Asheville, NC

Our first stop in Asheville, NC was the Sierra Nevada Brewery!  Most people know that their main location is in Chico, CA, but they opened up their brewery location in Asheville, NC in 2015. So, now they have two breweries in the US to meet the very large quantity of beer that needed to be brewed! It is a BEAUTIFUL facility.. It's located on about 200 acres (yes, 200), and the driveway alone had our jaws dropping. We got there fairly early (about 11am), so we were able to find awesome seats at the bar and we started sampling some beers! We ordered beer flights so we could have small samples and therefore taste MORE beers! Genius ;)

The main building!  So pretty. 

Happy and excited Kevin!!  Haha :) 

My beer flight! I also had a half pint of another beer that I loooved called Gothic Sessions. It sounds like it'd be dark or something, but nope it was very drinkable and I think it was a pilsner. 

McGee's beer flight!  It was all hoppy beers :) 

Kevin took this picture when he was coming back from the bathroom!  I'm actually sitting there at the bar towards the right of the pic. 

After we sampled a bunch of beers and also had a snack (a pretzel with beer cheese sauce), we went on a 90 minute tour of the brewery!  It was an excellent tour, and I'm quite impressed with the facility.

That guy in the plaid was our tour guide and he was awesome. 

Each of the brewing vessels was labeled in copper on the ground so you could see which step in the process it was!

Happy Kevin!

This was the Hop Room, where they store all of their varieties of hops. I didn't count, but there were definitely over a dozen varieties in the room while we were there! 

At the end of the tour we got to taste 8 different beers!  I took some very impressive notes (that's sarcasm...). I was pretty tipsy by this point - my tolerance is WAY too low to try this many beers in one afternoon! 

After the brewery tour, we got lunch back at the bar area of the brewery, and then we left to go find our hotel in Asheville. It was called the Princess Anne Hotel - it is super cute and has a lot of great history (built in 1922). 

We got checked-in, then we FINALLY showered (boy did we need it!), and then we went to a nearby really fancy hotel that Kevin's parents told us we had to check out! It is called the Omni Grove Park Inn, and it is a GORGEOUS (and fancy!) hotel. We had some fun hanging out there for a bit, and we had a cocktail on their back patio area because the views were absolutely stunning. It was nice to sit there and just enjoy the view while sipping a delicious beverage! 

Here's a nice view of the hotel!  I stole this picture from online, because I couldn't get a good picture while we stopped by the hotel. The sun was in THE exact wrong spot to try to get a good picture... haha :)  

The lobby of the Grove Park Inn. And all the stone you see is LEGIT stone... It's all pieced together and totally beautiful. 

Here's the fireplace in the lobby of the hotel!  I couldn't get over the size of the stones. 

They had some nice rocking chairs in front of the massive fireplace, so we sat there for a few before heading out to the back patio area. 

This was the view from our table where we had cocktails! 

The cocktail area. 

 After we were done checking out the super fancy hotel, we went to dinner at this AMAZING place called Early Girl Eatery. The food there was amazing.

After dinner was over, we walked around Asheville a little bit and checked out the area.  We were pretty exhausted and we had a long drive back to PA the next day, so we didn't stay out too late... but it was a super fun day in Asheville! It's a nice area with a lot to see and do, and if it wasn't such a long drive we'd for sure want to go back soon to see more of Asheville!

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Wow, so I'd planned on doing a post last week about our trip before we left, but MY GOODNESS last week was insane!  Kevin and I both only worked Monday thru Wednesday (we left for our trip on Thursday morning), but I swear we'd both worked over 40 hours for the week by the end of Wednesday. It was crazy busy.... But we were VERY excited to go on our trip and unplug for a few days! We left bright and early (well, actually, DARK and early...) on Thursday morning, and we drove all the way down to the Gatlinburg, TN entrance of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I don't know how many of you have heard of Gatlinburg, TN... but take my advice and DON'T go there. It's ridiculously awful. But, we drove through there as quickly as we could and entered the National Park!  We were excited to make our way to our campsite!  It had been about 10 hours of driving.

We found a great campsite that was pretty spacious and secluded, and we were excited to set everything up and then relax after our long day of travel. We could hear the river from our campsite, which was soooo peaceful! We brought our hammock, and we were able to just rest and relax for the rest of the evening. It got quite chilly in the evening once it got dark, but it was toasty warm with our campfire! That night for dinner we kept it simple: hot dogs roasted over the campfire. And s'mores, of course!  It was a really great night.

Our hammock!  

Our tent!

Our new canopy to give us shade at the picnic table!  It was supposed to rain on our trip (but it didn't rain until our drive home!), so we brought the canopy so we could stay dry. It ended up being great for making sure we didn't sunburn though! ;) 

We slept so great that night, and woke up in the morning feeling incredibly refreshed and excited for a day of hiking. Unfortunately, the first and second hikes we'd wanted to do that morning ended up being closed for winter... which was very confusing to us since it is definitely Spring by all calendars, and it was like 70 degrees that day... So, that was weird and a bummer.  But, we drove to a lookout area, where there were some AMAZING views of the Great Smoky Mountains! Such a beautiful area. 

