West Virginia: Bears, Fat Cats, and Gardens

At the end of summer, my family decided to get out of hot, hot Austin and visit pleasant, wooded West Virginia. West Virginia is where my Aunt Shelly and Larry live. Visiting Aunt Shelly is a unique experience because the house is in such a beautiful and secluded location.

Geezer's Roost

But just because it's a secluded house, doesn't mean it's quiet! The whole house was alive with many, many dogs. In fact, this vacation was as much Honey Bear's vacation as it was ours.

Honey Bear

Including Honey Bear, there were six dogs running around the house. My favorite dog after Honey Bear was Little Bear, the original bear.

Little Bear

Besides Little Bear and Honey Bear, there are two more "Bears." One of them is Teddy Bear, who is a bit shy but joins in on the fun when the Bears go romping.

Teddy Bear

The last Bear is Smokey Bear. Smokey Bear is the "Show Dog" since she's got shorter legs and is more rounded. Smokey loves tagging along with Little Bear on all her adventures.

Smokey Bear

Next up is Lucy. Lucy is not part of the Bear family. In fact, she looks a lot more like a deer.

Lucy

The most recent addition to the dogs is Henry, who is Larry's dog. Henry is the only male dog of the bunch, so Larry often made jokes with Henry about how hard it was to be surrounded by females.

Henry

Larry is the dog master. He's the hand that feeds, and also the man who drove the truck out back to walk the dogs.

Larry the bear master

But let's not forget Aunt Shelly.

Aunt Shelly and her mushroom

My whole family loved it here in West Virginia. It was very relaxing and beautiful.

Nicholas and Honey Bear resting near the gardens

In addition, we had a great time with Little Bear, who I consider to be the happiest dog of the bunch.

Little Bear on the front porch

Little Bear was just endlessly entertaining, and you could tell that she was having a good time.

Little Bear rests in the funniest ways

I think Honey Bear could tell that Little Bear was the cool dog to hang around with. They often were around each other, and they both enjoyed going outside often.

Aunt Shelly's Garden

I can't talk about West Virginia without mentioning how fun it was to pick fruit. This time around, blueberries and apples were in season, and they were delicious. There's nothing like hand-picking your own batch of blueberries.

Blueberry Huntin'

Apple harvesting was something new for me. It is a bit more exciting than picking blueberries because you essentially poke the apples until they fall, and when they fall, they fall fast. You have to be careful not to let them hit  you.

Can you see the falling apple?

We had fun riding in the back of the truck going from tree to tree. Larry showed us a great technique of setting up lawn chairs in the back of the truck. The only problem is that when the truck went up steep hills, the chairs slid around the truck bed. Nick nearly crushed me when his lawn chair started sliding towards me (I was sitting on the truck bed itself).

Truck bed riding in style

The truck was also an easy way to get down to the beautiful lake on Aunt Shelly's property.

Beautiful West Virginia Pond

All the bears loved getting in the water and swimming, except for our Honey Bear. It was pretty funny when Aunt Shelly tried to coax her into swimming with food. Honey bear wasn't biting. 

Come on Honey bear, get in the water...

Aunt Shelly told us that she eventually manged to get Honey bear into the water after several days of teasing her with food, but I didn't get to capture it. Nevertheless, it was a pretty amazing accomplishment, considering how scared Honey Bear is of water.

Another accomplishment was that Nicholas managed to catch a fish.

Nick caught a fish!

Unfortunately, he could not remove the hook in time, so when the fish was thrown back in the water, it simply floated on the top. That's when Little Bear decided that fish was hers.

Staredown

Gotcha!

After Nick finished fishing we got a fire started so that we could eat dinner. As you can see, Nick's the better boy scout.

Fire makin'

We used the fire to cook corn, potatoes, and delicious toasted marshmallows. I love taking my time to cook a marshmallow properly.

I love a good marshmallow roast

After that, we were treated with one of the best dinners I've had. We had fresh steak, corn, potatoes, and even a Hawaiian bread roll. Just seeing it makes my mouth water.

Delicious steak dinner

But my favorite West Virginia treat was going motorcycling with the Honda Fat Cats. Dad scratched his leg up once while riding, but fortunately he healed quickly enough to do one really long, fun ride with me on our last day there.

These bikes are out of control!

Bryan on a Fat Cat 

I don't remember quite how to get there, but we found a dirt path that lead to a gravel road. On the gravel road were some of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen. The gravel was also a really great place to speed up on the Fat Cats. I couldn't capture some of the scenic views, but I did manage to snap one good picture of the gravel road.

On the road again...

Eventually if you follow the road long enough you find a beautiful West Virginia landscape.

Sweet West Virginia Air

So that was our West Virginia Trip. This was the last vacationing spot I managed to visit before starting school again. That means it might be a while until my next post.

West Virginia will always have a special place in my heart. It is the most beautiful and relaxing place to take a break, and I can't wait to come back again. So if you ever wonder to yourself if you should visit Aunt Shelly or Larry, let me tell you, the answer is yes!

Washington D.C.

