The Step Out the Door: June 2013

It was a muggy Saturday afternoon, west North Carolina. The sun was high and the temperature higher, a big canvas of blaring blue sky overhead. The excitement in the air was palpable, an almost tangible sense of anticipation. What would the day hold? How would our fearless shooter fare in her first competition?

A 12-pointer. 12-point shot that is, not a 12-point buck, because as you can see, this deer has no antlers at all. Excellent shooting, Honey. Bringing home the bacon. Erm, doe meat.

Let's see the pro in action from beginning to flawless end.

Kill shot.

Another dead animal.

I gotta tell you folks, you don't wanna cross this woman when she's got her Rampage handy. I mean we're all aware of her skills in an indoor range with known distances, but this was a whole new sport. Her first time competing in an outdoor 3D range, and here she had to try her best to gauge the distance at each target, and despite all the varying, unknown distances across different terrains, shooting uphill and downhill, navigating through trees and the wind to reckon with, and without any practice shots....

...she rarely missed her target.

Location:South Mountain Archery

So I woke up on a Tuesday morning with a list full of things I needed to get done. Before I was sure I was even awake Dustin turned to me and said

"wanna go to the beach?"

Then I wasn't sure he was even awake or if he was, he'd gone even more crazy in his sleep. We had lots to do and Dustin has work I was sure it was just a wishful thought. But as you can see somehow we ended up with ocean sand between our toes...

Backing up a little...

Here we are in the car with a backseat full of towels and toys to spend time at the terrific beach :D

So we hit the road, but before then we'd jumped up and rushed around the house getting everything ready for the trip. It turned out Dustin had been thinking about this for a while and once we discovered through a conversation with Mom & Dad the night before that the Columbia Temple was on the way to the beaches of Charleston it was already decided in his mind that we would go.

Lucky for me I married a thoughtful, thorough, and yet spontaneous husband so I got to tag along with his well made out plan. We'd go to Columbia, reserve a cheaper campsite, go spend the day in Charleston and then return late that night to Columbia and hit the 9:00 session at the temple making the timing right to for me to get to work on time.

Everything went so smoothly, no wrong turns or time spent backtracking or stopping for wifi directions at McDonald's thanks to Dustin's trusty Ipad:) It was a non-stressful and very pleasant get-away.

And here we are, in Charleston! My first time returning and Dustin's first time ever.

It pored.

So we ran into a museum. The oldest museum in Charleston actually, we really enjoyed it because it had once been a museum for the old city and we got to see a museum through their eyes.

Imagining a time when there wasn't a Planet Earth or National Geographic channel to watch we could see just how spectacular this place would've been to them even as it was to us.

For example, that's an Egyptian mummy. ITS A REAL LIVE (ok maybe not live per say but still) A MUMMY from a civilization that thrived THOUSANDS of years ago! I was pretty stoked about that (not that I'm bitter about missing out on Egypt or anything ;D )

Dustin was equally stoked about the... uh... alligator.

And here is one of the infamous post boxes. I was constantly seeking these out while on the Sabbatical with my family, looking for a way to have any kind of contact with my beloved in Idaho. I was always moving locations so no mail could reach me and WiFi was few and far between so emails were sparse. My best effort at a solution was postcards. I loved collecting them from each state I visited, telling a brief story about our adventures there and then sending them off through one of these boxes. I remember placing several in this very box, and here we are two years later returned to that very place as a married couple. Didn't see that coming, but I'm so glad it did.