A Quick Road Trip Dinner

June 21st

So this isn't a weekend trip post but we took a hilarious road trip on Thursday evening that needs to be documented.
So here is the important information to know...

• We only have a few more days with Mathis and Nicki before they move to Texas
• Terri came and stayed with us part of the week
• We didn't want to go to dinner to some same old - same old place we had all been a ton of times before

I did a quick search of the area for some kind of fun restaurant and I was coming up empty. We have explored a lot of great places but we wanted something memorable. I remembered a friend telling me that her and her family had come to this place pretty far out that was a lot of fun so I thought I would do a little research. It looked PERFECT for what we were looking for. So Thursday evening we picked up Mathis, Nicki and Terri told them to home in the car and we were going to dinner. They knew nothing. It was so fun. As we were driving the hour and a half to the restaurant, we learned that the first hour of the drive Nicki use to do a few times a week for her school internship. It was fun to hear all the stories and realize how far and how much she took on to get her degrees. Impressive.

The last half hour of the drive was pretty much straight up a mountain. The views were beautiful but I was starting to wonder if we might have screwed up. And then it appeared... The Swinging Bridge Restaurant.

The first thing we saw when we pulled into the parking lot was a status of a duck-cow being hatched from an egg. Yeah, weird. We had to get a group picture around it...

The restaurant is in an old building and it has a general store in the front of the building. They also had an area in the back of the restaurant where you can hang out, play yard games or just sit and relax. Seemed like the perfect photo op.

 The restaurant was so cool. There weren't many people there so we had the run of the place for the night. They told us normally they are packed on Thursday nights and there is usually a wait but we lucked out. We had an amazing experience. Our waitress was great and so much fun and the food was great. They had live music too. There was this really nice guy and an older gentlemen that would play different songs on their guitar. We even sang along and Terri had them play a song for Jed.

After a memorable, kind of creepy ride home, we all settled in and watched The Goonies. Jed had never seen it so it was fun for all of us to watch it together. What a great night!

A Weekend at Home

June 16th

One of the many things that is so great about a weekend at home are all of the day trips we can take. There is always so much to see and do. This Saturday we traveled to Mountain Lake with the Kennington's and the Racek's. Mathis and Nicki have never been and Joe and Lisa hadn't been since we graduated from college. One of the most exciting parts of going this weekend was it was Dirty Dancing Weekend. In 1987, they filmed the movie here and it was so fun to go see the different places that they shot different parts of the movie.

On our way to Mountain Lake, we ran into a wine tasting on the side of the road. He had his SUV with cases of his local wine from Alta Vista Vineyards, a tailgating tent, table, chair and plastic wine glasses. It was such a beautiful view and such a fun and random road side stop.

We spent most of our time walking the lake's bed where all of the water has dried up. They say that one day it will come back, I hope they are right. It was so interesting to be able to see all the different stages of the shrinking lake as they continued to build different docks as the levels continued to drop. There is still water there and we made our way down to it. The kids walked half way around it in the water while the boys had an impromptu stone skipping competition. As we were walking around we learned that this is where Joe and Lisa got engagement! We had to have a photo op on the very rock that Joe proposed on. (At least they think it was the rock.)

We made our way to the overly large chess set. I think this is just so much fun and had to have a group picture of us with all the pieces. I think everyone had fun with it. There was a quick game of tether ball and then it was time to head home. Lisa and I made a quick trip to check out the inside of the hotel and see some of the Dirty Dance memorabilia and other historical things about the lake.

We had to hurry home because we had a very special pizza waiting for us back home. Mathis, Nicki, Jed and I had been talking about ordering a traditional Chicago deep dish pizza from Giordano's. They overnighted us the pizza and it was just as good as I remembered it. We ended our evening at Joe & Lisa's with her famous, homemade apple crisp.

