This weekend my sister April and I made a quick trip to North Carolina to visit Sophia, my 15th great-great niece/nephew and her 15th great grandchild! It doesn’t seem possible that we have that many, but we are truly blessed beyond our belief that we do!

We have been meaning to make this trip ever since Sophia was born on New Year’s Eve, but we both have had this annoying cough that was going around and takes forever to get over! It took us both about 3 weeks or so! Didn’t want to give her or anyone else the cough!

We headed out on Friday morning, trying to keep ahead of the bad weather the forecasters said was coming our way and heading for the Carolina’s. Fortunately we were able to do just that going both ways, only running into a little rain on the return trip Sunday the 13th. The trip over took us about 10 hours with gas, food and photo stops occasionally along the way. Can’t make a trip without photo stops and of course this includes a train or two during the trip!

I guess we got checked into the hotel around 9pm or so and then headed on over to Jamie’s, Stephanie’s mom, and Sophia’s YaYa (YaYa is a popular Greek grandmother nickname and yes, I had to ask!) for our first visit with Stephanie and Justin’s daughter Sophia ! Of course neither of us were disappointed as she was awake, alert and beautiful!

We had a great visit Friday night and then headed back over Saturday morning to continue visiting her and everyone else. Since Jamie was hosting a Kitchen Party for a bunch of ladies, just about all the guys escaped to other locations and I used the opportunity to find a few trains to photograph in Monroe and at the I-485 metro stop!

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I got back to the house just as the party was breaking up and had enough time to meet and greet some of the folks I met and saw at Stephanie and Justin’s wedding. It was nice to catch up! We all sat around and nibbled on the foods they made during the kitchen party before everything broke up.

Afterwards we headed out with Stephanie and Sophia to meet up with Justin for dinner before heading back to our motel for the night. Poor guy had to work during our visit! (I remember those days and don’t miss them!!) We actually went to three different restaurants (all had long waiting lists) before we settled on waiting at a Texas Roadhouse for about 20 minutes to get a table. It was well worth the wait though as all our food was great and we had a great time of visiting before heading in for the night as we planned on leaving for home early Sunday morning.

Sunday morning we got away early so I could stop by the train yard at Charlotte, NC from a bridge on the north end that Wally had told me about. It was a great view and I was able to get several nice shots of rail action before we hit the road back to Kentucky.

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On the way home I kept watching for a spot where I could stop in the mountains and get a shot of the river as it ran through them. I passed up a couple spots because it was raining fairly hard, but finally found a spot at Cosby, TN.

All in all it was a good trip, despite it being too short and we finally arrived safely back home at a decent hour without any really bad weather!

Right now our next planned long trip is to Chicago for a concert in March! Stay tuned!!