The hounds were long overdue for their quarterly baths.  Last weekend the weather was warm, so it was the perfect time to hose them down and wash them clean.  What mom doesn’t want to capture cute pictures of their kids at bath time?

My intention was to take some cute “naked” pics of the pups but being the one bathing and trying to take pictures proved to be a challenge and what I ended up with was an unexpected surprise of their reflections while they did the post bath shake.

First up for his Johnson and Johnson’s baby shampoo bath was Cueball.  I gave up on buying expensive dog shampoo years ago when I discovered baby shampoo works great and if it is gentle enough for a baby, I figure it is good enough for my hounds and it makes them smell great.

Shaking……

More shaking…..

Inside after being towel dried.  He looks so pleased with me, doesn’t he.  Ha…ha….

Next up is the Queen herself.  She likes to rub herself on anything after a bath.   I think this picture is really sweet. 🙂

She may be admiring her beautiful self in this one.  Don’t hate me because I am beautiful she says.

Shake, shake, shake…..

More shaking…..

She looks like a whippet to me in this one.

Pippi gets really wild after a bath, but I had the deck gate closed this time, so she did not get a chance to go buck wild running and rubbing her self in the grass/dirt.

She shows her wild side here.  She wants to play with me.  She did end up jumping up and down and putting her paws on my chest wanting me to play.

Mom, why do we have to get a bath?  I wasn’t dirty.  Did you forget that I am a greyhound and do not have that normal “dog” odor?

No Pippi, mommy did not forget, but you must have been smelling pretty rank for Katie-Beth, our niece, to let me know on vacation that our dogs stink.  =)  She suggested we give you all a bath.

Once inside she romped around in the living room and settled on a spot on the couch ready to prance at any moment.  Oh and she rearranged the blankets on the couch for me too.

Lastly it was Booyah’s turn.  He cooperates beautifully at bath time.  The others I have to chase around the deck with the hose.  Booyah just patiently stands beside me while I wet, lather, rub him down and rinse.

I love the way the sun gleams on a black greyhound.  Beautiful shine.

Good shake!

Back inside Booyah takes a nap.

All clean for the summer months.  Next bath will be after our vacation to Beach Bound Hounds.  Hopefully the weather will still be nice enough to bathe them outside.  It is so much easier than lifting them into the tub.  🙂

Last entry of our vacation to Barkwells in Asheville, NC (if you are just tunning in, see posts 1,2 and 3).   It wouldn’t be a vacation if you didn’t get to spend time relaxing, right?  That is what we think.  I hate vacations where you come back home and you feel like you need a vacation just from being on vacation because you tried to do too much and did not get a chance to relax.  We wanted to make sure this vacation was not going to be one of those.  We spent a fair amount of time relaxing.  Taking a cue from how the hounds seem to spend most of their days.   It was too hot to use the fireplace, which was a shame, as I was hoping to see their reaction to it since we do not have one at home.  Maybe next time.  Mitch thinks it would be really cool to come back and stay for a week in the winter.  He said the hills are perfect for sledding.  This won’t be a place we visit every year, but it is on our list to visit again.

Cueball preferred to do his relaxing partly on the couch and partly on the floor.  He does this at home too.  He just balances himself for a while.  Not sure how that is comfortable.  He looks like he is going to slide right off the couch at any moment.  Such a goof!  😉

Pippi chose the more traditional way to relax if you’re a hound.

I prefer the hammock.

We ventured out most days in the morning and enjoyed Asheville and in the afternoons and evenings we were back at the cabin.  We enjoyed smores one evening on the charcoal grill.  Not the prefered way to do smores for me, but we had to work with what we had.  The kiddos had a lot of fun roasting marshmallows.

Mitch being a big kid.  🙂

Ramona showing us her talent at roasting marshmallows.

I like mine black just like I like my hotdogs when cooked over an open fire.  Yum!!

We also enjoyed walks around the pond with Greta and meeting new friends along the way.  She is one regal beagle!

And spending time with the kiddos.  Mitch and Katie-Beth chilling by the pond.

And picking flowers.

And flying planes.

And trying to figure out what was killing the catfish in the pond.  We found two like this on one of our walks.  Just the bellies were mangled.

