Wherein I make you jealous

I love my parents. There's no question. When my dad retired they bought a house in western North Carolina. No biggie. It's a beautiful house. They are surrounded (literally) by babbling mountain brooks. The one behind the house has a dam built in, so it makes a nice little wading pond for the kids to get muddy in. It feeds into a larger creek and is widely known in the fly fishing world (Curtis Creek, if anyone is interested). It's quiet. It's picturesque. It has no cell phone service. Yeah, there does exist such a place. It's mostly due to being 'in the gap'. They are in between two mountains and the cell towers don't quite have the punch for them to get service. You have to go up (they can day hike up to the Blue Ridge Parkway) or down into town to use your cell phone. Being out of touch is nice. I don't talk on my phone much, so it's not a big thing to me. However, they only have dial-up internet. It's crazy. You can't use your cell OR surf the internet. You can walk the internet, but there is no such thing as 'surfing the web' at their house.

The first day, you're fine. "I can do this! It's awesome not hearing the email chime on your computer/phone go off every 5 minutes!" Day 2, you might think "I should probably check my email to see if anything important came through" and you promptly forget. Someone wanted to go for a ride in "The Mule"

Like this-but not camo. And lots more grandchildren. Source

The third day, you login to your email and realize, "Holy shit, I have 234094tr098wr0098876876 unread emails!" But most of them are spam, so you're okay.

By the fourth day, you're wondering if you need bread/milk/chocolate bars so you have an excuse to go to the store. You will find a recipe for your mom to make that requires obscure ingredients, so you can check your FB/Twitter/other social media sites. You also realize you get most of your news from Twitter and wonder if the Zombie Apocalypse has started.

However, you DO get to use your cell phone's camera ('cause you forgot the regular one) and get some pretty amazing shots, IMO. These photos ALL came from my G2X phone camera. I used no filters from Instagram, no photo editing software. This is just me and my camera (phone).

The bench by the fire pit. Yeah, they made that.

Close up of some of the run off from the damn. A mini-waterfall.

A violet, I think.

A dandelion

This is the view from the front deck.

The pond reflecting the sky. I really love this shot.

So, yeah, I get to spend two weeks there at the beginning of June when we're in the process of moving. Be jealous of the beautiful views. Don't be jealous of my dial-up internet.