August Accomplishments, September Goals and the last hike

We arrived home Saturday afternoon after 2 days of driving. Driving is always tiring but coming home was much easier than the drive up when I was sick and coughing my lungs up the whole time. 
Now, I've spent the weekend unpacking, doing laundry and going through mail. Chris also made favorite meal for my birthday and that's Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, gravy and mashed potatoes.

I got the Red Sunset quilt unpacked and decided that I would use the Brother machine to finish the sewing on it. As I was winding the bobbins I decided to have a peek at the bobbin area and it needed a serious cleaning.

​That's done and I'm ready to get back to work on this project.

August finishes

Fortunately I ended July with these projects all about 99% done do I finished them up in the first days of August. I still have to make a label for Groovy 3 and the 3 crochet projects will all be delivered to From The Heart sometime this month.
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I made good progress on my 3 crochet projects and used up 5 balls of yarn
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September Goals

It's a little weird but I'm feeling kind of list-less for September! I don't have any specific gift deadlines that I'm aware of and I don't want to put a deadline on Red Sunset. I'll take a stab here are a goals list that I expect th change in the next week as I recover from my vacation mindset.

- start planning Christmas postcards
- make a new hiking backpack
- quilt Mom's quilt
​- possibly load my flower applique quilt to start quilting

​Mostly I just plan to work on whatever I'm in the mood for.

The last hike and stats

For our last hike of the trip we decided to do Cedar Swamp Mountain. Chris and I did this a couple of years ago but this time we wanted to take a different route. The trail we took up is called the Amphitheater Trail. It travels up between two mountains and along a spring. We crossed the spring about 20 times. Sometimes it was easy, like here.

Most of the time it was quite tricky, like here. A walking stick was very helpful. It was worth the effort because it was a beautiful trail that is hardly used.  We only saw 2 other people on this trail.

The payoff came about halfway up when we reached the Amphitheater Bridge. It's huge at 245 feet in length and was finished in 1931. 
Next we headed to the top of Cedar Swamp Mountain, found the plane wreck site nearby and headed down Sargent South Ridge.

We have done Sargent South Ridge Trail before and there's a great viewing ledge along the trail. The last time we went we had the view on the left. This time we were rewarded with the view on the right.
​Much better.

Our vacation came to and end Friday morning with me at the Visitor Center to be the first person in line to finally get my Senior Lifetime pass! This is a bargain at $80. I never have to pay at a National Park again.

You know I love some statistics so I calculated a few for the trip:
We had 8 rainout days in 4 weeks - a record
We each had about 4 solid sick days
We saw 5 moose, one bear, severa eagles and lots of loons, turkeys and hummingbirds
We hiked about 47 miles for a total elevation of over 8600 feet

We can't wait for next year!​