Nomad Life - Day 205

I had a second weekend day with Mollie!  In anticipation, I was up at 0630 (no alarm set) and did some blog catchup before Mollie was awake too.  It was 0800 before I saw my daughter and, when she came into the living room, we talked for a bit.  I learned that she had a hair appointment and I realized that this gave me some time to go to Mass.  After locating a Parish in downtown Fredericksburg and saying goodbye to Mollie (0815), I drove to St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception.  I arrived just before the Mass began (0830).  Unfortunately, I had trouble parking (the church lot was packed) - in the end, I left my car in front of a nearby home and was a bit late entering the church.  The service was interesting, with at least 10 altar servers, several Latin prayers (including the Credo) and a good Homily.  Overall, the church seemed very "fancy" to me.  When the service ended, I left the church (0935) and walked back to my car.  By then, it was already 65 F, with higher temps coming towards the city.  Next, I drove back towards Mollie's house.  As always seems to happen, I found myself on US-1...  However, I realized that I was hungry and that I should have a good opportunity to find some breakfast food.  Sadly, this ended up being a bit harder than I'd hoped.  After striking out on several other choices, I stopped at the Valero near Mollie's house.  In the little store they had at that gas station, I was able to pick up some low priced and healthy (banana!) snacks.  As I was checking out, the clerk gave me a new loyalty card - not sure I needed another one...  By 1000, I was back at Mollie's apartment and discovered that she had just returned from her hair appointment.  Since she apparently hadn't eaten either, Mollie made eggs for the two of us (I ate my banana). After our mail, we started getting ready to go out for the day.  Realizing that Noon was approaching and I was running out of time for one of the bonuses, I ended up doing my morning Duolingo in a rush.  This slight delay led Mollie to ask if I actually was going to be ready soon (!).  Wrapping up this silly habit, I joined her in the car.  We'd toyed with bringing Maple on our outdoor excursion but, in the end, decided against it.  Instead, we departed Mollie's apartment at 1150 and drove east.  Mollie and I had talked about adding a new site to our Virginia State Park Challenge list and we'd figured out that neither of us had been to Caledon State Park.  Like several other units of the VA State Park system, this one was also about 40 minutes from Fredericksburg.  The drive gave us another chance to have a nice talk.  With minimal traffic, we arrived at the Visitor Center parking lot at 1230.  We used Mollie's State Park pass to gain free entry and parking and then went inside the VC.  From the displays and a friendly Park Ranger, we learned about the families that had lived on the property since the mid Seventeenth Century (some relatives of George Washington were included).  Mollie expressed interest in getting in part time or volunteer positions - we'll see if that idea goes anywhere.  On the property, there was a "Salamander Meander" event scheduled to begin (about 30 minutes later) but Mollie and I decided no to join it because she didn't have waterproof boots.  Instead, we started hiking on trails in the park.  We had a paper map but this was only a little helpful - sadly, there was a lot of poor signage.  The trails, though, were very well maintained.  Another bonus: the weather was wonderful (60s and sunny).  Along the way, Mollie and I tried to estimate the age of the trees.  She told me they looked really old but I thought they were newer.  Later, we learned that many of the trees we'd seen (Poplars) were around 300 years old!  That'll teach me to argue with my Dendrology trained daughter!  Eventually, we managed to make our way to a pretty Potomac River view.  Mollie had brought some Belvita sandwiches and we ate these while sitting at a nice picnic table in the shade.  During the break, we made plans for the route we planned to walk back to the car.  This decision ended up taking us on some different trails.  Initially, we headed towards what we thought was a boardwalk (we were wrong and cursed the map again).  After that, we went through some wooded areas on mountain bike trails.  During this time, I believe we passed an old homestead but there was no interpretive signage.  Another highlight: we encountered some interesting birds.  After wandering around the wood fof a while, we ended up on a service road at the end and came out in an area where there were some maintenance buildings.  It wasn't intentional but this error allowed us to access the Potomac Heritage Trail before we got in the car.  Our five mile walk was done at 1500 and we both agreed we'd had good time.  Even better, this was my 30th Virginia State Park (out of a bit more than 40).  Afterwards, we departed and backtracked towards Fredericksburg.  We noticed something (near Caledon State Park) called the "Dahlgren Railroad Heritage Trail" and agreed that we'd try to walk that someday in the future.  During our drive, we debated where and what to eat and then finally decided to get some late lunch at Wawa.  In the iconic Mid-Atlantic lunch stop, we made sandwiches to order and got a really good deal on the food.  With "lunch" in hand (1535), we headed back to Mollie's.  After we arrived, Mollie warned me that Alex needed to use the Guest Room for a Game Night.  With this in mind, I skipped relaxing and taking Maple for a walk and, instead, tried to catch up on more work before Alex returned from Beaverdam.  I was still working (at 1800), trying to get my work done when Alex arrived.  At that point, he told us that Mollie had the evening wrong.  Oh well, I'm much more caught up on blog entries!  Meanwhile, Mollie made dinner for everyone but, since I was still full from the late lunch, I ended up skipping dinner.  During this same time period, Mollie sewed another seam rip in my hiking pants.  She's very handy!  By 1815, I'd finished my work on the computer and joined Mollie and Alex in the living room.  While they watched a "documentary" (on the lives of people with Autism and Asperger's), I went through all the magazines that had arrived at Mollie's over the last few months.  In the end, I left only a few for her (she told me she might use them for a school project) and threw out the rest.  At 1905, I went walking with Mollie and Maple in the neighborhood.  The weather was still very nice and the extra steps took me to more than six miles of walking for the day.  Back at Mollie's apartment, we found some ticks on the dog and this led to everyone getting a shower to make sure we hadn't also picked up any.  As a result, it was almost 2050 by the time Mollie was ready for a to watch something else on the TV.  She told me we needed to have another movie night and, because she said I would like it, Mollie turned on a film called "K-Pop Demon Hunters".  Alex even watched with us and, I must admit, it ended up being mildly entertaining.  It was also long, though, and we weren't done with the movie until 2220.  Even though I was actually really tired, I didn't go to bed until 2300.  Very glad I made a return visit to see my daughter!