American dream holiday

Day 2 and lets go Stateside today. When kids come along we got told we would need to change the way we holiday, no more adventures and only hotels with kids club. We never liked to do the normal we decided that we would take the family holiday and turn it into the trips we had seen on films and went for the American family Holiday, This involved travelling with a 4 year old and a 6 year old to Virginia. We rented a log cabin, okay make that a 5 bedroom house, with a den, a deck and a hot tub, in the Blue Ridge Mountains close to a lake!

This was our amazing home for 10 days and it was a holiday that had a great impact on us all. We walked in the woods, swam in the lake, India who was 6 at the time swam to the pontoon in the lake with Paul and dived off, which was amazing. We visited the Shenandoah National Park and went on a real life bear hunt! Unfortunately we did not get to see the bears but we did see deer.

The kids, and adults learnt all about Stalactites and Stalagmites at Luray Caverns, how to pan for gold and also started discussions about slavery and the history of it. I am sure that visiting the American Civil War Battlefields in the area helped influence the obsession with Alexander Hamilton that came later. The kids also experienced their first proper water park at Massunutten which is when we discovered they had no fear, as well as the opportunity to go tubing on the dry ski slopes.

As a family it was amazing to spend the time together learning new things, seeing the wonder in the kids eyes and having fun away from the everyday. The evenings were film night in the den after a BBQ on the deck and of course a dip in the hot tub.