Beautiful Fall Day

Friday, while at lunch, Ron found that Mast General Store had Columbia jackets on sale 60% off of sample sale prices. I desperately need a winter coat, so he drove me over the Greenville today to look at them (I ended up getting a $200 jacket for about $50!!!!) and have lunch at Barley's, one of our favorite pizza places. This is also RunFest weekend in Greenville and I wanted to go to the Expo and check out the vendors -- as research for my new hobby (see My Running Blog for more info....). After lunch we walked the four blocks down to the Reedy River Park and it was BEAUTIFUL! We walked all over and then visited this dog festival that was going on. We saw some really beautiful greyhounds and great danes. It was a wonderful day to be outside -- not too cold, not too hot -- and bright, beautiful. It was truly a South Carolina fall day. We met a super nice couple from Birmingham who had just moved to Greenville (we learned about the "mice" from them), another couple from Knoxville visiting for a wedding, a couple from Virginia on a trip, and a Greenville couple with two Boston Terriers - Rudy and Sammy! We thoroughly enjoyed sharing Boston stories with them. We also ran into one of my favorite education professors from Converse and Ron's old boss from BMW. It was quite a day! After the park, we headed another couple of blocks to the Run Expo. We met up with a member of the Greenville Track Club and upon finding out that I have just taken this up as a hobby, he was more than willing to chat with me about it. He also introduced to a couple of adidas employees that were there helping out when he found out Ron used to work for adidas. Another guy even gave Ben a race event shirt! We ended our time in Greenville by visiting the Quatrofoil fountain at the Wachovia building (Ben is playing with Ron's old boss from BMW's kids) and with a stop at the BEST ice cream shop -- Marble Slab! Very rarely do we "go out" for ice cream (or orange sorbet in my case) so this was a real treat. It was a wonderful family day and just relaxing, exciting and invigorating. Overall, we probably walked 3 miles or more and just enjoyed the outdoors.

(I am putting together a slideshow of all the pictures and will post it to the blog once it is done....so check back!)