A Weekend on the Other Coast

Well, it was more like 30 hours actually in Virginia.  You might think we're crazy, and we might be, but a college friend was getting married in Virginia, and we had the skymiles, so we went to Virginia for the weekend.  We left Saturday afternoon, dropping Gromit off at his new buddy River's house on the way.  We were in Auburn in time for dinner with Jon's parents, and then they dropped us off at the airport for the red eye flight.










We flew into Newark at 6am local time.  During our layover, I found the most ghetto Jamba Juice.  I was so excited to have found it, since we still have over $300 on our gift card, but I was sorely disappointed when I got there.  There were only two flavors, they came out of a slushy machine (and tasted like it), and they didn't take my gift card.  Can't believe they could call themselves a Jamba Juice.   Anyway, other than that, we made it to Norfolk, Virginia around 9am without any incidents.  Our friend Angie picked us up in the rental car we were sharing, and we made it to Cracker Barrel to drop Jon off for brunch with the other groomsmen.  Angie and I Had nothing else to do till we could check into the hotel and start getting ready, so we found a Kmart going out of business and away we shopped :) 

We went to lunch and then got ready at the hotel and made it there, to the Cherry Grove Plantation of Suffolk Virginia, passing cotton (and probably tobacco?) fields along the way.  We were definitely in the south.  Despite the inclement weather cutting the homily short and blowing the unity candle out, we had a good time and it was a lovely ceremony.  At one point towards the end of the ceremony it started raining hard enough that everyone busted out their umbrellas.  I couldn't see anything, so I asked my friend Kari who was sitting on the aisle to give me a play by play commentary ("Tim's smiling now!"...."They look happy."  ..."Awww they just kissed" etc.).  Luckily, the reception was under the cover of a giant white tent, where they served a fantastic array of appetizer like food, fruit, veggies, crackers, bread, cheese, artichoke spinach dip, etc.  The cake was tasty and they even knew someone who makes ice cream who had made a flavor just for them- cheesecake ice cream with white and dark chocolate and berries. 


We spent a lot of time trying to scare some goats that resided on the property, as we had heard that they were the fainting kind.  The owner of the plantation had given everyone permission to try to scare them, so we did, but unsuccessfully.  One bridesmaid claims to have gotten one of them to faint with an umbrella, but was unsuccessful in reproducing similar results. 

We helped clean up and then made it back to our hotel and in bed by 10:30 or so.  The next morning, Jon, Angie, and I met our friends Kari and Jason for brunch at Panera Bread (how have I never been there before? So yummy!).  Afterwards, we spent some time walking along Virginia Beach, watching the tractor push some sand around (?), checked out the Navy Air Station Monument and the giant Neptune statue, and then it was back to the airport and back to Auburn by 8pm Monday night!  We spent the night there and drove home Tuesday, stopping at a REAL Jamba Juice on the way, before picking up a puppy very happy to see us :)