I will not let a broken air conditioner – and a 87* house – ruin a perfectly lovely weekend.

So here are some highlights:

Us and a kaleidoscope

Mt. Mitchell is two humps left of the scoop.

And yesterday was a cute day, so I took a picture in (what else?) a bathroom mirror. (In the Mast General Store in Boone, NC, in case you’re wondering.)

And, since no trip is ever complete without reading material, feast your eyes on the motherload we returned with.

I’m going to Weight Watchers tomorrow, so I’ll tell you how my week went with food and exercise when I report my loss. My loss? Yes, I’m feeling pretty good about it this week.

Enjoy your nice, cool beds tonight! Think cool thoughts for us!

Today was an awesome day. Except when the goat statue tried to eat my ice cream. Get away, goat!

Today is our 5th wedding anniversary! Yay! I woke up to an incredibly sweet card from Nathan. He truly is the person that makes me who I am – that makes me make sense. I want to be a better me because of him, and in a lot of ways I want to be more like him. But not in the fart department. He can have that award.

From body functions to food pictures. Natural progression, eh?

Breakfast at the inn. Fruit/pastries and a waffle! I only ate 3/4 of the waffle. It was huge!

We stopped at Starbucks on our way out of town. I know we should have done local coffee, but I didn’t feel like finding somewhere to park downtown. So I got my usual and Nathan planned out our route. Oh, and by the way, we saw the McDonald’s in the background on the Travel Channel. It looked pretty cool. We did not investigate.

We jumped in the car and headed the hour or so to Hendersonville, NC. Very neat little town. They had goat sculptures all over town – like Lexington had horses several years ago. There was a great one wearing pink cowboy boots, and then there was the one who tried to eat my ice cream. Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream to be exact.

Then we got back in the car and drove another hour or so to Brevard, NC. Another really cute little town. Although they had a fascination with white squirrels that I don’t really understand. We ate lunch at a place called Hobnob. It was light and fabulous. I had the Warm Goat Cheese in Puff Pastry over Baby Greens with Walnuts, Fresh Tomatoes and Balsamic Vinaigrette. Very good and light. They had a three-piece string band there. Very swanky, but very affordable.

We then took the Blue Ridge Parkway back to Asheville. Incredible drive. What? You want pictures? I’d be happy to!

We returned to the Crooked Oak so I could spruce up for dinner. The innkeepers had went out do dinner, so we had to resort to an ashtray stacked onto the back of a chair and the timer on the camera. I think we did pretty well.

And then there was dinner. Table. Lamb. Chocolate pots de creme. No more words.

I am bummed that we go home tomorrow! I have had such an amazing trip and there are many more adventures to come on our drive home tomorrow – maybe driving through the Smokey Mountains to get home?

I just want to thank you all for indulging me in my blog switch and vacation photos. I will get back to regularly scheduled blogging soon. But I don’t want to go back to real life at all!

Happy Saturday everyone!

Don’t you love the picture? Between the longness of my hair and the cuteness of my husband, I can almost forget that my period showed up in the middle of our anniversary trip. Oh well.

Even so, today was amazing. And so many adventures to tell you about…

We started off eating breakfast at the b&b. We split the fruit and baked goods and then I had blueberry/cranberry/granola pancakes. So freaking good.

Then we headed downtown to do our usual shopping. Nate bought a great pair of shoes. And we had two coffee stops – one around 10 and another about 4.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We had lunch at what has become my favorite restaurant in Asheville : Chorizo. It doesn’t have a website, so I can’t link it. But it’s in the Grove Arcade and it is mostly local food in a Caribean/Latin style. I had the chicken burrito with spinach, black beans, sweet potatoes, guacamole, and goat cheese. Nathan had the pulled pork. He was a big boy and cleaned his plate. I got about 3/4 through my burrito, maybe 1/4 of the chips and didn’t even have a bite of the salad. Oh yeah, and there were mojitos all around.

And the day just got better. We once again found ourselves in another church we have often admired from the outside, and the interior was just as breathtaking

We headed on our road trip (about 30 miles round trip) to check out the campus of Warren WIlson College. Kinda reaky, if you ask me. Beautiful, but I’d be afraid of either the Blair Witch or a serial killer (or are they one in the same? discuss.). We then headed to Black Mountain and walked around for a while. Nathan found a new mandolin book and I bought some cool cups that bear our last name. We finished the evening with dinner at the Black Mountain Bistro. Cute southern cooking that was very financially-friendly and the weather could not have been better. I had the Pastry Chicken – chicken, spinach, cream cheese, and walnuts wrapped in puffed pastry with just the right amount of chicken gravy on top. The mashed potatoes were just okay, so I ate very little of them. We also had 2 truffles each from Chocolate Gems. I had a lavender one and an espresso one. Nathan had one with white peppercorns and star anise, and another one with cayenne pepper. I wouldn’t even try the spicy one.And we finished our evening with another Blue Moon and White Zin. I didn’t take repeat pictures…they were here yesterday.

Tomorrow is our actual anniversary! And we don’t leave until Sunday!

I could get used to this…