Nick and Jen Lloyd

Yesterday we had a special delivery at our house. My Mom bought us a brand new washer and dryer! We are soooo excited to be able to do our laundry from the comfort of our home and not at the scary laundromat. THANKS MOM!

For Labor Day weekend we decided to find the nearest national park and go camping. Seeing as how we live on the East Coast, we figured the woods would be the least crowded place to be on this three day weekend! So we headed down to Virginia to the Shenandoah national park which overlooks the historic Shenandoah valley and river. We discovered though that even the woods are crowded here on the east coast. The campgrounds we went to were cramped…tent sites no more than 20 ft. apart and the place was FULL! We made tin foil dinners and s’mores and then as it began to get dark we realized we’d forgotten a flashlight, so we went to bed.

We talked to a very strange park ranger…we were asking him about another campground further down the road to see if it was less crowded and his response was “that one has a lot of history, you should read up about it. This country used to be a lot more segregated you know.” I thought this was a very strange comment. I looked it up and here is what I found out:

In the early 1930s, the National Park Service began planning the park facilities and envisioned separate provisions for “colored guests,” as African Americans were described in contemporaneous government documents. At that time, in Jim Crow Virginia, racial segregation was the order of the day. In its transfer of the parkland to the federal government, Virginia initially attempted to ban African Americans entirely from the park, but settled for enforcing its segregation laws in the park’s facilities. By the Thirties, there were several concessions operated by private firms within the park, some going back to the late 19th Century. These early private facilities at Skyland Resort, Panorama Resort, and Swift Run Gap, of course, were operated only for whites. By 1937, the Park Service accepted a bid from Virginia Sky-Line Company to take over the existing facilities and add new lodges, cabins, and other amenities, including Big Meadows Lodge. Under their plan, all the sites in the parks, save one, were for “Whites Only.” Their plan included a separate facility for African Americans at Lewis Mountain — a picnic ground, a smaller lodge, cabins and a campground. The site opened in 1939, and it was substantially inferior to the other park facilities. By then, however, the Interior Department was increasingly anxious to eliminate segregation from all parks. Pinnacles picnic ground was selected to be the initial integrated site in the Shenandoah, but Sky-Line continued to balk, and distributed maps showing Lewis Mountain as the only site for African Americans. During World War II, concessions closed and park usage plunged. But once the War ended, in December 1945, the NPS mandated that all concessions in all national parks were to be desegregated. In October 1947 the dining rooms of Lewis Mountain and Panorama were integrated and by early 1950, the mandate was fully accomplished. (Wikipedia)

In the morning we took Zoey on her first hike up whiteoak canyon to some beautiful waterfalls (see the picture above, can you find Nick in it??? They were HUGE!) She did amazingly well being so little. She made it almost the whole 5 miles. The hike probably took us twice as long as it should have due to the fact that people simply cannot resist stopping us to tell us how cute Zoey is. And of course, Zoey knows she is cute. When they stop to pet her and talk to her she wimpers and whines. We’ve had more social interaction with strangers in the last week than we have in the past year combined I’m pretty sure.

It’s official, we’re staying here! I’m getting stationed at the 55th Combat Camera company, Signals Brigade stationed on Fort George G. Meade (the picture above is just a picture I took at a training day, seemed appropriate since I’m blogging about the Army). That means another couple years of living near the nations capitol. We’re both excited and disappointed (some of the people in my class got Germany and some got South Korea), but overall I think it’s a really good assignment.

Anyway, Jen already posted about all the fun stuff going on in our lives so I’ll just leave you with a picture I took a little while back at the natural bridge.

The past week of our lives has been completely filled with our new long eared, pooping cutie. She is an 8 wk old beagle puppy and we absolutely couldn’t resist when we saw her at the puppy store. We’ve been looking for a puppy/dog for awhile so we had become all too eager and this was the cutest face we’d seen in awhile!

To update on last weekend, Saturday we went to Colonial Beach in VA with some of Nick’s army buds. The beach wasn’t anything to rave about but the town was so cute. They call it the “golf cart town” because everyone there drives golf carts. They have some tricked out golf carts with lift kits and sweet paint jobs. It was an unexpected quirkiness of this historic little town.

Sunday we used the free ticket I got from work for the “governor’s volunteer appreciation day at the MD state fair”. We watched a really funny pig race where the last round of the race was the pot belly pigs and they ran soooo slow it was hilarious. Then we looked at all the 4-H animals, saw the baby animals display, watched a few horse races, ate a funnel cake and a huge turkey leg drumstick and watched all the crazy people that only come out at the state fair. On our way home we made that fateful stop at the puppy store and our lives have been filled with Zoey ever since.

While we did pay a bit much for our purebred baby, Nick has decided that “you get what you paid for” certainly applies with her. She does not bark when we are gone, she is practically potty trained and follows us without even needing a leash. It’s almost like someone already trained her. Of course, her beagle instinct kicks in and when she is on the “smell trail” she hardly hears a word we say, so we’ll have to work on that. We’re hoping to train her well enough that she can certify as a therapy dog so that I can bring her into wherever I work. That’s one of the perks of being a recreational therapist, I use therapy animals sometimes so if my dog is one of them, I can take her to work. It’ll be awhile, but that’s my ideal outcome for Zoey.

Today is Nick and I’s 6 month anniversary! It does not feel like we’ve been married that long! I guess that could be due to the fact that we’ve only been together for three months of it. Sometimes I feel like I never really got married, due to the lack of a wedding. But just to let everyone know, we will be making up for that. I have officially booked a reception center in Provo UT for January 3rd. We may also try to do a house party in Moscow when we’re there for Christmas. We’re excited to get our chance to celebrate with family and friends…even if it is almost a year after the fact!

