The Future

So, we turned down The Mountain Institute. It’s a beatiful place, rugged and wild. With the 6+ inches of snow that they had while we were there, it was even more so. However, its also very remote. In a lot of ways thats nice, and very cool. But, its also just a tad bit on the scary side – what if something happend? Its about an hour from the closest “decent grocery store”, so how far to real emergency medical care? Its also quite rustic – we’d be living in, basicly, a hut. Thats not bad, but it’d be a big change. Currently, most of them don’t even have elctricity, let alone a bathroom, kitchen, stove, etc. We’d have to share those things with the rest of the center. Thats not neccarily a bad thing, it’d just be… different. In anycase though, we turned it down.

Which, leaves us back at the question of “whats next?” After a good bit of discussion our plan for now is to stick around here at my dad’s place untill next fall/winter. Kevin will either go back to work for the MWCD or get a factory-type job with a temp agency. We’ll save up as much as we possibly can, and then in the fall/winter Kevin will go down to Hall’s Diving Career Institute and take their Professional Diving Instructor course… and we’ll move down to Florida or similar and go from there.

So, thats our plan for now.

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West Virginia

Well, we drove down to Spruce Knob Mountain Center on monday – it took right around 5 1/2 hours to get there, and Andros did wonderfully. We got there right around 5pm, and met Dave Martin. He took us up to the dorms and the main yurts, and so we just ate dinner and hung out and then went to bed. Its a beautiful area, and was especially so with the snow.

Its very remote – the closest town being 9 miles away (six miles down 28/10, a forest service road, and then 3 miles up 28), though it doesn’t even have a post office. The next town, 3 miles up the road, Circleville, is where they get their mail. But the closest place with a decent grocery store is Franklin, an hour away, or Elkins 1.5 hours away. In between are several tiny towns, Seneca Rocks, and miles apon mile of national forest.

The mountain center itself though, is pretty cool. Most of the buildings are yurts, including the main one which houses the the kitchen, dining area, library and a “bubble” at the top from which you can see the night sky. Its also connected (via a short walk way) to the other big yurt which is just one big open room where they can have lectures, classes, whatever. Its pretty cool. From there, there are two dorms, each of which can house aprox 20 people, as well as several small yurts which are usually indivudual residences for field staff and/or visiting “dignitaries” over the summer. Some of them have had wood stoves in them in the past, which is how most everything is heated (except for the bathrooms which do have a gas heater). Theres also a few other buildings, including a geo-dome, several sheds, the main office and another all-season residence.

Overall its a pretty cool setup, very rustic but cool. The only thing that bothers me at all is just how remote it is. Andros wasn’t feeling very good while we were there (and still seems a bit more fussy/upset than usual), and it kind of made me worry about what would happen if he were to get really sick, or hurt or something. Other than that… its awesome. I’m not sure I’d really want to stay there over the winter, but during the spring/summer/fall? I think it’d be very cool.

The drive back took about 2 hours longer than the drive down, due to very, very bad weather. It took over two hours to get to Elkins. When we left they hadll like 6-8″ of snow and it was still snowing. So, probably a good thing we left when we did. The roads were horrible till we got to Elkins and then pretty bad through till we got to 79. So, its good to be home again. Very, very good to be home.

We still haven’t decided if we really want to do it or not. I think we probably will tell them we’re interested. But we’ll see. It’d be a change thats for sure… one heck of a change!

Climbing

Well, today we drove back up to Kendall Cliffs in Peninsula, OH and went rock climbing again. It was a lot of fun… we went, I have to admit, mostly because we forgot *all* ov my climbing stuff their last weekend.

Anyways though, it was a very fun time. Plus, Sue, Brad, Christian & his friend Micheal, Jenny & her boyfriend Tim all came too, so we got to see and climb with them, which was very cool. I managed to climb one route that I hadn’t been able to finish last weekend, as well as a couple of others, so that was cool. I think the hardest one was probably around a 5.8, which isn’t too bad.

Our plan is, to drive down to The Mountain Institute’s Spruce Knob Mountain Center on monday morning and check it out. I really hope everything goes well and we like it. It *sounds* very cool, almost too good to be true in fact. We’ll spend the night there, and then on tuesday drive down to Seneca Rocks and check it out, maybe climb a little and then drive back home. I really don’t know what time we’ll get back home, so I may very well not make it to tae kwon do on tuesday night… but thats OK. I’m just very excited to check this place out… the pictures of it are beautiful. And it would be super cool to get back to doing what we love, especially for Kevin after everything he’s been through this past year.