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August 16, 2015 (Sunday)

This morning was the first blip in a week of breakfasts – I went to the buffet to get scrambled eggs and sausage and they were both cold.  There was a family reunion and wedding party in the hotel this weekend as well as a bunch of families taking students to the University of Richmond.  I assume that the full hotel led to the drop in quality.  The milk for cereal ran out and they also had trouble keeping up with demand for half and half.  We were still fine, but it was not the excellent breakfast experience that we had the last six days.

We needed to do a third load of laundry today.  We did learn a lesson though, we have been going to the pool almost every day and the children have been going through two sets of clothes each day (before swimming and after swimming).  We ended up at the intersection of Skipworth and Broad at Coin Laundry.  Once our clothes were in the machines, we headed to Cheswick Park to use the playground.  It’s a great park, but we almost missed it.  The entrance is across the street from the hospital (Henrico Doctor’s Hospital) so make sure to slow down or you will go right past it.  It has great wooded trails through the woods, a nice large playground, picnic pavilions and nice clean restrooms. When it was time to pick up our clothes, the kids enjoyed the Ms. PacMan and other arcade machines in Coin Laundry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We dropped off our clothes at the hotel and decided to return to the Panera where we ate on our last visit (2010) in the Willow Lawn Shopping Center.  We all had more than we could eat so we packed it up to eat for supper tonight.

When we finished eating we dropped the food off at the hotel and headed to Three Lakes Park.  It’s about a 15 minute drive from the hotel.  This wonderful park contains three small man made lakes, wonderful wooded nature trails that circle each lake, has multiple restrooms and a great nature center all of which is free!  We began in the Nature Center which hosts a small aquarium.  The kids really enjoyed seeing the animals (mostly fish, snakes and turtles).  We spent about 30 minutes inside then another 5 or so minutes on the deck over the lake.  There were so many turtles that you could see them all the way across the lake.  The kids also enjoyed seeing the fish that they had seen underwater from the deck above.

Next we headed across the parking lot to the great playground where the children played for a long time.  It was a very warm day so we headed back to the hotel and then to the pool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For supper we ate our leftovers from lunch.  It was nice day even with the heat, but the places we visited all had enough shade that it never felt that bad.

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