This week has been one of much activity for the college as staff and students prepared for homecoming weekend. The maintenance building had a full whiteboard of tasks displayed that needed to be done leading up to Friday afternoon. At the start of the week, we and another couple worked together in a two-story historic house on the campus. The college has plans to make the first floor into a museum, so we were tasked with de-cobwebbing and doing a light clean of all the first-floor rooms. We also did some outside cleanup, which included removing debris from the gutters, roof, and deck area, as well as cleaning outside/inside windows. After we cleaned, some staging was done by more volunteers to have the house ready for tours for the guests visiting the campus this weekend. In the afternoons and the rest of the week, T found himself constructing a room in the music department for sound system equipment and helping with setup alongside the maintenance staff. I, on the other hand, brushed up on my paper-cutting skills going through and cutting out photocopies of pictures from various college yearbooks, which would be displayed on tables as a talking point for those attending. Overall, our first week has gone well. The weather is beginning to cool down, and it is really starting to feel like fall.
Today, T and I explored the surrounding area and traveled just inside the South Carolina state line to take a scenic hike before visiting a local farm to have some lunch. The hike delivered some beautiful views of four separate falls. Copper had to navigate one set of steps by running up them and had to be carried down another set because the steps were more like a ladder. His little body would have definitely fallen through! The farm setting for lunch was so much more than I had expected. The views of the mountain range in the distance, with the vineyard and apple orchard close by, were very serene. Copper was being extra clingy with T today, so for T and my sanity, we had to banish Copper to the truck while we ate. Thankfully, it was cool enough outside to be able to put him in the truck and roll down the windows. On the way home, we saw a sign for a historic site, so we decided to stop at a place called Travelers Rest, which used to be a stagecoach inn. A guy greeted us from the porch and gave us a short briefing before taking us in to watch a short 10-minute video. We then went on a self-guided tour to explore the inn and its grounds. It ended up being a nice little stop for us on the way back.
