After plans A, B, C, and D did not work out as I'd hoped for UEA break, I was still determined to go somewhere and do something!! Flying anywhere or driving anywhere long distance was out of the question at this point....it was Wednesday....the break officially started that afternoon! So at the very last minute, I booked a place near Huntsville, on Pineview reservoir. The owner of the condo gave me a fabulous rate for two nights...less than he had advertised, since it was last minute. And then he said he'd throw in two more nights for a hundred bucks! Like $50 a night! It's a two bedroom luxury condo! Yes, we'll take the extra two nights! So it was a scramble, but we made it up there Wednesday night and stayed until Sunday! We stayed in the Lakeside Village condos. Turned out to be exactly what I was after....very few people, no crowds, plenty of outdoor beauty, and lots of fall leaves!! This first pic I got online to show the place we stayed...but it was not taken in the fall.
The condo was awesome! Perfect for what we wanted to do....relax and unwind!!
The kids of course wanted to use the master tub for their baths...not their own! You can see why! Jets.
More chillin' out on the deck in our own private hot tub, and indoors on the bean bag and chaise lounge.
We did some reading and watched some shows.
Right next door was a big campground that was closed for the season. It turned out to be the perfect place to ride around on our bikes, crunching leaves wherever possible.
We explored the lake, and were the only people ever there. Perfect!
And we pretty much could not get enough of the leaves....so MANY of them everywhere we went!! I love, love, loved it!! Fall is my favorite season and we just do not get enough falling leaves and color in our neighborhood to satisfy my nostalgic need for crunching leaves!!
We spent time a couple of days in the little town of Huntsville. Adorable, quaint, makes-you-wish-you-were-a-kid-again kind of small town. I pretty much need to live there now.
We played at the Huntsville City park twice..such a very cool playground with modern equipment as well as the old time stuff. Check out the two metal slides coming off the tree!! Ellie banged up her shin really bad on some spinning thing.....nothing a big, strong dad can't fix.
We took a short drive to the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity Monastery. Monks have lived here for over sixty years. Darin remembers going here with his dad, when he was a kid, to buy milk cows from the monks. They got one of their best milk cows, Blindy, here. The monks also sold honey.
There are no cattle here anymore, but sheep instead. It's hard to imagine living this way for an entire lifetime. But it sure sounds appealing some of the time.
We kept on driving up to Causey dam. Such a beautiful place! The leaves were brilliant. The other three skipped rocks and tossed things in the water while I explored a little and collected more LEAVES!!
The kids REALLY wanted to go to a corn or straw maze over the break. We've done Cornbelly's a few years and they wanted to go there. But I wanted to avoid the crowds this break, and the kids are getting big for some of the kiddie things at those bigger fall frenzies. So I did a little searching and came up with this!! This place is fabulous!! It's in Pleasant View, up near North Ogden. It's a trout farm. It's out of the way and there were only a handful of people around. It's only a couple of bucks per person and you get to: go through the corn maze, (the haunted portion is optional), take home a free mini pumpkin, and get a free cup of fish food to feed the fish! They also sell larger pumpkins, so we bought our pumpkins for Halloween here, and the kids went fishing...you pay by the size that you catch.
The grounds are beautiful, with maybe five different fishing ponds, and the view is amazing. Who knew this little place even existed?!
We did a handful of other fun things that I didn't get pics of....we ate dinner at Rainbow Gardens at the mouth of Ogden canyon. Fun place to go...not such great food. We took a bike ride along the Ogden river parkway. Went to the see "Cloudy with a chance...2", picked up pizza in the ski town of Eden...and pretty much just had a great break from life!
So close to home......but still felt like we were on vacation. Perfect! I think we found a new favorite spot to get away!
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