Culpeper - with Cindy & Steve

In honor of our generous hosts Cindy & Steve, today's episode will be in English😄

On Thursday, we were welcomed at their home in Culpeper, Virginia. Or, rather, around Culpeper, as we had to drive into the countryside, turn right into a dead end street, drive for another mile, continued on a gravel road & there we were!

Wow - their home truly is their castle!

Anyway - Cindy welcomed us and showed us around - while Steve was still making his way home from the airport, returning from a visit to one of Rocket's locations in Germany.

After Steve arrived, and a few beers (Maaike is all into IPA now) we went off to a great little (fish) restaurant in downtown Culpeper 

and to a nice bar afterwards, catching up on family stories (keeping work chatter to a bare minimum)

On Friday, everyone woke up fresh and fruity to a fun day.The men and Maaike went for a walk around the premises with three energetic dogs who hunted for turtles. 

Steve had taken the day off so we were going to out into the Virginia area - but first: Breakfast, with a capital B - fruit, a blueberry pie, and eggs benedict - amazing!

Today it was two years ago that Maaike's mother died and Maaike called her dad to talk to him. Of course we were thinking of Dini a lot today. Anne also called her opa from Mallorca. 

After this, we decided to go out for a walk in the Shenandoah National Park (a 15 minute ride) and then visit a winery or something.

Shenandoah is an 800 km2 nature reserve, and there is a nice little hike to the Lower and/or Upper White Oak Falls

It was a great 2.5 mile hike up after which it was very relaxing to cool our feet in the water ...

Well, that is, we got out quickly after I (Herman) saw a snake slithering his way in the water in our direction...

The upper falls were a bit further down (well, up) the road

but the ladies went on strike - so Steve and I took care of that part ...

Going down we took a little (...) detour for a change of scenery where I am afraid I have to admit we broke the law ...

(don't be alarmed no mass murderers on the loose, this was just put there to avoid a tiny little landslide ...). According to Cindy's app we burnt 674 calories and we hiked 6,51 miles (which is 10,45 km!). Maaike could not remember when she had last walked such a long distance and Cindy broke her own record as well.

After our adventures, we had a late lunch at the DuCard Vinyards - with a little wine as reward for our hard work on the hills

All well deserved of course!

We were all pretty exhausted because of the heat and the exercise so we took a shower and took some rest. We ate a salad with chicken because we had a lot of snacks in the afternoon with our wine. 

It was a great day, Steve and Cindy took very good care of us. We hope we will ne able to have them over in Dordrecht someday to return this favor. 

Everyone was real tired, so we went to  bed early.