We have now been married for an entire year, folks. We just returned from a nice trip to Shenandoah National Park to celebrate our first year of wedded bliss. Here are some pictures of our adventures.
On our way to Skyline Drive, we saw signs for a distillery outside of Culpeper, VA. You see a lot of winery signs on these roads, but this is the first distillery sign we've seen, so we decided to stop. We met Chuck Miller (surely a long lost cousin), who gave us a tour of his distillery which he and his wife have been running (legally) for 18 years. Boy, what a character. We had a wonderful time watching how he makes his Virginia Lightning moonshine and his Copper Fox whisky (this is like a bourbon, but he can't call it bourbon because he "puts the barrel in the whisky before the whisky in the barrel"). He adds smoked apple wood to the concoction before he stores it in barrels for two years. Oddly enough, we took the tour with an old man from Lynchburg, who is a retired regulator. He said this was the first distillery he's been to where the state licenses were hanging on the wall. We weren't able to taste or buy any of Chuck's whisky there, because ABC has a monopoly on liquor sales in the state of Virginia. So, we went into Culpeper and bought a bottle of Copper Fox at the local ABC store. Greg really liked the way it went down; Lara (who is by no means a whisky fan) did not. Check out www.virginiamoonshine.com.
Wonder why they can't get anyone to take this job!
He's one of very few distilleries that still grows all of his crops; his operation is still small enough to do that.
We did some heavy duty climbing (yeah right!) but Lara stayed strong throughout (yeah right!).
We had a wonderful dinner at Big Meadows Lodge overlooking the gorgeous Shenandoah Valley at sunset. Then, we played a mean game of dominoes (Greg won) with our headlamps providing most of the light in our little cabin. Oh, and we drank wine too, which explains the face that Greg is making in this picture.
The next morning we took some short hikes and stopped at some amazing overlooks. Here's a very determined photographer who must have taken hundreds of pictures of the same scenery just waiting for the right light and using the right filters. My picture of him took all of 5 seconds!
Here's a contemplative shot of my beautiful husband (who needs a haircut!)
We ended our trip by eating wonderful health food (you know, burgers, grilled cheese, onion rings, and milkshakes) at Spelunker's in Front Royal, VA.
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