And watching/catching lightning Bugs.  Depending on where you grew up, you may call these fireflies.  We have them in our backyard too but not like at Barkwells.  There were thousands every night and the kiddos had a blast catching them.  I tried to get the best picture I could.  It is still not great.  I tried changing the aperture, shutter speed, flash but this was the best I could do.  It was interesting to see them respond to my different flash settings.  Some settings made them all light up when I flashed the camera and some made them stop lighting up when I flashed my camera.  It was weird…..and a you had to be there kind of thing.  When they all lit up across the field in front of the pond…….it was breathtaking.

Other pictures of nature that I took while we were out and about enjoying Asheville.

I love Sunflowers.  I actually have some seeds to plant just have not done so yet, but plan to in the fall.

Day lilies were abundant all over the medians of the highways in NC.  They were beautiful!  We had some orange day lilies in our flower bed at home years ago, but they overtook the bed, so we removed them and planted some liriope instead.  They need a lot of space to populate and the medians on the highways are the perfect spot.  Virginia should take a cue from NC.  Our roadways are looking pretty sad with overgrown grass/weeds.  All the roadways we drove on in NC were cut and manicured.

Pretty Butterfly and a Bee pollinating at Pisgah National Forest.

Well……that’s all for our Barkwells vacation folks!  We hope you check back again….we have some pretty neat photos from recent bath time of the hounds, Booyah and Cueball’s 8th birthdays and some pics for Wordless Wednesdays coming up.

Maggie and Pippi want you to know life is greyt!

Post three of four of our vacation to Barkwells.  This will mainly be pictures with little commentary.

We release one hound at a time to 7 acres of fenced bliss.  We released them one at a time because we tried releasing all four at once earlier in the week and it was a nightmare visually being able to keep up with all four; Pippi took a three time roll over near the corner of the pond and Maggie decided to walk right into the pond.  Thank goodness it was not deep.  Needless to say we knew we were not doing that again!

First up was Cueball, who was itching for a good run.

Next up was Maggie.  Our ten year old girl still has a lot of spunk.

I was very proud of my little monkey mae.

Next up was the youngster in our pack, Miss Personality, Pippi.

Can’t get much lower to the ground than this.

Next up was Booyah, who was very interested in the chickens  who were residing in the fenced yard just next to our cabin, instead of a fun run, so I coaxed him a little.

Last, but certainly not least, is Greta, cousin to our hounds, showing us she can run with the big dogs.  She may not be as fast as the her bigger hound cousin counterparts, but she can out “nose” them any day.  😛

Stay tuned, we have one more vacay post to share.  🙂

This post is a continuation of our family vacation to Barkwells (see previous post).  The forecast for the week was thunderstorms/rain all week.  This was not going to stop us from having fun on our vacay!  On days when we had rain showers, which were only a couple of days, we hung around the cabin until things cleared up, then we ventured out.  We found the weather predictions to be inaccurate on most days.  If the local weather person said we had a 60% or better chance for rain, we learned that meant we would not get rain at all but a 30% or less chance meant we would get rain between the hours of 12-4 p.m.  Strange to say, but this is how it worked out all week for us and by the middle of the week, we had the system down.   🙂  There are quiet a few things to do at the cabin.  Relax in the hot tub or soak in the deep two person jetted tub, fish/swim in the pond, watch the storms from the comfort of your huge country porch, play board/trivia games with the family, bird watch etc.  We did lots of bird watching while we were there.  There are feeders on the cabin porch and throughout the property.

Birds were plentiful.  I was able to get a few shots of birds flying, which I think are pretty cool, that I will share below.

While I was taking pictures of Mitch and Mike tossing a styrofoam airplane (pics in later post), this bird kept turning its head towards me when my camera would make a noise while taking a picture.  I figured he/she wanted its photo taken, so I obliged.

