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Monday, March 31

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Cerwin and I decided last year that it was the time in our lives to let someone else do the driving for our vacations. Bob Neff Tours is a popular tour ministry/business in our area, so we signed up to receive their email advertisements. Toward the end of the year, this trip grabbed our attention, consequently, we made plans to travel with them for this five-day trip.

As we boarded the coach/bus at Calvary Church on Monday morning about 6:15 am, we were handed the folder below – with the title for this trip.

Elva is a popular chalk artist not far from our house, but ironically, we had never heard about her until this trip. The schedule for the two-day stay at The Cove looked interesting and relaxing.

We were scheduled to leave Calvary Church at 6:30 am and were on the road a few minutes early. We traveled with Executive Coach. Bill Rohrer is our driver, and his wife Angie is Tour Director.

As daylight arrived, we were reminded that is still early spring in the northeast – with most trees still bare.

It was about 8:45 when we saw raindrops on the front bus window and a beautiful rainbow captured everyone’s attention.

We traveled with the rainbow for several minutes.

The sky returned to clouds, and we drove through rather heavy rain for a short period of time.

Our first rest stop was at 8:20 at a Loves Truck Stop.

We were on Executive’s newest coach, so it was quite comfortable and up to date. There are outlets and USB ports at each seat.

This is where we started getting acquainted with more people in our tour group. I think there were about 30 on the bus. A few more joined us at The Cove later in the day.

By 9 am we had affirmation that we were traveling south as we began seeing beautiful white blooms. I think most were pear trees.

I took these pictures just north of Winchester, VA. We could tell where we were because there were screens in front of us showing the bus drivers GPS route.

Following lunch at Chick-Fil-A, about 1 pm, we began seeing hundreds and hundreds of blooming red bud trees. It made me miss ours that had to be taken down because it was damaged in one of last summer’s storms. Cerwin thought maybe we will plant one in a different location. I would love that.

As we saw lots of cattle on the hills of Virginia and North Carolina we commented that the “cattle on a thousand hills are the Lords”. Psalm 50:10.

Many of us tried to get a good photo of the deep valleys and mountains, but the openings – between trees on a moving bus – were few. I did manage to capture two.

We were all captured by the beauty of The Cove as we approached our motel about 5:30 pm. We will stay in this motel on The Cove grounds for three nights.

After check-in we enjoyed a delicious meal in their large and fabulous dining room. Following supper most of us were ready to relax, visit, and get ready for bed.

Oh, what a delightful day.