Northern Virginia, where I grew up, is a metropolitan area. One could say we are the suburbs of D.C. The rest of Virginia is rural. Something I realized when I left my NoVa bubble when I left for college. What’s nice about the NoVa bubble is that it’s only an hour’s drive until you find yourself in tree covered mountain landscape.
This weekend, we were invited to go camping to celebrate the life of one of Brian’s friends from college who passed last year. His friend’s wife coordinated the event in Gore, Virginia for all of his friends and family. There was no way we were going to miss it. I never thought about how campsites worked. I’d always assumed you showed up with your gear and that was it. We drove a few miles on a gravel road to get to our site. I didn’t know what to expect when we arrived. It was big, open, and spacious. Many people had already set up their tents and children were running around collecting insects, mainly Spotted Lanternfly. Something we learned during our time in the woods is, if you stand underneath a tree infested with them, they will mist you with their “honeydew” aka urine.
There were custom t-shirts and cups to commemorate the event. We spent a couple hours catching up with some of Brian’s friends from college and the boys took turns making smores over the campfire. They wanted to stay longer but Brian and I wanted to get back to the main road before dark.
We stopped in town for a sit-down dinner before getting on the highway to Staunton. Just in case the boys fell asleep, they’d be sleeping on a full stomach. I’d been so preoccupied during the week that I’d totally forgotten about making a hotel reservation for that night. After dinner, we had about an hour and a half drive to our destination. I started making calls as soon as we got back into the car and the first few places were booked to capacity. Like, no vacancies. Things were looking bleak until we were able to reserve one of the last rooms available in Hotel 24. We were told there was a Harry Potter convention going on and that was the reason for the lack of vacancies.
The next morning, we learned the convention was a festival called Queen City Mischief & Magic; the entire town had turned itself into a Wizarding World. It’s an annual event that brought in people from all over the region. People were dressed up in their best Hogwart’s attire and patronized local restaurants that had magically modified their menus for the weekend. Vendors lined the streets to sell dragon eggs, wands, and other items you might find in Diagon Alley. The boys made their way through a magical maze and stopped to play a quick game of street Quiddich.
At the advice of one of the festival vendors, we popped into Pufferbellies Toys and Books store, one of the most popular attractions in Staunton, Va. The shop was full of unique toys, crafts and activities for children of all ages. It kind of felt like stepping into an old-school toy store. We picked up a gift for a friend’s child who was having a birthday party that day. We allowed the boys to pick out one item that we could take home. Lincoln picked out two large horseshoe magnets and Parker picked out a science-based activity. By the time we were rung up, the line was out the door. We would have liked to spend more time at the festival, but we had a birthday party to get to, which was the reason we were in Staunton in the first place.
The boys ran around with our friend’s children at the park for a couple of hours until a sudden downpour caused everyone to go running to their cars. Our sunshine was cut short. However we made plenty of memories to carry home. It was a weekend of spending quality time, unplugged and outside.
What a great way to welcome Fall.
Click here for more photos from our time at Queen City Mischief & Magic festival.
L. Bradley 