Enough birds.  🙂  The whole Ridlon clan and an overnight guest, Sharon, Ramona’s BFF, went to play mini golf one day.  It happened to be the hottest day of the week, of course.  So we treated ourselves to ice cream at the Sugar Shack when we were done with our game. 😉  8 players took two hours to play an 18 hole mini-golf course, but we had fun while doing it.  I stink at mini-golf.  I mean STINK!  Stink, Stank, Stunk at mini-golf.  Always have, and probably always will!  Think of something you are not good at and multiply that by 10,000 and it still won’t be as bad as I am at this game.  Partly because these are the kind of shots I make (below).  Luck is not on my side.  I can “bring it” in a Bball game for sure but mini-golf I lack all talent. 🙂

I don’t have the patience for it and usually give up if I can’t make the putt in three shots.  I did not let my frustration ruin every one else’s fun and stuck it out through all 18 holes.  🙂  My final score was 59.  Mitch’s was 56.  Below are a few pics of us playing.

We played mini-golf in Chimney Rock, NC.  I did not realize that the Last of the Mohicans and Dirty Dancing were partially filmed in this area.  The town sure knows it though.  They have a Dirty Dancing boat tour which will take you to the spots where they filmed the movie, including the lake scene where Baby (Jennifer Grey) and Johnny (Patrick Swayze) practice their lift.  We were going to try to do this on our last day in Asheville, but it rained.  Next time for sure.  I am a Dirty Dancing nut!  I first saw this movie when I was around 8 years old and have loved it ever since.  Anytime it is on the tube, I am glued to it.   Mitch just rolls his eyes, Lol!!  Anywho, at the mini-golf course there was a Johnny loves Baby tree.  Had to take a photo of this.

The kiddos had a great time at mini-golf.  It was great to see smiles on their faces.  🙂  Well worth all the frustration during the game.  We traveled through Batcave, NC to get to Chimney Rock and we thought for sure Carl, our nephew, would be thrilled about this as he is a HUGE Batman fan, but he informed us that the Batcave is a scary place, so he wasn’t too excited about it, but we thought it was pretty neat.

Back at the cabin, Mitch takes a nap with the pups.  We did this frequently throughout the week.  I think we need to institue a mandatory Siesta time at work.

After a bit of a rest, Carl has energy to expend so it became bubble time.

The grownups needed to have some adult time, so Auntie Carol volunteered to watch the kiddos while we went downtown for some lunch and some local brews.  Unfortunately, the two breweries we opted to try were both closed.  Jack of the Wood was closed because they were filming.  Filming what I don’t know, but we were all willing to be active extras drinking at the bar.  😉  And Thirsty Monk did not open till 4 p.m. and it was only 2 p.m. so we headed to a local eatery and enjoyed some Highland and French Broad Brew.

The Highland Gaelic was excellent and is sold here in VA, YAY!!  French Broad’s Wee-Heavy-Er was also fabulous.  Maybe next time we will do the Brews Cruise!  Afterall, Asheville has been voted Beer City, USA.  Sounds like fun to me.  🙂

We returned to the cabin after our adult time and had some more brews on our porch.  The pups were quite content upon our return.

And, I was content enjoying a cold beer and enjoying this view.

We hope you will stay tuned.  The next two posts for our vacay will mainly be of the pups and their adventures.

We just got back from a week vacay for the Ridlon family in Asheville, NC.  We stayed at Barkwells Pet Friendly Mountain Resort.  The Park family inspired our stay at Barkwells.  We had a fabulous time!!  And, we highly recommend this resort to anyone who is looking for a mountain retreat.  Owners Ellen and Michael, originally from Tampa, FL, bought the property 7 years ago and over the years turned it into a mountain retreat for humans and dogs.  They have done a wonderful job!  There are a very nice family and were just a phone call away if we needed anything.  🙂  We referred to the Book of Wisdom in the cabin quiet a bit during our stay.  This resource was very help.  There are so many things to do in the area and the resort itself offers a relaxing carefree environment.  Perfect setting for the type of vacation we love!!  We have so much to share!  We hope you enjoy reading about our adventures and that we don’t bore you too much.

🙂  I went through the over thousand photos that I took during the week and narrowed everything down to what I feel are the best.  Since I have over 70 photos to share, we will spread this into 4 posts starting with this one (Mek = One in Armenian).  We were welcomed by this sign:

Below is the Libby Cabin and where we called home for our week.  With 5 adults, 2 children and 5 dogs we needed quiet a bit of space to be comfortable for the week.  This cabin offered us lots of room and was beautiful inside and out.