The Great Smoky Mountains! 

This sign was there at the viewpoint! Pretty cool. 

After spending some time at the viewpoint, we drove to the parking area for the Laurel Falls hike. It was a really nice hike, and the waterfall was beautiful!!

A cool cave on the hike! It had a bit of a waterfall inside it. 

A nice view during the hike! 

Laurel Falls! 

 

Me and Kevin in front of Laurel Falls! We were hoping for a bit more of the Falls in the picture, but the guy taking the picture didn't understand... Oh well :)

After Laurel Falls, we went to one of the Visitors Centers and wandered around there a bit. They had a nice video showing the history of the Great Smoky Mountains, and they had a little museum and a store, and then there was also a hike to another waterfall that started in the parking lot of the Visitors Center. After finishing this hike, we decided we wanted to just go back to our campsite and relax for the rest of the afternoon/evening!  It was so awesome. We started the campfire shortly before dark, and spent a really lovely evening hanging by the campfire. That night for dinner we had burritos - It's one of our favorite camping meals!  And it was especially easy this time, because we were able to cook up some rice and ground turkey at home and bring it with us in an ice chest, so all we had to do was assemble the burritos, wrap them in foil, and then cook them over the campfire! It's our favorite. SOOOOO toasty and delicious. And more s'mores for dessert, of course!! 

The next morning we woke up fairly early and packed up all of our stuff, and drove to Asheville, NC!  I'll do a separate post on all the fun we had in Asheville. We loved Great Smoky Mountain National Park, but honestly a lot of the people that were there were kinda bumming us out.  A LOT of people were littering... I have never seen so much litter in a National Park (especially cigarette butts... so many of them EVERYWHERE. Plus tons of plastic bottles, plastic bags, etc). And people were driving crazy and fast, and just weren't very friendly. It's a free National Park (most charge $20 or so to enter...), so we were wondering if that was part of the reason?  And we were also thinking it might have been because it was located RIGHT next to Gatlinburg, TN, and that place was a shit show. So, we're not exactly sure WHY, but the park totally had a different vibe than all of the other parks we've been to.

The next post will be all about Asheville, NC!!

Winter Storm Stella, St. Patrick's Day, and early Birthday Fun!

So much to tell you about! First, Winter Storm Stella came and went, and it definitely made for some ugly road conditions!  McGee had to stay home because of the weather for like the first time ever, and so we both worked from home that day. There ended up being a good amount of snow, then a bunch of sleet and icy rain, and then more snow.  So... yuck!  Shoveling our driveway wasn't much fun because that snow was HEAVY thanks to all that freezing rain and ice! But, on the bright side, Guinness had a blast playing frisbee in the snow!  He loves playing in the snow SO much.

This is our screened patio!  The wind was so crazy that it blew a lot of snow in through our screens!

Guinness almost catching the frisbee!  I got a few good action shots

Running back to Kevin! 

Caught it! 

Going up for another frisbee! 

He's flying in the air! 

After I shoveled the stairs and walkway!  Kevin was working on the driveway... 

This is our driveway... even though you can't tell there's a driveway there! You can see the neighbor's house and car across the street (can't tell that there's a street there either! haha)

We didn't do much for St. Patrick's Day this year!  We kept it pretty low-key.  Work has been insane for both of us, and we just felt exhausted by Friday. So, we went to a bar and had a few beers and ordered some food, and we watched the UC Davis (my alma mater) game!  They made it to the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever, which is incredibly exciting! Unfortunately, they had to play Kansas (and they're ranked #1...), so it was not a pretty game.  It was still super cool to get to see them play on TV though! We also scored a FREE Guinness glass!  If you bought an appetizer (which we did), then you got a free Guinness glass for St. Patrick's Day.

My beer (Golden Monkey), and our free pint glass! 

This weekend we started celebrating my birthday super early!  Kevin wanted to take me to a museum in Philly that I have been wanting to see for like 8 years, and then also out to dinner at a restaurant we really love... and we were going to plan it for April lst (close to my bday!), but it turned out that the restaurant was closed for a private event on April 1st! And next weekend we are going on a trip... So, we decided to celebrate this weekend instead since we didn't have any plans!  The weather was really gross, but that was kind of perfect for wandering around a museum! The museum I'd been wanting to see for sooo many years is called the Mutter Museum, and it's a medical museum that houses a bunch of medical oddities, specimens, antique medical equipment, etc. They don't allow any photography inside the museum, so I was only able to take a few pictures in the hallway before you enter the exhibits... There are a ton of cool pictures online of the exhibits though if you want to see any!  They have sections of Einstein's brain, The Soap Lady (her body basically turned to a soap-ish substance after she died... ), lots of skulls, skeletons, etc... Oh and a special exhibit on medical procedures and equipment used during the Civil War. It was all really fascinating!  The museum was incredibly crowded (lots of people had the same idea for the bad weather that we did!), but it was still thoroughly enjoyable and amazing.

