I don't have any more fun pictures to post with this one, though. Wait! Maybe I have a picture of our campfire. I'll check in a minute. Now I must focus on remembering where the hell we went two weeks ago.
We woke up sweating in our tent, because it was super humid that weekend and never even got chilly overnight. I think that next year I'll aim for two weekends after Labor Day. I like camping to require our awesome, flannel, double sleeping bag. We sparked a pretty great morning campfire and made some delicious breakfast quesadillas! Jeff did a great job making sure our foil packets didn't leak the eggs out like they usually end up doing. We like to use chopped up kielbasa, eggs, onions, peppers, and plenty of cheese.
The bathhouses at Staunton River are a little older than some of the newer ones in state parks we've visited. They don't have the family shower rooms on the outside of the buildings. My shower was a little cold, but that was welcome to help me prepare for the sticky air outside. We got all cleaned up, straightened up the campsite and tent, and headed out for our winery adventure.
We visited a few of the wineries on the Southern Virginia Wine Trail a couple of years ago on a trip to see some of my family in South Boston. I wanted to sample some more, and check out a few new ones, so we started our day with a beautiful, back-road drive to Annefield Vineyards. This began the day of living-room-tastings - each place we visited had tastings offered directly inside their homes. This was a new experience for us, and happened at all three of our stops - it was such a nice treat! It feels like you're visiting a friend. The old farmhouse at Annefield has been renovated to an amazingly beautiful condition, and since they talked about plans to build a separate tasting room, I'd hurry out there to visit before the main house is off-limits! The wines were mostly dry and very tasty.
Our next stop was Hunting Creek Vineyards and another living room tasting area. Their wines are delicious and cleverly named, including Temptation, Indulgence, and Repentance. We loved all of them and bought a bottle of the Decadence, I think. I love the art on their labels. They told us that a kid in the area drew it. It's remarkable! Perhaps as a lover of trees, I am biased.
Jeffrey was very excited about our final stop at White Oak Mountain Meadery, because mead is old and ancient, and he likes old and ancient stuff. We called ahead as the website asks, and Betsy East told us to, "come on out!" We were delighted to be invited inside for tasting and a lesson about mead, right at the dinner table of Mr. and Mrs. East. We learned about the entire process of attracting bees, collecting honey, and all the different ways to combine it with yeast and water to create delicious, alcoholey mead. I was amazed at the variety of flavors between the bottles - even ones that had no fruit added tasted drastically different depending on factors in bottling. If you visit the meadery, be prepared to listen and learn about everything that goes into this art.
Did we eat lunch? I don't think we ate lunch. Wow, that's a lot of alcohol tasting with no lunch. We had some snacks in the car (CHILI CHEESE FRITOS CHYEAH). Wait! We totally had lunch! We decided to have a late lunch and then cook dinner at the campsite (since we cheated the night before and went out for Mexican). We took a break between Hunting Creek and the meadery to enjoy some grub from Southern Plenty, a charming spot in the historic downtown area of South Boston. We ordered at the counter... I cannot remember what we ate at all. I do remember ooohing and aaahing about it for the duration of our meal. And I remember that they had a ton of local art, canned goods, and other neat things to browse through while we waited on our lunch.
So, phew! After our adventurous day, we headed back to camp and lit the fire to grill some hot dogs.
We enjoyed a few hours sitting far away from our campfire because it was too hot, then turned in for another night of no-blanket-sleeping. Despite the humidity, our trip was very fun! I love how cozy our campsites always end up being.
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