Our Mini-Honeymoon: Part 3!

If you missed part 1 or part 2, read those first! 🙂

Another highlight of the mini-moon was all the great hiking! We did two fun hikes while we were there. The first was about an hour long; we hiked it late afternoon one day before returning to the lodge in time for happy hour.

Love those beautiful leaves.

The hike took us up and up and up – beautiful views of the VA mountains!

We also made friends with this random tin man. Weird?

Soon, we were rewarded with this stunning view. That’s Fort Lewis Lodge, where we stayed, below!

Matt practiced his handstand skills while we were enjoying the view.

We arrived back at the lodge in time for a brief happy hour, and then dinner! I would like for these women to live in my kitchen, please. Thanks.

On this menu this evening was grilled salmon, plus veggies and ham with a mustard sauce. Yummy!

Wednesday was our last morning at the lodge, sadly – the trip went by way too quickly! Back to the main dining room for breakfast.

Fresh homemade blueberry muffins still hot from the oven? I’m pretty sure that’s paradise.

After breakfast, Matt and I packed up and said goodbye to the lodge. Matt is now the proud owner of a Fort Lewis Lodge t-shirt. 😉

We also enjoyed an intense game of tetherball while waiting for our packed lunches to be made. I’m still as terrible as the last time I played, which I’m pretty sure was 5th grade gym class.

Goodbye, lodge! We will definitely be back. 🙂

Instead of heading straight home on Wednesday, we decided to do one last hike on our way out! We got another round of packed lunches from the lodge, checked out, and headed to a nearby trail they recommended to do a nice lunch time hike.

After about 30 minutes of uphill hiking, we reached a beautiful summit.

We ate lunch while enjoying the view. Yum!

And made friends with an older couple, also staying at the lodge, who got this photo of us. Other than that, we had the place to ourselves!

After eating, we decided to hike on a little farther.

We hiked another half hour or so out and then made our way back; we ended up hiking for about 2 hours total.

It was a great ending to a very sweet trip. 🙂

So, what now? It’s going to be another crazy busy couple months as I finish out my grad school program! Here’s what’s on the docket:

• October 22nd (Monday) – start my final dietetic internship! I’ll be spending 3 weeks interning with Danielle Omar, another private practice RD in the area.
• November 7th – the first draft of my masters paper is due to my UNC advisor for edits. I need to start working on this today – I basically decided to pretend it didn’t exist until after the wedding was over.
• November 9th – last day of my internship!!!
• November 21st – final masters paper and PowerPoint presentation to accompany it are due (we’ll be having various rounds of edits between when I first submitted it and this point).
• November 22nd – Thanksgiving! We’re staying here in DC this year, but Matt’s parents are hopefully going to come join us.
• November 28th to November 30th – my grad school class will head back to UNC to present our masters papers to each other and the staff.
• Friday, November 30th – DONE WITH GRAD SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!! Our department will be hosting a mini-graduation ceremony and reception just for our class. We can come back and walk later in December if we want, but we aren’t planning on it.
• December 1st & 2nd – stick around Chapel Hill that weekend with Matt for one last hurrah. 🙂
• December 7th – December 21st – HONEYMOON with Matt in Costa Rica!!!! So. Excited.

Whew! After all this, all that will be left is to study for and take the RD exam in January, as soon as my grad school completion paperwork goes through. The end is so close! 🙂

As for wedding-related blog recaps, they will be coming next week! I’m already starting to get more photos from our official photographers (Ben and Taylor) and I can’t wait to share them. I’m going to break the recaps into sections – e.g. one post for the rehearsal dinner, one for getting ready, one for the ceremony, one for the reception, etc. Stay tuned!

Also, I’m running the Army 10 Miler on Sunday! I’ll be back with a recap of that, too. 🙂