Nick and I spent the weekend in Virginia seeing the Natural Bridge. It was beautiful! The only problem was that Mr. Thomas Jefferson bought the land with the natural bridge on it and then sold it to someone else who has turned it into not only a tourist attraction but has made the surrounding area the ultimate tourist trap. I am not sure why the state has not reclaimed this natural beauty, but it remains privately owned. There is a HUGE gift shop where you can purchase package deals to take a tour of the nearby caverns (deepest on the east coast!), see the natural bridge, tour the wax museum, the dinosaur museum, the monster museum, the factory, the zoo, the drive through zoo and see a life size replica of stonehenge called “foamhenge”. All this, in the middle of nowhere! Their marketing is great…they make it sound like you need to plan on spending DAYS there. Which means that you also have to stay at their hotel and eat their food. It’s brilliant really.
Luckily we were smart. We wanted to camp and we did our research. There was a national park only 10 miles away where camping was 1/3 of the price that the private campground next to the natural bridge tries to charge you. We actually asked about camping while at the gift shop and they did not mention the national park.

We took a tour of the caverns…which were mostly man blown holes with paved walkways to see a few little cave formations. Then we went out to the campground where we met some funny old men who lent us an ax and talked our ears off for awhile and made a few blatantly racist comments. (Funny how white people assume they can say these things to other white people!) We made a fire and some s’mores and went to sleep.

Next morning we went to the natural bridge. It was quite impressive. Worth seeing for sure. They have a nice little 2 mile trail you can walk down and see an “indian village” and a little waterfall. It followed a stream that was full of fish jumping here and there.

Then we saw the “foam henge”…it was free. Some crazy man wanted to make his mark on history and decided this was it. It was pretty cool.

It’s always sad when the weekend ends and you gotta go back to work. But that’s life I guess! It can’t always be the weekend!

Have you ever gone for a run and felt like you were moving so slowly but then looked back over your shoulder and the point where you started is much further away than you had imagined it would be? That is the best metaphor that I can think of for what my life feels like right now. Each and every day drags and yet at the end of the month I can’t seem to figure out where all those days went!

Work has been insane. Remember the boss that I talked about? The really nice lady who made a terrible manager? Well she had been working at our facility for 12 years and a month after I started working, she put in a four weeks notice. I thought for a little while that this would make life a little better…I was sorely mistaken. Within our department there is supposed to be a boss and three staff. When I started work there were two staff members who had just quit. I replaced both of them as there were no other applications for the position. After being poorly trained, I attempted to take over two people’s positions. As you can imagine it has only resulted in stress. Now that the boss has been gone for a month, life is all the more stressful. The two of us are trying to do the work of four and we are getting stretched thin. The worst part is that our wonderful residents have not been too forgiving about the situation. They continue to comment on how there “used to be so many good activities in this place!” We try to explain that we have to get a lot of things done and we had to cut back…to no avail.
But there is a light…finally after weeks of no applicants, we had a downpour of them and have now hired a new director and staff member who will start on Sept 8th (hopefully…we have had one fall through before…) Even then though, we will be responsible for training them. I only hope I can train the new staff better than I was trained.

I fluctuate between being really super motivated and seeing a lot of potential in my job to feeling completely beat and just wanting to give up and quit. I guess the main thing that keeps me there is the fact that there aren’t many jobs around here. I’ll keep looking though.

As far as Nick’s job goes…We still haven’t heard where we will be stationed after Nick’s graduation from his training here on Sept 29. I guess we might not know until the week he graduates…good old army. I’m beginning to develop a love/hate relationship with the army.

This weekend Jen and I took the plunge. Spending A LOT of money we purchased most of the professional photography equipment I need to really get into the field. If you know anything about photography you might understand when I say I got a Nikon D300 with a Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5 lens, a Nikkor fixed 85mm f/1.8 lens, a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens, a Nikkon SB 800 flash, a 72mm polarizor and some standards like a tripod and a bag. The reasoning is three fold: A. I can’t shoot anything for personal use on government equipment. B. I’m a professional photographer, I may as well have the gear to act like one. C. The army won’t make a foolish man rich, but a wise man can use the army to make himself rich. By this I mean that although my salary in the service will never provide much in the way of comfort, I can use the skills the army has trained me on to help myself. I intend to start shooting jobs (most likely weddings) as soon as possible. The going rates in this area for photography are high and I’m hoping to pay off the gear and start making some decent scratch.

Jen has been absolutely incredible by patiently (and a bit timidly) allowing me to film her every waking moment and has even allowed me to drag her into the woods and onto a running track in makeup and interesting costumes to help me build my portfolio of work. For your viewing pleasure I’ve included some of the shots. Stay tuned to our Flickr account to see more in the coming weeks, months, and years. Let me know what you think, the more feedback the better.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY from the nation’s capitol! What better place to commemorate our nations birthday than Washington DC? Yesterday Jen and I saw the Parade and then waited six and a half hours to see A Capitol Fourth, which is an annual concert of the West lawn of the Capitol Building facing the National Monument. After waiting about four hours, mother Nature decided to spit on our endeavor and rain quite a bit. It rained so much people decided to go home even though they’d waited so long to see the concert.

WE on the other hand stuck it out, and well worth our efforts proved the show. We saw such talents as Jerry Lee Lewis (amazingly still alive and more amazingly still able to play the piano and sing), Huey Lewis and the News, and American Idols Taylor Hicks. Lastly the National Symphony Orchestra played the 1812 Overture while the biggest fireworks show in the country went off right over the National Monument. It was truly a once in a lifetime experience. Afterward, the Metro was so crowded that we had to stand huddled together in a corner of the train all the way back to our car. Check out our flickr account for lots of pictures of the parade and the Capitol Building.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY from the nation’s capitol! What better place to commemorate our nations birthday than Washington DC? Yesterday j