Summer Adventures

In the lives of college football coaches, time off doesn't come on the weekends or at any other time of the year - except for the month of July.  July is marked as time off for college coaches.  This is to somehow offset all of the 7 day a week 16 hour days.  Its like a crash course of make up time with the wife, family and friends.

Herb and I traveled to Ludington to spend 4th of July at mom & dad's beach house.  Fireworks on the pier, a drive along the lakeshore to Traverse City, a dinner at Scotty's and just plain relaxing time.

 

 

Next we celebrated Chloe's 4th birthday at Muskegon State Park.

Towards the end of the month Herb and I headed back to Ohio to plan a last minute adventure.  We knew we wanted to go white water rafting in West Virginia and were looking for other fun things to do along the way.  Herb came across the James River Spash & Dash 5K in Richmond, Virginia.  Priceline.com had a special on 4-star hotels in Richmond and we booked a weekend stay. 

Our drive from Oxford, OH to Richmond, VA was about 11 hours.  After all day in the car, we were ready to explore the city of Richmond.  Right outside our hotel is what is referred to as the Tobacco District.  It's an old area of the city with neat brick streets, fun night life and street people playing saxophones, drums and guitars and selling roses.  I've never been to New Orleans, but this is how I would imagine the scene.  We tried out a new night spot called 'Off the Hookah'.  It was different from anything we have ever been to.  The vibe was fun hip-hop dance music, but what made it a little wacky was that club goers were just walking around puffing on hookahs. I learned that a hookah is a waterpipe with different stems to smoke flavored tobacco.  Herb and I are not smokers, but we both agreed that the flavored tobacco had a nice scent in the air. It was a fun night.

The next day we rested up for our big run and swim.  Participants run a 3 mile trail course on Belle Isle, grab a tub and, paddle and swim 1/4 mile across a stretch of the James River, then run their tube to the finish line.  The 100 degree heat and humidity was not fun, but the adventure of the run and swim was such a neat experience.   

We celebrated our finish with a nice seaford dinner and mimosas followed by margaritas and dancing at Cha-Cha's!

Next up was our White Water Rafting adventure in West Virginia.  We chose Ace Adventure for our trip.  It was awesome.  We tubed with 2 guides and 1 other couple down the New River.  The trip we signed up for was suppose to be Class I-III rapids, but since they had just gotten a bunch of rain it turned out to be Class II-IV rapids!  Wild, exciting, and refreshing.  Herb was so brave to jump out of our raft and "swim" through one of the first rapids.