Sowers Family Thanksgiving

Hi Lake People,

Lisa and I spent our Thanksgiving on the Blue Ridge Parkway. My Dad and his two brothers, Bob and Don, as well as my half brother Brian and families all rented cabins. Nice cabins at that. They were all one room, very clean and nicely appointed with micro, fridge, jacuzzi tub and gas logs. Some of the larger ones had a small stove. It was nice to have your own retreat, since we were having to deal with family.

It was great to see Brian and his new family, his wife Andi and daughter Katarina. Brian and Andi are both career Coasties, stationed near Boston, MA. This was our first meeting with Andi and Kat. Kat is a trip, smart and full of energy. She took a shine to her Uncle Benny. Andi handles a lot of the radio transmissions for the Coast Guard. My Dad, my Uncle Don and his wife, Carol, are all ham radio operators. We had plenty to talk about.



Brian brought his new turkey fryer and a bird. It was a little bit of challenge trying to keep the burner lit, after all we were on top of a mountain, and a coastal storm had just blown up the East Coast, but we managed. I just love fried turkey.



It was cool to see the three brothers together again. All are retired now. Bob and Don are both very active in their churches, Dad is active in the Church of the Long Distance Motorcycle Riders. Here you can see the interior of one of the larger cabins. That is Don, Dad, and Bob respectively. This was taken after the meal and the tryptophan is starting to kick in.



All in all, a very enjoyable trip except for the trip back. We decided to try US 58. Got turned around some how in Danville and wound up on US 29N. Back tracked and found US 360 and followed that all the way back to Richmond. My GPS was on the fritz, so guess what Santa is bringing me? Here is a view from the front porch of our cabin, Buffalo Mt. in the distance. If you're ever up this way, I highly recommend Lonesome Pine Cabins. You can see more photos from this and other trips at my Flickr page.

WELCOME!

This is an experiment to see if we can get some more participation in the "off season", so that we can keep up with what we all are doing. Anyone is free to post here. In fact, the more the merrier, and the more interesting this site will be. If you would like to post, I will need to add you as an author. This will be a closed site, not openly visible on the internet, and is just for our lake people community. so, if you would like to post something here, shoot me an email - bender77@gmail.com or you can leave a comment here. You will have to register ( I know it's a pain, but it's the only way to keep the spammers out) and you will have to log-in to view or post to the site (blog). This site is not meant to replace the lakegastongroup site on AOL. I just thought it would be interesting to have a little more modern site with more features and no limits on the number of participants. Got a rant? Got a rave? This is the place for it. To get things started, how about posting what you did for Thanksgiving this year? If you have trouble figuring out how to post, I'm here to help. So lets get typing people, this could be a whole lotta fun!

Benny

It seems that some of you are having problems getting registered , so here are step by step instructions:

1. Click on the link in the invitation email.
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3. Enter your current email address and choose a password. You must also enter the word verification (squiggly letters) in the box provided. (this makes sure that an actual human being is trying to register)
4. Click the "I accept" button at the bottom of the page. DO NOT TRY TO SIGN IN YET.
   
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Hope this helps, let me know if you are still having problems.