Wild and Wonderful

This past weekend, hubs and I headed over to West Virginia for a little mini-weekend away, and it was glorious.

For Father's Day, I got him some scratch off adventure cards from an ad I saw on Instagram. We're always looking for fun things to do with the kids that might make them dislike family time a little. But after several weeks of whining when we suggested it, we decided we'd just go ourselves.

So I pawed through the WV cards to find some that were all relatively close to one another and not a huge drive for us (because I love a road trip and he does not) and Saturday morning we headed off bright and early.

Our first stop was a flower farm. Not something I would ever have thought to do, honestly. But it was really cute and fun (and cheap!) and for maybe $20, we spent a solid hour (possibly a little longer) walking among the flowers and snipping off a lovely bouquet that is still flourishing on my kitchen counter.

From there, we went on to Morgantown, where our other cards had sent us.

Since hubs is a big fan of spontaneous, the culling of the cards nearby and booking a hotel were all the planning I did. This bit us in the rear a little as three of the items revealed, upon scratching off, that we needed to book 24 hours out. So I'll be letting the company know they need to indicate that somewhere on the card. But the other activities (the botanical garden and glow in the dark mini golf themed around WV cryptids) were really quite a lot of fun. 

We hiked every path the garden offered (and hike is an exaggeration, it was lovely walking. They were not paved paths - many were forest paths but the larger "main" one was gravel.) I think we spent close to three hours - thankfully it was a lovely day for it. And they have a little cafe that provided a very tasty lunch for again not a huge outlay. Always a plus.

And who doesn't love mini golf? (Indoor mini golf!)

We had dinner at a local Italian restaurant - quite delicious - with memories of Ireland popping in as, since we had no reservation, they asked if we thought we could be finished in an hour and a half as the table was booked then. We assured them we could. Although in the end, we were only out about 5 minutes prior to the deadline, but that was more service related than anything. (It wasn't bad service, just slow. And I think purposefully slow. As the restaurant was very much a sit and linger type place not a here's your food and your check all at once.)

In the morning, we'd planned to hit up a local farm that let you pet llamas (hubby's favorite and another of our cards), but when we pulled up their address, the website had changed from showing operating hours to "everything is by appointment only." So in the end, we just meandered home, with a stop at the Apple House in Linden for some apply goodness.

It was lovely to get away sans kids. First time, I believe, since eldest was born. So perhaps a bit long in the making. But now that he's definitely old enough to hold the fort and youngest is old enough to not really need much supervising beyond making sure that food is consumed, we'll definitely be doing it again.