My family and I went to visit Washington D.C. on August 12th. If that date sounds familiar, it might be because August 12th is my birthday! That's right, I had the fortune to celebrate my 20th in the United States capital. My favorite description of America's Washington D.C. was best said by a British actor.

"We're in the middle of the most powerful city in the most powerful country on Earth." -Matt Smith's Doctor

So I had an unconventional birthday. But I had delicious food and we even got to see 30 Minutes or Less, which was surprisingly funny.

Bryan Turning 20

The Cropper family did a lot of visiting in D.C., so I've broken up our conquests into three parts. I'll start with what I call The Big Four, and then move onto the memorials, monuments, and finally museums. So let's start!

The Big Four: The Capitol, Supreme Court, White House, and National Archives

The very first building in D.C. that we saw was our nation's capitol, where the Senate and the House of Representatives create all the laws we hate today.

The U.S. Capitol

At least our legislative branch operates separately from our other branches of government. Speaking of other branches, I learned that the Supreme Court (judicial branch!) used to work in the basement of the Capitol. Fortunately, in 1933, the Supreme Court finally got their own building. At the Supreme Court Building we had a pleasant lecture about how the Supreme Court operates. For instance, did you know the Supreme Court only takes only 1% of the cases that apply to be reviewed?

The Supreme Court

Finally, no trip to D.C. is complete without viewing the White House. When we arrived, the lawn in front of the White House was closed to the public for an hour or so. But when they let us in, Nicholas and I went running!

Get to the White House!

We then struck our cool poses.

We Rock the White House

Lastly, we visited the National Archives, which holds our nation's most important documents. What kind of documents? I don't know, just the BILL OF RIGHTS, the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, and the UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.

The National Archives

That's right, in the Rotunda Room of the National Archives we got to see the three most important papers in the United States. What surprised me was how large the documents were. I always imagined these documents were slightly larger than printer paper, but the parchments were actually about two feet wide and two and a half feet long. Also, the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence were very faded, since they were held previously in picture frames. Our Constitution however, being four pages long, was not displayed and therefore the ink held up very well.

The Rotunda Room

Next I'll talk about the many memorials and monuments the Croppers visited in D.C.

Memorials & Monuments

The most identifiable monument we visited was the one featured on all of our pennies. That's right, we visited the Lincoln Memorial!

Lincoln Memorial

We actually found the memorial to be a bit closed off and very crowded. Despite that, we still managed to get our photo o Lincoln sitting.

Lincoln Statue

To give you a scale of how big the statue is, you can use mom for comparison.

Mom Looking at Lincoln

For me, what was more interesting than the Lincoln statue was the view from the Lincoln Memorial. Behold, the world-famous reflecting pool!

Washington's Majestic Reflecting Ditch.

Apparently the reflecting pool had a leak, so they are re-digging and re-cementing it. The project should be completed by summer 2012. But we did get to enjoy the other structure in the picture. Yes, we visited was the world's tallest free-standing stone structure, the Washington monument!

Washington Monument

Dad actually purchased tickets, so we got to see the view from the very top! The Washington Monument provided an excellent view of nearly every important building in D.C, so it was a real treat.

We're at the Top!

Our last memorial was the Jefferson memorial . It turned out to be a surprising favorite. As you can see below, this memorial is open at all four sides.

Circumnavigating the Thomas Jefferson Memorial

Also, inside there is a cool statue of Jefferson standing up, surrounded with some of his awesomer quotes, such as

"I have sworn, upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" -Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson Statue

Man, our founding fathers didn't tolerate any nonsense. Makes me proud to be American.
Lastly, I'll mention briefly some of the many, many Museums we visited while we were in the area.

Museums, Museums, and Museums

The very first thing museum we visited was actually in Chantilly, outside of our Capital. Here we saw the Air and Space Museum.

Air and Space Museum in Chantilly

My favorite part of this museum was being able to see NASA's Enterprise shuttle model. It was pretty neat being so close to the first reusable space craft ever built.

Space Shuttle Enterprise

We also visited several art museums, but there was one piece of art that truly stood out. Below is a modern-art piece called Ghost Clock. What do you think about it? Do you understand the underlying message about our society and time?

Ghost Clock at the Renwick Museum

Just kidding. The real beauty of the Ghost Clock is that it is carved from a single piece of laminated Mahogany. The white sheet and string are actually just bleached parts of the single, carved piece of wood. When we told Nick, his eyes bulged.

Nick's Impressed

Lastly, we visited the Museum of Natural History, where I had my mind blown! Do you know about the mysterious Easter Island Statues? I always thought that they were very narrow since they were always photographed from the side. But here I learned that the statues are actually very wide, and not at all what I was expecting.

An Easter Island Moai

To end this post on a sweet/creepy note, here's a picture of a man and his dog that was on display in the museum.

Dr. Grover Krantz and Clyde

So that concludes our adventures in Washington in the District of Columbia. I can now say that I've been to the prime centers of each branch of our government, seen the documents that laid the foundations of our nation, and also got to appreciate new artistic and scientific curiosities. Overall, I'd say it was a success. Next up, I'll (really) talk about wonderful, wooded, West Virginia!