Wednesday started out pretty uneventful in the morning – we went to the park and swimming again. While at the park there was this other kid there that looked similar in age to Scott, and Scott and he were chasing each other around, but this kid was running circles around Scott. It was nice to see Scott interacting with someone else and having fun and all that. Later, I asked the kid how old he was, and he said “7 1/2” and I thought well that explains it then… While we were at the swimming pool, I called around to find out what everyone else was doing, and found out that folks were heading to Reddish Knob. This was being billed as the tallest point in Virginia. This attracted the highpointer in me, so I decided to take Scott and go with everyone. The rest of the fam stayed back. It was supposedly a very gentle hike once you got to the top – only like 1/4 mile or so from where you park. We didn’t bring anything but sandals for Scott, but I hoped it would be okay – and I figured at worst I could just carry him 1/4 mile.

We headed west from the resort through Harrisonburg and into the George Washington National Forest. After driving up and up and up, and making a few stops to converse and determine where exactly we were going, we went around a corner and… we were there. There was no 1/4 mile hike, the top of the mountain was just a big blacktop parking lot (with a lot of graffiti).

That’s Scott making his “cheese” face. After we got back, I did some checking only to find out that not only is Reddish Knob at 4397 feet not only not the highest point in Virginia (that’s Mount Rogers at 5729 feet), but it’s not even the highest point in Augusta County (Elliott Knob at 4463 feet), so I was denied a county highpoint. I consoled myself by saying that at least I had visited a new county, but upon further review, I-81 goes through Augusta County so that wasn’t even a new county for me. Oh well, it was still a nice trip. In looking at the Google Map of the area, it appears that some of the roads that we drove on might be in West Virginia, which might be a new county or two, but it’s hard to know for sure.

In the afternoon, we had some Scottish highland games. My dad and my brothers are very into these Scottish games. We have a lot of Scottish ancestry on this side of the family. Or I guess I should say “they” do, since I’m not a blood relative :-). The bad part of this was that it decided to rain for the first time all week. When I had checked the 10-day forecast before we left it said “rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain” (literally). But the weather had been pretty nice until then. The rain didn’t last too long though, and we were able to get in a few good caber tosses.

That’s me admiring one of my tosses. I have to say, I didn’t find it to be that difficult at all. Of course, that it may have been due to the fact that instead of a regulation 20 foot long, 130 pound chunk of wood (think telephone pole), it was a 10 foot section of PVC pipe :-). At the games, we busted out the water balloon launcher, which has become sort of a staple event of these reunions. Here’s Scott “helping” my cousin Jake launch one.

Good times, good times…