"Carry Me Back To Old Virginny (Ray Charles). "

6:55

6:56

7:27

It was pitch black at 5:45 when I got up, with cool weather and rain forecast for this morning, a good day for a seven-hour drive to 'old Virginny.' Unfortunately, it's going to be cool in Virginia today but get up into the 80's over the weekend.  It's just after 7:00 and a pink streak has appeared just above the horizon, a harbinger of the morning sun.

Another Dahlia

Pink Beauty

Yesterday was a getting ready kind of day, ready for fall, ready for our drive to our daughter Jill's home.  Despite the overcast morning sky, I got in a good kayak paddle and by 1:30,  the sky opened up and it turned out to be another Indian Summer Day.  Our dock will be coming in during our trip so I started clearing off the dock, bailing out the rowboat, getting things ready to put up in the garage attic.  Evie decided it would be nice to make a pot of sloppy joes to take along with the chocolate chip cookies she was already baking.  So I drove off to the store and picked up what she needed for the sloppy joes and came straight home.  The cookies were practically done so it was easy to start browning the ground round.  Her goal was to have everything done by 12:30 and by 12:45, she was able to go out on the dock for another end of summer day.  The sun was warming and although the temperature hardly got up to 70º, it was still pleasant.  I joined her around 2:30 after my lunch, nap, and some reading.

Around 3:30, we had enough of the sun and it was starting to get windy so Evie took what may be her last swim of the year.  After the swim,  Evie started to get things organized for our trip, always an arduous task.  I finished up with taking everything off our dock, putting up a fishing line to keep geese off our lawns, cutting the lawn and storing all the boat stuff in the garage attic.  It was warm enough to work up a sweat so I decided that despite the wind, I would swim.  It was great once I got in, refreshing and it woke me up.

Around 5:30, we had a brief wine time and Evie got our dinner together, leftover chicken and noodles from last night's dinner and a big salad.  We watched more news about Harvey Weinstein, the only good thing about it was that it stopped, momentarily, the flow of news about Trump.  We also watched the Wisdom of The Crowd, a new series which was average.  I am not sure we will stick with it.  We both went to bed early because of our trip this morning.