The grounds at Barkwells is also lovely.  The entire 7 acres is fenced so we did not have to worry about our kids if a door was accidentally left open.  Which is an added benefit when you are vacationing with some many other folks.  =)   Below is the pond.  It is the perfect place to fish.  We saw a couple catch a significant sized Trout and also saw two very large Catfish in the water.  I did not bring my poles, so we just enjoyed watching others fish.  Our cabin was just uphill from the pond so every day we got to enjoy this serene view.

The property also had two very lovely Weeping Willow trees.  My absolute favorite tree. 

We had scattered showers throughout the week, but it did not prevent us from having a great time!  The first day we relaxed at the cabin and enjoyed a nice dinner cooked on the charcoal grill.  It did not take long for the pups to find comfort in the cabin.   They loved the King size bed and so did we.  Sleeping in our Queen bed just isn’t the same.

On Monday we took the pups to Chimney Rock State Park for a nice hike to see some waterfalls.  We passed through Batcave, NC on our way to Chimney Rock.  What a cool name for a town!  The town of Chimney Rock is very quaint and is actually where part of the movie Dirty Dancing and The Last of the Mohicans was filmed.  They even have a Dirty Dancing boat tour, which we did not get a chance to do, but would have loved to.  Maybe next time.  🙂

We were not able to hike to the top of Chimney Rock since it was all open back stairs and about 26 flights total.  They have an elevator that will take you to the top, but it was not functioning on the day we went and no pups are allowed on it so we hiked the Hickory Nut Falls trail to the waterfall instead.  It was a beautiful hike and the pups did great.  So worth the walk to get to this view:

Those rocks are amazing!!

The pictures do not do the falls justice!  Nature is so amazing!!!

The pups did wonderfully on the hike!  We were so proud of them!  Maggie was definitely a trooper.  🙂  She is one strong girl.

Below is a pic of Mitch, his sister Carol, and the pups.  Carol flew in from California.  We were so happy she could join us, but sad that his other two sisters could not.  We missed Kathy and Paul and Darcy and Bre, but enjoyed spending time with Carol, Mike (Mitch’s twin brother) and his wife Ramona and their two adorable kids Katie-Beth and Carl.  🙂  Pictures of them to come in a later post.

Lastly for entry number one is a pic of us with the pups at the falls.

We have lots more to share, so we hope you check back again soon.  🙂

Here is a picture of the print we picked up at the silent auction at the VAGA picnic (see earlier post).  Mitch is quiet proud!  He is not much into silent auctions like I am.  He usually just tags along with me and then gets stuck carrying all the good stuff I end up with.  😉  Maybe he will be participating in bidding this year at the Beach Bound Hound Silent Auction, I always pick up good stuff there.

The print is by Van Loan done in 1988 and is print 154 of 300.  It now proudly hangs above the TV in our living room.

Anyone else have a hound(s) who has never lost their “track time internal alarm”? Over the years, we have spoken to several adopters who say their hounds sleep in late, some have even said that they have had to make their hounds get up and go out as late 10:00 a.m. Not our hounds! They wake us up every morning between 5:45 and 6:00 a.m. and the latest they have ever let us sleep in was 7:30 a.m. Not really sleeping in by my standards. 😉 During the week we take them out between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m. for their last potty break and we are okay with getting up at 6 a.m. during the week, since it works out great for both our work schedules. On the weekends, we have taken them out as late as 12:30 a.m. in hopes they would allow us to sleep in, but nope! They still got us up early. They are so reliable that we have not used an alarm clock in our house in 4 1/2 years. We have 4 very trustworthy alarm clocks who wake us up by either coming over to the bed and sticking their cold, wet needle noses on us; whining and whimpering until we acknowledge them; letting out a loud, screeching bark ; or by squeaking a toy. We should not allow toys in the bedroom at night, I know, but Maggie Mae loves to bring a toy to bed with her each night. She lays with it. I guess it is a comfort to her. She looks so happy and proud coming up those stairs each night with a toy in her mouth that I just don’t have it in me to take it away from her.

Anyone have any suggestions on what we can do differently to get them to sleep in a little later or are we just stuck with our four early risers?