Thursday, July 15, 2004

Thank you Letter to my Aunt and Uncle.
 
July 15, 2004
 
Dear Ann and Don,

We had a wonderful time in Eastman with you. Thank you for your great hospitality and for letting us have an entire day and two nights with you. There could not have been a better way to start a vacation. It was such a rush to get away from Miami, we were wound up to say the least, and to sit on that porch with you and have that time together was a balm.
 
We reached Montreat in plenty of time after leaving Eastman on Saturday. Walter, Morgan, and Mary drove up with Carol’s sister, Mary Ann, in time for dinner there. We all enjoyed each other and the conference activities. My seminar on "End of Life Issues" was well received. We heard some fine preaching. We saw old friends from prior conferences, including a young lady whom we had met years before, Becky Capps. She graduated from Princeton Seminary in 2003 and had recently joined the staff at Westminster PC in Spartanburg as an associate minister. Is that the church you attended?

On Tuesday at Noon the conference ended. We said good bye to Mary Ann, and Mary, Walter, Morgan, Carol, and I drove to the Blue Ridge Parkway and headed north toward Blowing Rock. We stayed for three nights at a National Park Service campground just off the Parkway: no electricity, no showers, but a "comfort station", which you had to find at night with your flashlight. Despite all of those deprivations (maybe a little because of them), we enjoyed it. The weather was cool and dry. One day we canoed down the New River. Another day we went to Linville Gap, to the viaduct on Grandfather Mountain, to the Mast General Store near Boone, and we did some hiking.

On Friday we drove to Spindale and visited Carol’s Aunt Evelyn. Macon and Kellsey met us there and we spent the night. On Saturday, we drove Walter, Morgan and Mary back to Greensboro, but stopped for lunch in Winston-Salem. In W-S Mary showed us the school where she will be teaching and the house that she and two other young women will be renting for the year. Then we dropped Walter and Morgan off at the Greensboro-High Point-Winston Salem airport for their flight back to Dallas. From there we went to Mary Ann’s house and dropped off Mary. About 3PM we headed for home. We got as far as Savannah Saturday night, and then drove the rest of the way to Miami on Sunday.

Now its Friday, two weeks from the Friday that we spent with you. The velocity of time seems to accelerate as I get older. But I am still enjoying those moments with you, and I always will.

We hope you will come visit us soon.

Thank you again for making us feel so welcome and loved.

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