Family by the Lake

Dr. and Dr. Cheesy recently took a vacation to a lake house in northern Virginia. It was, needless to say, not the big, boisterous get-together that had originally been planned pre-pandemic. But we were able to spend some quality time with a few members of my family.

Our departure was delayed by two days because I had to reschedule one of my board exams (thanks, COVID). Eventually we packed the car with all the food we would need while driving and at the house (and then some); sheets, towels, pillows, blankets; games and books; and anything else you might want at a lake, before heading off with extra masks and several downloaded podcasts about an old Sherlock Holmes TV series. Our next door neighbor kindly agreed to feed Rosamunda, whom she saw ever so briefly the very last night before we got home.

My father had found a large rental home that sleeps 10, with a variety of en suite-bedrooms, a pool table, screened/covered/open porches, and access to a backwater creek feeding into Lake Anna. Lake Anna was created when the Virginia Electric and Power Company (now Dominion) dammed up the North Anna River to create a cooling pond for a nuclear power plant in 1972. Fun fact: they thought it would take 3 years to fill the lake, but thanks to Hurricane Agnes, it only took 18 months! Lake Anna is now a very popular recreational spot, though I regret to inform you that we missed the Rumpus in Bumpass, the annual spring triathlon in a nearby town.

Instead, we swam and fished off the nearby docks; played a lot of games; made ginormous bubbles; watched Hamilton on Disney+; lay in the hammock; swam and hiked in the nearby state park; walked the dog; and put together and started to color a jigsaw puzzle. The week started off sunny and hot, then got progressively wetter. The rain showers mostly happened overnight, except for the brief one that produced this rainbow over the little island in the lake that we paddled around on our pool noodles. There wasn't too much boat traffic in this part, and the partying college kids mostly kept it down. Alas, s'mores didn't happen this trip.

We ate like kings and queens. For instance, N. and C. brought taco fixings and a charcuterie board. The two meals Dear Husband and I prepared were veggie pizza (like last summer) with watermelon, and the black bean burgers with blue cheese crumbles that I recently mastered. Except that I forgot Pioneer Woman makes massive patties, so when I doubled the recipe, we ended up with 14 burgers instead of the 6 we needed! We also grilled corn on the cob via a clever method I learned from my other brother that doesn't involve laboriously picking off the floss.

Too bad the "after" picture is blurry, but I think it gives you a good sense of how tricky the puzzle was to assemble when it was just black lines on a white background, and what fun it was color all the wildlife. Aunt B. and Cousin J. can put it back together and finish coloring it.

We also took a couple of carefully planned excursions, including to Monticello.