Asheville

June 8th - 10th

Jed & I had the opportunity to go with Mathis & Nicki to Asheville. We have been to Asheville before when we went to the Biltmore Estates, but we had never explored the actual city of Asheville. Boy have we been missing out! We headed to Asheville early and were able to get dinner at Salsa's. We had read great things about this place and it was better then we could have expected. Our server was great, the atmosphere was fun (we saw a nun on a bike on a bus drive by!), the food was INCREDIBLE and we even had a "calf off" on our way out of the restaurant. (One of the cooks claimed he had the best calf's in town, Jed had a little throw down with him and Jed won, at least in my opinion.) I would highly recommend this place.

We started the trip off right with a lot of food and it was time to walk some of it off. Downtown Asheville is really fun. They had unique street performers up and down some of the roads, we saw musicians, artists and magicians. We found some interesting sculptures and cute little shops to check out. We even found our first cupcake place, The Sisters McMullen. The first two cupcakes of the weekend were pretty disappointing but we haven't given up on Asheville cupcakes yet. I hear there are a few more places we will have to check out.

As we wondered the city, we found a fun place to just sit and hang out for a little while called Lexington Ave Brewery (LAB). We catch the very end of some live music, orders an appetizer and hung out for a little while before calling it a night.

Saturday morning we started off with a bang. We read about a place that had cinnamon rolls that we couldn't miss while we were here so we head to West End Bakery to see if what we had read was true. This little bake shop was so great! The pastries were delicious and it was a place that I could go and hang out for hours. We had lots to tackle today so we couldn't stay long. Our next planned destination was the River Arts District. They host an open house kind of thing once or twice a year so we thought we would check it out.

On our way there we found a flee market that we had to check out. There was a lot of fun stuff, creative jewelry, old time dresses and costumes, toys from my childhood and older. As we were checking out the tables, Mathis spotted a tent that was the Texas flag. He made a beeline to it and struck up a conversation with the guy. He was selling sunglasses, hats, clothes, and a ton of other random stuff. Come to find out he is from Texas and he dives rivers for a living. He picks up all the stuff that tourists or college kids, and everyone else that floats the river drops, and can't recover. He told us all about his impressive sunglasses collection and how many diamond rings he has found. I can't believe the things he had and that it appeared that he was able to make a living doing it. Because "we" were from Texas, we were able to get a discount and Jed got some pretty cool new Oakley sunglasses.

We finally made it to the River Arts District and it was really cool. It was so much fun to go explore all the different galleries and workshops and do a little bit of walking. We even got to take a trolley back to the main part of the district. It is truly amazing how creative people can be. I was definitely inspired and wanted to come home with so much.

We did a little bit of walking around to get to many of the galleries and were able to take the trolley back to the center of the district. That is where 12 Bones is located. 12 Bones is a barbecue place that is all the rage. We didn't think we were going to get a chance to go because it isn't opened on Saturdays or Sundays but this was a special Saturday because of the Open Houses so they opened. It was so good and I loved the decor on the walls. Still makes me laugh thinking about it.

After lunch we headed back to the downtown shopping area. There were a few farmers markets that we wanted to try and find and some other shops that we thought would be find to explore. Some places were a success while others were a bid of a dud but we enjoyed exploring the area. During our exploring, we came across the Thirsty Monk and decided this would be a nice place to sit and relax for a little while. So we grabbed some drinks (Jed & Mathis got samplers) and we found seats on the little outdoor seating area. It was so fun to just relax and people watch.

We had plans later in the afternoon to go check out a Moonshine Distillery so we thought we would grab a snack since we were going to end up have a later dinner and we had just the place in mind, The Gourmet Chip. I absolutely LOVED this place. What a creative idea. I had no idea you could make chips taste so good.

