Travels and Treats

It was his idea to go.  "Let's go to the Great Swamp to see if they have any amaryllis bulbs yet."  We picked out the bulbs and then he detoured away from me while I checked out the Christmas ornament section.  I thought he was in the next aisle, but when I rounded the corner, he wasn't there.  It took me a while to find him because I actually didn't want to go into the "greenhouse" and be tempted to buy any new plants.  I'd just finished repotting all the orchids at home the last week and with bringing in the few plants we overwinter indoors, space is at a premium.  There he was, conducting business as he made himself at home near the cyclamen.  And, since he kept talking as I approached, I did decide to do some plant shopping and came home with a small cyclamen and an even smaller Christmas cactus about to bloom.  

I wanted to look closer at this mushroom garland but it was out of my reach and by the time I found the chatterbox I had forgotten about it till I uploaded my pictures.

I think I have some wooden mushrooms around here..... and some screw eyes.  Then again, it might be a wild goose chase.  Instead of going home on the highway, I convinced HWNSNBP to take the back roads home so we could enjoy the scenery.  There is a Japanese word for when the sunbeams filter through the trees - komorebi.  Thankfully it was a sunny fall day and we did get to enjoy the komorebi.

Which reminds me that I didn't post anything about our Lighthouse Challenge yet.  I won't repeat all the lighthouses that we visited, just some highlights of the days.  When we started out on that Saturday morning we got down to the end of our street and I realized that I had forgotten to put earrings on.  Not a big deal, but I feel better when I have them in so HWNSNBP turned to go back to the house and I remembered that I had a spare pair in the overnight bag, so we turned around in a driveway that was decorated as such..........

After the first two stops at Tinnicum and Finn's Point, we stopped at the Amish Market in Bridgeton and he treated me to a whoopie pie.

Thank the clouds for briefy letting the sun illuminate East Point Lighthouse for this picture.  It was way too windy for the flag apparently.  

Hereford Inlet Lighthouse is not on the official list of stops but it is on the way so we stopped to take our obligatory gazing ball picture in the front garden.

We made it through to Barnegat by the evening and woke the next day to get on the road early to make the last 4 stops.  This is a view of the ocean from the lighthouse at Sea Girt.  We did have gorgeous weather.

I loved the side of this building we passed on the way to the end.  Luckily we were stopped at a traffic light so I could reach across to take a picture.  I'm not sure what town it's in though.

We ended the challenge at the Twin Lights.

Our challenge souvenirs this year were log books.  Each sight had a page with a copy of a log entry from one of the lightkeepers over the years.  You got a stamp on each page as you completed that stop.  There were 4 additional stamps and 2 secret stamps that you had to ask about at each stop to get.  We only knew that because we are on the email list for the challenge and it was published there.  There were a couple of people who overheard HWNSNBP ask about it and were a little upset that they didn't know about it in their journey.  He got one of the committee members to take our picture in front of the lens in the museum.   

This past weekend we went to the condo on Thursday night - kind of a last minute decision - so that HWNSNBP could do some surf fishing Friday as we were planning to go to Delaware to babysit on Saturday.  I also wanted to get pictures of the full moon rising - always a toss up on that one.  He did get a picture of the sunrise on Friday morning as he headed out for his coffee.  

And he did hit up the bakery a little later in the morning and brought me back this treat.

The full moon wasn't until Saturday night, but we went up to the bay beach and waited for the almost full moon to rise as I'm pretty sure that, had the clouds not been there, it would have started out behind the lighthouse across the bay.  It wasn't this pretty when we first got there, but it was so peaceful we decided to stay a while and it was HWNSNBP who first caught a glimpse of the moon as it came out from behind the clouds.  I was so happy to get the reflection in the water.

And even happier when the swans started swimming in the pink water towards that direction.  I kept whispering to them to swim faster, swim faster, so that I could............

Get them in the moonlight before the moon disappeared again behind the clouds.  And if you look to the left you can see the lighthouse there too.

Saturday morning we left early to get to DE so that Rachel could spend some one-on-one time with GS2 while we watched GS3.  (Their daddy was at a wrestling event.)  She took him in his costume to the Delaware Children's Museum for some special Halloween activities.  We got to spend some time with this little love.  Those eyes just make my heart melt.

Naptime was short but he didn't fight it at all.  

We had lunch when they came back and then we went in two cars (no room for Grandma and Papa and 2 car seats) to the UD Creamery - a little ice cream stand on the University of Delaware campus near the football stadium run by the agriculture students.  There specialty for the holiday is the "Trick or Treat" ice cream which is French vanilla ice cream with candy.  It was another delicious treat on another beautiful day.  There were a lot of people there and we had to initially share a picnic table with a couple of students.  Luckily there wasn't a football game there that day or we wouldn't have been able to go.

I've finished my Inktober tangles and my birds which I'll be posting soon.   Yesterday I had two dr. appts. - one with a back surgeon and the other was for a vein study in these old legs that are not working like they're supposed to.  HWNSNBP came with me to the surgeon and I think he finally understood why I'm having so much difficulty.  The dr. showed us both what a normal spine looks like and what mine looks like and it was abundantly clear that mine is not normal.  Insurance doesn't let you jump to the surgery part without further tests and non-surgical intervention so, even though the doctor agreed that it looked like that was going to be the final outcome, I have to have another test and do some PT first.  As for the veins - that doctor is in such demand that I won't be able to follow up with the test results until January.  It's going to be interesting.

This has gotten quite lengthy and I really need to get up in the stamp cave to get a couple of Christmas cards done.  The JB challenge this fortnight is to use a creature on our card.  I think I've got a couple of ideas.  Happy Halloween!