No Color, No Brother

No color.
What I mean by no color is that the color was not spectacular like it was five years ago when we were here for a comparable weekend. There was some yellows and browns mixed among the green. But the vistas are still spectacular. We went out water-falling each day. The first excursion required a walk to the falls and after our wonderful picnic lunch (the pork loin is a whole other story) I stayed in that area while the others walked to the falls. I did bring along my cane with a seat and needed to use it even to walk to the place where the best picture of all of us was to be taken and used it to sit on while the picture-taking jockeying went on.

The next excursion - Lori was/is a volunteer with a forest service of some kind so she had friends in the right places. She called ahead and got us permission to drive on the hiking trails, someone met us at the gate to let us through and we were able to drive right up to the water falls. That was at DuPont falls. We set up a time to meet when we were done and he was there to open the gates to let us out. We met many envious people along the way.

The third excursion was to the Looking Glass falls that are visible from the road and we just pulled up and parked for a while. That was on Sunday and we stopped for lunch at a barbecue place called Hawg Wild where we had eaten five years ago. Sure enough, the food was just as good this time.

Color improved considerably on our drive home and we got the spectacular factor thru eastern Tennessee and most of Kentucky.

No brother -
The person that started this whole ball rolling failed to show up at the reunion. Its not important which brother that was but he had trouble with flight connections and ended up going back to LA on Thursday while the rest of us were gathering for that great pork loin dinner. We were all kind of irritated and yes, a little angry (not having been in his shoes) but we got over it and ended up just really sorry we didn't get a chance to see him. Party animal, though he is, we still managed to have a really good time without him.

We played the "blog game" (thanks Stephi) which engendered much discussion and laughter. We three girls were prepared with written remarks while the resident brothers winged it.

Lori, of course was the perfect hostess and. wonderful cook that she is, kept us fed very well. The famous pork loin was so good at dinner that I asked her what she had used as a marinade and she started naming ingredients but when she got to clam sauce I made her stop because I didn't want to have to think of that while I was enjoying the subsequent sandwiches.

Chalet Beauregard is multi leveled with outdoor decks on many levels. So our weather was always good. If it got too hot on the sunny deck, we moved to a shady deck. When it started to get cold in the shade we moved to a sunny deck. When the sun went down we moved inside. We couldn't have found a better "resort" to have a reunion.

We have decided that the next one will be in Uncle John's back yard. One of the many sarcastic barbs aimed at him this weekend. But we have also decided that we all love him like crazy even though our blog game remarks of our "first clearest memories" of him painted him as a spoiled brat.

All in all a great weekend, and its not over yet. Monica is still here for a couple more days and this afternoon we are going to Elise and Larry's.