Hiking the Deathly Hallows Trail

 Yay, it's Memorial Day!  This blog post is late, but that doesn't mean it's any less inspired.

Over Memorial Day, we rented an AirBNB in McGaheysville, Virginia, not so far from the Massanutten Resort, where there are loads of hiking trails open to the public.  For some reason, all of us (except Matt, who had the itch to golf) got the itch to hike in Massanutten, and we picked the Kaylor's Knob Trail, high above the Massanutten Resort Lodge.  We drove up and congregated at the trailhead.  Beth Puppy was so excited for the hike that she forgot to look at the camera:

It won't be long -- only a couple weeks -- until Weina, William and Matt fly off to their new posting in Lithuania and have a chance to try out hiking trails in Europe.  As for us, we had to satisfy ourselves with this time with them in the George Washington National Forest:

The views were dramatic if leafy:

Although it was late May, some of the mountain laurel was still blooming, and NaiNai discovered a bush still rich with blooms:

William, like any red-blooded 10-years old girl or boy, loves Harry Potter, and, as we hiked, he enlisted YeYe in an effort to mark the trail with the symbol of the Deathly Hallows (the Elder Wand, the Cloak of Invisibility, and the Ressurection Stone), so that the other hikers could know that they were on the correct path (at least according to Luna Lovegood and her father):

William and YeYe pretended not to know where those mysterious symbols came from, and put on their most serious mystery-solving faces when the rest of the family stumbled upon the symbols:

It wasn't long before we all had solved the mysteries, and we paused on some big boulders for a traditional hike photo:

NaiNai was still on the search for a beautiful panoramic view --

-- which we finally found after we finished the hike -- looking out over the opposite valley:

There are a lot more stories about Memorial Day, but those will have to be sealed in our hearts until you happen to ask us, in person, to share them with you.

In the meantime, stay cool, my friends!