A Nat 20 Vacation

Have you ever had a trip that was so good you mostly forgot to take pictures, and the pictures you did take are mainly just fleeting moments that don’t do the overall feeling of the trip justice? This was one of those times.

It started with attending the Taylor Swift concert in Atlanta on April 29. Despite what other shows may have, we got an acoustic version of High Infidelity on April 29 – and not even a Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) announcement can beat that. As the lyrics say:

Do you really want to know where I was April 29?

Taylor Swift | High Infidelity

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And then it was a quick turnaround as both Krystal and I headed to the Pocono Mountains to spend four nights in a cabin with a group of friends to finish the D&D campaign we’ve been playing for the last three years. Now, all of us have met other people in the group, but only one person had ever met everyone else, and none of us had ever been together at the same time. Within minutes it was like we were the best kind of family.

Here’s a tour of the cabin:

Please note the pictures shared here were the sum effort of the entire group and are shared with permission. As one of our group said

“They’re joyful and I felt at peace so I can only see them as happy.”

Monday: settle in, grocery shop, pierogi for supper, exchanging gifts because why not?

We found a Weis Market and while we found everything we were looking for, there came a time when the aisles seemed to get long and the shelves tall and we all felt like we were slipping into a liminal space.

This feeling was heightened on the drive back when we encountered this temporary stoplight on a backroad while deer’s eyes shone out at us from the roadside.

And that’s without mentioning the . . . shall we say, ‘night noises’ we heard each night . . .

But, back to gifts:

The hat was Krystal’s and I put it on. It made me so happy! Then Ciarán practically grabbed me and ran to his suitcase where he pulled out this cloak. He said he’d modified it years ago but never quite found a place for it and it was now mine. This was my comfort clothing for the week and will be the closet cosplay for an upcoming character named Belladonna.

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Tuesday: take care of work/business in the morning then D&D in the afternoon with charcuterie, baked brie, and dough twists for lunch and spaghetti and meatballs for supper

The players & their characters, left to right:

• Rosie | Thea
• Indy | Fuego
• Jax | DM
• Ciarán | Rylan
• Jay | Garrett
• Krystal | Ruinfea

The three of us in the kitchen was super special and a time we will treasure for a long time to come!

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Wednesday: sleep in, grilled cheese and chicken nuggets for lunch then more D&D with burgers for a later supper

The picture is yellow thanks to the Edison lights, but I made this burger special for our group. I named it The Critical Hit and it lived up to its name as we all devoured them. Look for a separate write up coming soon!

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Thursday: D&D finale followed by cosplay. Leftovers for lunch; pizza and drinks by the fire for supper while planning characters for both a short prequel campaign and a legacy campaign of indeterminate length to begin sometime later this year.

You can read Garrett’s whole arc!

More cosplay pictures will come later after edits have been done and special effects added

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Friday: pack and leave, but not immediately because we went to a Halloween Emporium and then out lunch.

And then it was time to say goodbye, which was hard.

We spent the night at a friend’s house so that we didn’t have to drive for hours into Saturday morning. Sunday, we got on the road later than expected and encountered heavy traffic but arrived home safely. I’m glad we both had Sunday and Monday to recover and begin to process the excitement.

These sausages were made by a business in my hometown. They made the trip back with us and I enjoyed them over the course of several days.

It was such a good trip it’s taken me almost a month to put any part of it into words.