation: 910 foot gain
South River falls offers 2 trails to take in the falls. The first one is Observation Point Hike which is 2.6 miles with 850 foot elevation gain and the second one takes hikes to the bottom of the falls. We chose to do the longer hike.
We stop at an overlook on Skyline Drive to get a picture of the clouds over the mountains.
We begin hiking around 12:30 and it is cold. The trail is also pretty wet due to snow melt. We come to the first creek crossing and cold or not Gander doesn’t mind and he goes for a swim.
Being winter, no leaves are on the tree and this provided views of the river the entire hike.
We reach the overlook at 1:13 and pause for a little bit to take in the views.
Of course we had to get a picture of our baby to be in front of the falls.
We make our way down to the base of the falls about 20 minutes later.
Going to the base of the falls provide a very different perspective vs the view from the overlook platform. From the overlook they don’t seem as big as they do when you are standing right next to them. Blake tried to rock hope to get to the falls but didn’t make it. The water was too deep and he didn’t want to top his boot.
We finished our hike a little after 4:00 pm and then headed back to Richmond for dinner.
We had dinner at Joe’s Inn and if you know anything about Joe’s Inn, then you know that the portion size is HUGE. Blake and I split our meal and had enough left over for 2-3 meals the following week.
Notice Blake’s outfit???? Last year we went to an ugly sweater party but unfortunately this year Blake had to work and we were unable to attend but that didn’t stop us from wearing our tacky Christmas clothes. We dressed up in our formal Christmas wear to have dinner. We love putting smiles on everyone’s faces. We even got smiles out of people that you could clearly tell were having a bad day.
Being dressed up, we make a stop at The Jefferson Hotel. If you are unfamiliar with The Jefferson, this hotel is very elegant 5-star hotel. Every year The Jefferson has a large Christmas tree and display. We enjoyed looking at all of the decorations as well as taking our picture in front of the tree. It appeared some sort of event was taking place but the tree was not blocked off. We got a mix of looks in The Jefferson but most people thought it was great and stopped to talk to us and people even offered to take our picture.
We head back to Ty’s apartment for the night and have Ty help us come up with a plan for our big announcement.
The next morning Blake and I head back to The Jefferson to take our announcement pictures. The announcement is for Facebook. Our family and close friends already know the news.
We said Santa is bring a special gift this Christmas that is not to be opened until April.
Introducing Baby “Nilakay” coming April 2020.
“Nilakay” because Ty said we had to have a couples name and he combined our names together. We did fool a couple of people by the “baby Nilakay” and they though that was really going to be the baby’s name.
Nic of Time - Travel 