VISIT TO WARRENTON, VIRGINIGA

Dear Family,

We went to Virginia just before Thanksgiving Holiday to see our friends, the Manwarings.  They have this beautiful property that reminds me so much of New England and also southern Germany with open fields and rolling hills.  Larry is an avid upland bird hunter.  He has wonderfully trained Brittany Spaniels who hunt as a team.  We hunted in the long grass and you can see the dogs ahead of us.  Here is a shot of the Dad taking a bead on a pheasant flying through the trees. Believe we got that one.

Here we are at the end of the hunt with the dogs , the hunters, and the birds.  That's Larry on the left Me with my Austrian Drilling.  I took my Drilling that was made in Salzburg, (purchased after the mission in the USA) and it was perfect for this hunting. It is a 16 by 16 gauge doable side by side with a 8x57 JR Mauser rifle barrel underneath.  It is also scoped for deer hunting.

The rifle barrel was used when we deer hunted but I never did get a shot off.  The great hunting vehicle is a Kybota four seater and it took us over hill and dale.

In the morning we got up early and I sat in a deer blind and Larry was up in a tree in an area that was up until opening day, crawling with deer. I did not see anything but Larry saw one down in the woods partially hidden in the bush.  That one got away unscathed.

We decided to ride up the hilt one evening after the pheasant hunt.  Mom  and Madeline met us and we drove through the woods to the top of this hill where you could see the Blue Ridge Mountains.  We ran into no deer which was unusual.  We did run into two large Tom Turkeys but the season ended the day before. I so wanted to bag a deer to complete a perfect New England Thanksgiving dinner.  The only place where we saw deer every day and night was in their back yard.  We did not go out one morning because of the threat of rain but I was awakened with , "Get up, there are four deer in the backyard!" but by the time I got there, the dogs had run them off.

So the next morning we turned the garage into a gourmet shooting blind.  We tested the windows; Larry took one window and I took the one by the ornamental pear trees where there was more sign than anywhere in the woods but alas they read our minds and did not show.  They did show up every day after we left.

On Sunday, we went to church, did not hunt, (even though there were deer in the neighborliness yard) and in the afternoon, we drove up to the Washington Temple to attend the Christmas Devotional.  We took our white suits and clothes.  Larry and Madeline are Temple workers there and invited us as family. It was a great meeting with great Spirit.  We saw two of our friends from the Salt Lake Temple who were there on Temple missions. Also saw one of our former sister missionaries, Annie Baliff, who works for the "Department of Defense".

We hunted all day Monday, went to dinner in the evening and said goodbye on Tuesday. Here are the Manwarings (taken with Mom's Ipad. It was great to be back there and it could be so habit forming.  Larry is also a great cook and showed us how to make whole wheat bread made from fresh ground whole wheat with Chia seeds added. 

It was a great time and I am still unpacking.  We brought a bit of the pheasant and chucker goodies home.

More on Thanksgiving

Love, Dad