My Birthday Weekend Getaway Captured on Film

Last week was my birthday… and I knew a fun surprise was coming. It was pretty obvious my husband  had something up his sleeve the moment he told me to not make any plans that weekend…

Since my birthday was on a Thursday (workday), it was your everyday, typical day. He got home from work late that evening, and as we ate dinner there was little mention of my birthday. I was wondering if he was EVER going to tell me about why I wasn’t allowed to make plans. After all, the day itself was kind of a flop, spending it alone cleaning the house and cooking dinner.

Of course he waited until the exact moment I couldn’t bare the unknown a single second longer. He pulled out a birthday card (handmade – ok photoshopped – which is the computer-nerd version of handmade) which inside I found 2 concert tickets to Brad Paisley and The Band Perry. But the tickets were for a concert in Bristow, Virginia. Wait, what…the tickets were for Bristow, Virginia!!!!!! Did he really plan a trip to the east coast this weekend? Surely he didn’t, right? BUT he did!I was flabbergasted, and all of the bummed out feelings that I felt about my lame birthday-day were gone. I couldn’t believe he had planned such a fun adventure for us! But there was no time to spare, we were leaving in the morning, on a flight from Denver to Washington DC, so I got to packing…

Our flight was bright and early the next day, on one of our favorite airlines, Frontier. Our adventure had begun, and I was excited to capture all the special moments with my brand new Canon PowerShot compliments of Staples. (Thank goodness I had a camera of my own now – instead of borrowing one all the time!)

We arrived in DCA early afternoon, picked up our car and loaded our bags – then headed for the smaller town feel of Manassas, Virginia. We had a fun time saying that town name over and over! We spent the day in Manassas, exploring the boutique shops, walking along old town, and discovering to our surprise that we arrived during the 150th Civil War Anniversary! There were Civil War re-enactors everywhere (dang, how did I not get a picture of someone?). We went around to some of the celebration tents, and relived what it might have been like back in 1862, during the Civil War. After a loaded day of Virginia is for Lovers sights, we went out to dinner, for my REAL birthday dinner. (Aka, not one that I had to cook!). We went to a restaurant called Texas De Brazil. Have you heard? Basically it is a meat-lovers dream! They have people that walk around to each table bringing different meat selections.

It was a delicious evening, and we stuffed ourselves just enough, leaving some room for ice cream from a tiny local shop we saw on our way out of town. We love local, family owned shops, so we went there, instead of getting dessert at the restaurant.

Oh, and before I get to far off, I want to mention that when we pulled in to our hotel, we were mildly disappointed to see about 20 men working on the roof. We knew that we weren’t spending a lot of time in the hotel anyway, and we weren’t going to let a little loud construction ruin our awesome weekend! But let me tell you a secret… it is crazy what being nice and friendly to the front desk will get you! My husband joked around with the sweet hotel manager, and what do you know, she upgraded us – a room farther away from the construction and it had a giant Jacuzzi tub in it. It was a very awkward tub though, the tub was oddly placed in the middle of the room! This became a funny joke for us. I made sure to capture a picture on my new camera, so y’all could see what I was talking about…The next morning we slept in. My husband ran out of the room to bring me the hotel’s continental breakfast in bed. He’s pretty fun like that. I am pretty spoiled sometimes. Do you like the paper plates??

So the concert wasn’t until that evening… we had all day to kill, with no plan. We decided to make the most of it and just drive around in the rental car. As we drove, we realized that neither of us had been to West Virginia before, so we took off on Interstate 66 until we spotted the first town. That town was Wardensville, population 246. No seriously, Wikipedia just told me so. In Wardensville, we explored the visitor center, read about the town’s history, saw homes built in the 1700s and ate at the local diner. The pulled pork sandwich was delicious – I am SO glad we stopped in! One of the main attractions in town was the cemetery, which had 28 Confederate soldiers and 1 Union solider buried there! We walked around the graves, and found a few tombstones of the buried Civil War soldiers. Realizing the time, we got back in the car and headed back to Virginia for our big event of the weekend, the Brad Paisley concert. This was going to be my third Brad Paisley concert – all three in different states! I also must mention, my arm is in Brad Paisley’s Online music video

The Virtual Reality Tour concert was a blast. The Band Perry was awesome and Brad Paisley was even more impressive than ever! We enjoyed every moment of the night. From starting out the night tailgating with country music fans in the parking lot with our make-shift cooler (the hotel’s garbage can), to the crazy weather – both sun and the rain, to making new friends and relishing a fabulous night of music. Our trip came to a close quickly, as we left the next morning on a flight back to Colorado. It was a brief weekend trip, but it was a weekend that I will never forget, thanks to my wonderful husband and the pictures that we took.

Disclosure:  I did receive a digital camera from Staples for the purpose of capturing my birthday weekend, and sharing it with you. No other compensation was received. This did not affect the outcome of this review. All opinions are 100% my own. For full disclosure click here.