Adventures in North Carolina!

We have had a few crazy, adventurous, relaxing, stressful weeks here in NC and we've adjusted well. We are SO enjoying the chance to be out in nature without a 17 floor elevator ride and lots of concrete and pavement. We're working on all the spring gardening still and like all good horticulturalists I've learned that "special event" gardens need to be planted months in advance so they have time to establish themselves. Check out my 4th of July garden. I'm sooo EPCOT right?

Poppy Duck meanwhile is working on his castle hedge. It's coming in thick and looking good!

The kids have their very own garden! They planned it out, wrote a map to what they planted and are watering it every day. American Gothic eat your heart out!

Their garden is right near the log cabin that Grammy and P.D. made for them last year. They have a blast in that cabin!

Here it is! They are taking good care of the flowers in their window box as well!

What a set-up! We will sure miss this when we go back to Korea.

Uncle Timmy meanwhile is busy working on the 2nd floor of his barn/distillery. It's a gorgeous building and it's coming along really fast!

There will be many, many good memories made in and around that barn I have a feeling...

Meanwhile is has been an EPIC snake year! They seem to be everywhere and we have been killing them left and right. We always show the kids and they have been through several rounds of "snake school" so they know what they look like, where they might be, how to avoid them and when to really be on your guard. We killed more than this but birds keep stealing them off our snake trophy fence.

I spotted 3 in one day and was awarded my VERY OWN snake shootin' pistol. It's very rad and I am now a gardener who's packin' heat. Snakes better watch out! (I would also like to say that I find it very appropriate that I am wearing my new Zombie T-shirt in this pic. Because the gun's for snakes but you know I'm always on Zombie alert as well. Just sayin'...)

Everything here is green and lush right now. Here's a view from Bob Singer's lower barn (pig roast central) back towards the cabin. You can see the roof of the gazebo:

The kids love to relax in the hot tub at the end of the day. What a view!

Here Sasha was weeding the mint garden for Grammy first thing in the morning. She said it smelled awesome!

My garden. I work in it every day and it's coming along. We're already eating lettuce out of it!

Another view of the main garden. Timmy planted all these wildflowers on the berm below and they are gorgeous!

A view of the wishing well and the cabin up the secret staircase through the arch in the hedge.

Every day is full of wonderful little country living moments. One morning we were all our having coffee on the front porch and we taught the kids how to eat honey suckle. They loved it!

And then there's our nest in the fern. I was watering all these big hanging plants on the front porch and noticed that a bird kept shooting out of this one fern. Took a look and sure enough, there was the cutest little nest and 4 tiny blue eggs!

Another shot of the nest in the fern:

The kids are busy from morning till night. They do school with me in the morning, then we're either helping Uncle Timmy down at the barn....

.... or having a lesson with our AWESOME summer Suzuki teacher. Her name is Morgan and she is great. Teddy is even playing and he loves it! That's how awesome she is!

And she has this ridiculous cat named "Rimski" that is fat and lucious and just loves all over you the whole time you're at her house.

So that was last week. At the very end of the week I peeked in on the eggs in the nest and instead saw 4 little bundles of downy fluff. They hatched! We are watching them every day to see how they grow!

Juwangsan National Park

The weekend before the kids and I left for a summer in The States we headed to Juwangsan National Park to camp out and explore. We camped once in the fall and loved it so we were really excited to get to see one more park before we left for the summer.

Juwangsan was really cool! Huge granite exposures and waterfalls ect. Kind of reminded me of some of the smaller side valleys at Yosemite. And on the way up to the main hiking area they had this cool strip of shops and places to eat if you were adventurous enough!

Since Bhudda's Birthday is coming up the place was all decorated with lanterns whenever you were near a temple site. Since the flowering trees weren't out in full force yet at this high an elevation it added a lot of color to our hike!

My 3 favorite hiking buddies!

We headed up to a little temple complex about 1.5 miles in because the map said that there was a "cave" there.

The "cave" was actually a tiny grotto that pinched off pretty quick. More like a crack in the rock if you ask me. These people need to come to Tennessee and see some REAL caves!

Then we checked out another "cave". More of the same. But this one had a shrine in it and someone had left a can of pringles as an offering. I did NOT know that Bhudda enjoys pringles. How interesting....

One of the little temples in this craggy area:

The cliffs all around the little temple complex:

There were about 5-6 little buildings in this area and they were kind of stacked and staggered up the hillside wherever they would fit. It was pretty neat. Makes you wondering what they were doing way up here in the mountains so very long ago. Must have been a tough place to live!

Next we headed farther up the main valley to check out some cool waterfalls. We hoped the falls would be cooler than the "caves"!

Hiking through a rocky crack:

And then we spotted the base of the first waterfall:

Here's Jeff at the top. It was very cool and quite beautiful. The water had carved quite a smooth channel for itself and cascaded down several levels.

Then we hit waterfall #2. I immediately thought you could have a really nice summer swim in the pools at the bottom of these falls but the Koreans are NOT having any of that. There are signs that say "no swimming" in several languages and video cameras. Of course the people manning these cameras are far enough away that you could probably get in a pretty good swim before they arrived to bust you and then you could just pretend to be Russian or Norwegian. Both of those languages were not represented on the "no swimming" signs so if you faked it well you'd be blame-free!

Water fall #3 was off to the side in a smaller valley. It was really beautiful and quiet so we took a little break there.

How can you not want to swim???

Jeff on the beach and the kids exploring the river.

Then we noticed that the rock wall to one side of the river had all these tiny holes and people had made rock sculptures by sticking a flat base rock into a slot and then balancing other rocks on top of it.

So we all had to give it a try. Turns out we are rock-sculpture prodigies!

Ta-daaa!!

Only in Korea moment. Waaaay out in the boon-docks of the park we came across this cell-phone charging station. Really?!?

Really. Hope they brought a book so they have something to do out here in the middle of nowhere while their phone is charging.

Aaaaand there was a mini-cell tower so that you'd have coverage. Amazing. They haven't figured out how to navigate a shopping cart at Costco but these people are SERIOUS about their cell-phone coverage. Can you hear me now?

Then we headed back down the valley. Since the time of day and direction were totally different it was like a whole new hike!

The light was hitting the rock faces in beautiful ways so our hike out was really enjoyable even with 2 kiddos who were getting a tad bit whiny.

Huge rock perched high above the valley. That thing's going to EXPLODE when it falls!

Another "cave" this one was more of an archway.

Wow! We had to check it all out.

And then it was time for a rest and a snack. Ted takes a moment for reflection:

Hiking out. We headed back to our tent to go get some dinner that we brought from home.....

...but then we decided to have another adventure so we ate at one of the little restaurant shacks.

Sun setting on the rocks:

Goof-balls in a restaurant:

The kids woke up bright and early the next morning. Of course no Team Stolasz camping trip is complete without a session of "daddy steamroller". You don't even know that Jeff is up and then all of a sudden he just steamrolls everyone in the tent. He's been doing this for as long as I can remember. Even before we had kids. Seriously....

My hysterical bunch of campers:

We had a nice breakfast and a hot drink and then took our time packing up before heading back to the city. It was a great trip and we are excited to check out even more of the Korean National Parks when we get back in the fall!