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!