The outside of the Mutter Museum! 

Kevin standing in front of the poster of the giant skeleton (they have a real skeleton of someone with gigantism in one of the exhibits)

Here's the hallway before you get to the exhibits

There's a picture of Dr. Mutter!

After the museum we drove over to the restaurant we looove.  It's called Garces Trading Company, and I know I've mentioned it on this blog before. We got there a little before our reservation, so we had some wine and an appetizer (homemade mozzarella!) at the bar. For dinner, they have Steak Frites that is seriously amazing. It's this amaaaazing steak that is so beyond tender (cooked medium rare, thank you very much), and you get to pick your sauce (Bearnaise for me, please!), and a bunch of super thin cut duck fat fries. It's so decadent and delicious. And Kevin usually gets Steak Frites too, but this time he had Mussels Frites (in a leek and white wine sauce), and he loooooved it. 

And today we are being super productive, and running errands and also working on the Guest Room!  I am going to do another post tonight or tomorrow to show you the finished-ish Guest Room, and also tell you a little about our trip that we're going on this coming weekend! 

Guest Room progress, and some snow

Winter has decided to visit us a bit more!  We had some snow at the end of last week (just a few inches), and we are supposed to get totally walloped tonight and tomorrow (I have seen predictions as high as 2 feet of snow?).  The good news there is that I was supposed to have a work trip this week, and that got cancelled!  Wahoo!! I was going to have to drive to Maryland today, and it was looking like I would get there ok (before the snow started), but then I'd probably just end up being stuck at the hotel for days. So, that would suck. But now I get to stay home, and Kevin and I have already grocery shopped and we're all ready for whatever this storm brings! I think it's supposed to start around 7pm tonight and then go for about 24 hours, so I'll be sure to take lots of pictures. Here are some pictures from our few inches of snow late last week:

Here he is looking VERY ready for a nap after playing in the snow!

Such a sweet pup. 

And this weekend we made some GREAT progress on the Guest Room!  We finished pulling up all of the carpet, and we removed ALL of the staples from the hardwood floors!  They look pretty darn good.  All that's left is we need to sweep and clean the floors (and some spots will need a bit of scrubbing... but most of it just needs to be cleaned), and then we'll put down an area rug that we bought soooo long ago, and then we just need to move all of the furniture back!!  We probably only have a few hours of work left in there.

You can see the paint color kinda!  The lighting isn't great... but it's basically a grey-beige color. 

One more thing for today:  Happy Birthday to my amazing mom!! I love you so much, Mom!!

Beer Festival Success

This last weekend was a fun one!!  On Saturday morning it was FREEZING (like 12 degrees or something...) but we bundled up (sooo many layers!), and got on the train to head into the city!  A group of us were getting together to celebrate Michael's (aka Big Mike aka the opera singer) birthday, and every year he does the Philly Craft Beer Festival as his birthday get-together! This was only my 2nd year participating in the Beer Festival, and this one was a much bigger success for me! We had so much fun, and tried so many tasty beers, and managed to mostly stay warm! It was a really fun time.

Such a fun group!

Last year's beer festival was a bit of a mess... There were not enough bathrooms, so the bathroom lines were like an hour long or something crazy.  And the beer festival is only like 3.5 hours long... so by the time Kevin and I were out of the bathroom last year I think there was only like an hour left, so we were like, "Drink all the beer!" and we were getting as many samples as possible (and these are mostly STRONG beers). So, I was NOT feeling good at all about 20 minutes after the beer festival was over last year. THIS YEAR, however, I was pacing my beer consumption like a champ, and the bathroom lines were only like 5-10 minutes, so it was all-around a lot better, and tons of fun!

On Sunday we were planning on being super productive in the morning and working on the floors in our Guest Room to try to finish that up, but instead we decided to be lazy (but STILL productive and adulty) and do our taxes. So, it was really nice to finally check that off of our list! Shortly after finishing our taxes it was time to go pick up Mo (Kevin's sister) from the train station, because we were going to see the movie Logan together!  Logan was seriously AMAZING.  So, so good.  I absolutely loved it.

Logan!  Sir Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman.... SUCH an amazing movie! 

Then we came back home and relaxed a bit, and then it was time for me to go to my book club! It's a Wine and Book club and I've been in it about a year. I really like some of the women in the group, and some of the women in the group are not my favorites. So, the meeting was ok!

All in all, it was a really fun weekend!!  Not SUPER productive (except for our taxes!), but I think our plan is to finish up those Guest Room floors this coming weekend. Our Sunday is pretty free, so I'm hopeful we can finish it!

I hope your week is going well!!  We've ALMOST made it to another weekend!