Full Day Too

We started our day with a trip to Chimney Rock Park. After threading our way through the Eye of the Needle, we climbed the rest of many stairs to the top of the rock. The view up there is great and while the leaves are at peak higher up, in the surrounding mountains at 2 to 3k there is still a ways to go. Donna and I then walked the 1-1/2 miles of the Skyline-Cliff Trail Loop. A lot of the out is on boardwalk, but the way back is mostly dirt and rocky. On all of the loop there is thankfully fences and rails, because the average elevation of the trail is around 2300 feet and you can look straight down at all of it for quite a bit of the walk.

After cruising slowly back and forth through the touristy towns of Chimney Rock and Lake Lure we ended up deciding on Mexican for lunch. In spite of the upper 60’s temps and cloudless skies we were the only two people dining on the porch.

The afternoon was spent at the Foothills Highland Games and Festival in Hendersonville. Pipe bands & Celtic rock, musket fire, bonnie lasses & brawny laddies, sheafs & cabers being tossed and probably hagis for sale, but we didn’t look for any.

I took a couple of Post Office pictures, but they were of towns in North Carolina just in case this is the next state we pick on.

And TDPM is on again tonight, but I’m not watching it, so there.

Pictures from today can be found HERE.

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Pretty Full Day

  1. Breakfast in Aiken
    • We went to the New Moon and came to the conclusion that we are still eating there because of past performance. My muffin, while good, was not heated nearly enough. Donna’s hot chocolate had to be requested a second time before being served. If our last 3 visits here, were our first three visits here, they would be our only 3 visits here.
  2. Walk in Hitchcock Woods
    • Instead of our usual ingress point we started at the South Boundary entrance because we were already downtown for breakfast. A beautiful fall day and we shared the 2,000 acres with a horsewoman and her dog plus another woman walking a couple of small dogs. As is usually the case with our walks in the woods, we were certain of our path for approximately 75% of the time, never actually lost, just sometimes not sure where we were in relationship to the map.
  3. Pack the car and head north
    • I am constantly amazed with how much stuff we can stuff in the small trunk of the Miata. I am also constantly amazed with how much stuff we have to take with us for being away from home for a mere 48 hours.
  4. Lunch in Newberry, SC
    • The Grill On Main serves a mean Patty Melt. Donna had a cup of vegetable soup and a half of a chicken salad sandwich. The chicken salad had some mustard and maybe thyme in there to give it a different twist.
  5. Photographed 5 Post Offices
    • Whitmire, Union, Buffalo, Jonesville, Pacolet & Pacolet Mills. We stopped at White Stone, but it was busy and it had enough character that we decided to come back on the way home Sunday when it might not have cars in front of it.
  6. Dinner in Asheville Fletcher, NC
    • We had pizza from the second place we tried. We drove the 4 miles to a place just inside the Asheville limits that had some good reviews I found on the web. We left after we never got any attention from a server after being seated. That and the dozen small ants that crawled out of the menus and had to be squished under our fingers. The next place we tried was take out only so we ended up dining in our room at the Fairfield Inn in Fletcher, NC. The pie was not bad and probably would have been better if we could have eaten it moments out of the oven instead of the 15 minutes or so later that it took us to get back to the hotel and get settled.
  7. TDPM on USA
    • Commodore Norrington: No additional shot nor powder, a compass that doesn’t point north, [looks at Jack’s sword] and I half expected it to be made of wood. You are without doubt the worst pirate I’ve ever heard of.
      Captain Jack Sparrow: But you have heard of me.
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Bring It On

I’ve added the ability to comment on the photos in my galleries. There is no comment spam protection, so depending on how long it takes them to find the form and how long I can stand deleting the spam comments, will determine how long the ability to leave comments stays open.

Pick a gallery, pick a picture and fire away…

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Millinery Maneuvers

My search for a FRS WSC hat continues.

2007 WSC Ugly Blue HatThis one offered at MLB.com was too pricey at $30 for me to buy. I don’t really like the look, but if it was cheaper I might have bought it.

 

 

 

2004 WSC Blue HatA little searching around the web led me to discover that the 2004 hat, that I had owned and liked, was still available and maybe I would just buy another. It is available for $20 at the Yawkey Way Store.

 

 

2007 WSC Blue HatOn the front page of the Yawkey Way Store page is a link that says World Series Champions Merchandise Click Here. It takes you to a sister site that has the same Yawkey Way Store title and look, but the URL is www.thesouvenirstore.com. There I found a hat that looks like the 2004, but with 2007 and the word Champions in script. It is $30, but I’d pay that much for this one, because I like the looks.

You have to register with the site to buy anything, so I put the hat in the shopping cart and start the checkout process. When I get to the shipping page I find out that the cheapest way they offer is UPS ground and that costs $10. So now I rethink this purchase because the hat is now a $40 hat. I like it, but maybe not that much.

Ten bucks doesn’t sound like too much to ship 2 hats, so I try to order both the 2004 and 2007 hats. Can’t be done. Even though they are technically coming from the same place the two web sites don’t talk to each other.

2007 WSC Khaki HatDo I get one $30 2004 hat or one $40 2007 hat or two hats for $70? Maybe I’ll call the 1-800 number tomorrow and see if they will ship me the 2 hats for a total cost of $60. If I do get 2, the 2007 hat will be in khaki to differentiate it between the 2004 hat.

Next year when the FRS win the 2008 series, I will get the hat, similarly styled, in red.

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Bereft of Words

I had an idea earlier today on something to blog about, but it got lonely, so it left.

Bereft

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New Hat?

OK, I lied to you. I did not go to bed at 11:00PM, I stayed up until 12:15AM and watched multi-millionaire kids dance for joy on a field of green on a late October evening in Denver. I did not stay long enough to see if Syndrome would do another River Dance in his underwear again though.

Three years ago when the FRS won the Fall Classic for the first time in 86 years, I bought a hat to commemorate the event. This year I will probably do the same, but I’m not sure yet. One, I don’t really like the looks of the hats available and Two, they are kind of pricey at $29.99. The 2004 World Champions hat I bought was $19.99!

2007 Wild Card LoserTo rub it in I was going to buy my MFY fan manager a 2007 Wild Card Winner hat as a gag when I purchased my Red Sox World Series Champs hat, but even it at $24.99 is a little too much to spend on a quick gag.

Maybe I’ll just buy the Wild Card hat for myself and on the back where there is a ’07 Division Series patch I’ll have the word Loser embroidered there. 🙂

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Has Anyone Seen Them In The Same Room Together?

SyndromeIf you hunt around on the web you can find loads of pictures of the Red Sox closer, Jonathan Papelbon, in mid grimace after the final out and some others of him doing his little river dance after the FRS won the ALCS, but I can’t find any of him in the dugout between the eighth and ninth innings during one of his long, 4 out saves to show you what I mean. But a couple times during this World Series he has been in there sitting on the end of the bench with his wild-eyed look, running his fingers through his hair vertically to make it stick straight up. This gave him a very distinctively disturbing look. Unfortunately for him this may have given away his evil super hero alter-ego – Syndrome!

Last night, Donna and I watched the whole freaking game three and it didn’t get over until like 1:00AM. Tonight we are going to bed at 11:00PM, no matter what, the Red Sox will win or lose whether I’m watching the game or not, because tomorrow is a work day and we won’t be able to sleep in until 8:30AM like we did today.

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