A Social Socially-Distant Fourth!

Happy Anniversary, Kathy!  This was the high point of the holiday weekend, which is also the weekend of our anniversary --

-- but I get ahead of myself.

Our social, socially-distant Fourth began on Friday, July 3, with a visit to Kathy's sister Eileen's and her husband Tom's house for a barbeque.  Tom had been rummaging through some old tubs in the attic and discovered this Wawa rugby shirt that he had forgotten he was holding to give to Matt.  Tom modeled it for us, but the result makes Tom look like a munchkin from Oz:

You may be a little person, but the gift is big and your heart is bigger.

Saturday, July 4, the actual date of our wedding anniversary, was more peripatetic.  We met our daughter Katie at George Washington's Headquarters in Valley Forge National Park in order to give the puppies a walk and explore the easternmost trailhead of the Horse-Shoe Trail.  Here, Katie succeeds in directing Ruthie's and Maggie's attention to the camera as they rest on Washington's HQ front porch:

It was but a quarter mile to the trailhead of the Horse-Shoe Trail.  As we crossed the highway toward the trail, we encountered this memorial marker, erected in 1972 in memory of Henry N. Woolman, the founder, in 1935, of the Horse-Shoe Trail Club, Inc. He was also once the owner of the property used by General Duportail, which was our wedding venue.

The puppies were getting hot, tired and thirsty, so we walked back through the Park to our cars and drove 2.5 miles over to Duportail House, where Kathy and I got married on July 4, 1998:

According to the website of the Duportail House:  "In 1740, a Welsh Quaker named John Havard, Jr. built a stone farmhouse on a large William Penn land grant, amid the fertile fields of Chester County’s Great Valley. During the Continental Army’s encampment at Valley Forge in 1777-78, the Havard family played host to a guest from France, General Louis Lebègue Duportail.  Recruited by Benjamin Franklin, Duportail served as the army’s Chief Engineer, designing fortifications at Valley Forge that could enable Washington’s troops to hold off a potential attack by the British army, which was encamped in nearby Philadelphia."

When we were married, there was no evidence of the fortifications, but the old stone farmhouse still stood.  It boasted a beautiful wooden gazebo, which was where we took our wedding vows.  Our wedding party consisted of the entire next generation:

For reasons lost to memory, our niece Vicki was missing in the above photo, but she got back in time for her own photo with the newlyweds:

Here was one of the photos of us as we took our vows:

Kathy thought it would be fun to re-enact that moment, so we stood at the very location of the gazebo (unfortunately, it did not survive as long as our marriage has), with Katie as our photographer...

...and it was at that very moment that I swept Kathy off her feet (or nearly so), just as in the original ceremony in 1998.  Just as in the original event, Kathy was mainly scared that I would drop her.  

Never.

We capped this memorial ceremony off with a picnic lunch of Wawa hoagies, to memorialize our meal of Wawa hoagies on our first date.  You don't need to see us chewing our memorial food, but we thought you'd enjoy another photo of the puppies.  Maggie was hamming it up, but Ruthie was really more interested in the birdhouse above her head:

This recent heat and humidity has been somewhat oppressive, and it has really put a crimp in our hiking.   We resolved to get a hike in on Sunday, July 5, so we were up early, grabbed our cold brew coffee, Kathy wrapped some breakfast burritos, and we set out to hike a section of the Horse-Shoe Trail near our campground that we have done before.  No driving meant more, earlier -- and hence cooler -- hiking!

Up Muddy Creek Road we started --

-- but Kathy had to pause and say hello to a new resident of one of the nearby farms:

David, in turn, paused on the Weaver Farm, over which part of the trail runs, to check on a female cardinal who had somehow gotten caught in a critter trap probably meant for varmints invading the farm's asparagus crops.  Due to the lighting, and because she was frantically flapping about inside, it's hard to see her, but she was beside herself.  (She was still in the trap as we returned along the trail, and, while we didn't feel we had the right to open the Weavers' trap, we did pour a big puddle of water into the trap so she would have something to drink while waiting for her jailers to free her.)

Someone else needed a drink, too:

We felt this patriotic flag and blaze expressed the spirit of today's hike:

Our hike today was 6.5 miles.  As we neared our turnaround breakfast spot, we stumbled upon this box turtle who, when he realized two giants were approaching him, froze and tried to decide which direction to run...er...creep.  He decided to wait to see which direction we were headed.  As we proceeded along the trail in the direction he was crawling, he turned around and slow-tailed it the opposite direction.

That was about the extent of the excitement on our hike, but it universally involved unexpected wildlife experiences, which was interesting for a change.

Later, on Sunday afternoon, we picked up our newly traditional weekly foodbox from Stoudt's Restaurant and Pub -- this week a "Maine-Theme" box of very tasty food.  The day before, when Katie heard what food we were expecting in the box, she decided that she would grill lobster for our barbeque visit the next day.  We agreed to bring lobster mac-and-cheese from the Stoudt's box.

And so it was that our barbeque at Katie's house on Monday, July 6, was lobster-themed.   We brought all these goodies from Stoudt's Black Angus Restaurant and Pub: lobster mac-and-cheese, blueberry buckle, salmon tart and baked beans --  

-- which all of us loved.  Katie especially found the lobster mac-and-cheese tasty and she servinged-up.  The puppies also appreciated that and helped clean up the extra lobster.

Both at Eileen's and Tom's on Friday, and at Katie's on Monday, we lifted our glasses and toasted absent loved ones:  to Kathy's Aunt Jane, may she rest in peace, and to our son Matt and his wife Weina and their son William, who are sheltering from Covid on this holiday in Yangon, Myanmar.  Then we dug in:

We're excited to see Matt, Weina and William later this month when they arrive at their new home near Washington, D.C.!