Troy & Sons Distillery is a distillery in the area that makes moonshine and gives tours. It sounded perfect for us so made sure we got there way early. It shares a building with a brewery and we were a little bummed that we were a little too late to take the last tour there before out tour at Tour & Sons. We learned a lot of cool things on out town. Our tour guide was Troy's son so he gave us plenty of family history. Troy is his mom and Troy & Sons is one of very few female operated distilleries. The building and the process took up very little space but we learned a lot about they type of corn they used and how and why they distill there moonshine and how it is different from others. We were able to try 3 different kinds of moonshine. We all really like the first one best. Good thing since that is the only kind that they sell, just not in the distillery. For some reason, that is against the law so we have to quick run to an ABC store to get it immediately after the tour.

We had plans to check out a chocolate lounge tonight that we had seen the night before so after the tour, we stopped off at the hotel to regroup and then headed out to dinner. Since we knew we were not going to beat what we had had last night, we chose to go a completely different direction, Asheville Pizza & Brewing Company. It was good, and the building was very unique. People are just so creative. Who thinks to put a UFO on their restaurant?

Our next plan was to walk of some of dinner (and breakfast, lunch & snacks) before hitting up the chocolate lounge. As we were walking around, we were invited to a comedy club. We had about a half hour to waste before the show started and for us to decide if we wanted to do it. There was a cover, $5. That is nothing for a comedy club cover, so we decide to just go for it. If nothing else, it would be memorable. And that it was. I learned again, that the saying is true, "You get what you pay for". We didn't pay much and we didn't get much either. We sat through 4 comics and at the break we bolted. It was fun, a little funny at times and very memorable. I am glad we did it, you never know, we might see one of those comics on tv or a movie one day.

We finally made it to French Broad Chocolates for dessert. I don't think any of us were really hungry at all but we dug deep and went for it. There was quite a line to get in so that bought us a little more time to get hungry. Once we got up to the front, we learned that quite a few things were sold out. One thing in particular was "The World's Best Chocolate Chip Cookie". That is some pretty high praise and they were gone so it must be true. The desserts were good and it was fun to hang out and watch/listen to the live music. After a little while, we decided to call it a night, we were getting tired or we were falling into a food coma so we headed back to the hotel for the night.

Sunday morning started off with more food! Thankfully there was a bit of a wait to get into Tupelo Honey Cafe. We had heard and read a lot about this place and we couldn't decide which meal we wanted to eat here so we went with brunch. We got breakfast food with a side of lunch food (mac & cheese).

We did a little more window shopping and decided to start the drive home. We had a few stops in mind on our way home. We have eaten a lot of great food but we were really missing a great cupcake so before we left we had to find one more place to redeem Asheville and there ability to do cupcakes. We found Short Street Cakes and the cupcakes didn't disappoint. The were really good. The only problem was, by the time we got there, they were pretty much wiped out. But what we did get was worth it. Speaking of being wiped out, "The World's Best Chocolate Chip Cookie" was still just taunting us. Our curiousity got the best of us and we made one last stop back at the French Broad Chocolate to pick one up for the road. It was good. But I am not sure it was the best, atleast I know now.

Since the weather was a little iffy, we decided to forgo the hiking adventures we found and travel back stopping at wineries along the way. We found three very different wineries to stop at. The first was South Creek Winery. This was right up Mathis & Nicki's alley. All they make is dry wine. We learned a lot from the owner and how they bought and continued the vineyard.

Our next stop was a lot more our style, Lake James Cellars. It reminded me a lot of Peaks of Otter winery. Just super sweet, fun wine. The guy that poured our wine was really friendly and fun and told us all kinds of stories about the little town of Glen Alpine we were in. It also had a vintage store attached to the tasting room so we took a quick look at that before heading to our last winery of the day.

Waldensian Heritage Wines was our last winery. This place was such a neat experience. They didn't have the best wine but they might have the best story. If I understood the guy correctly, there were 5 Italian dudes that came to the area decades ago. Those 5 decided to make wine for fun. As those gentlemen have moved on, they get to invite someone to buy into the vineyard. So everyone that is there has been hand picked, retired, older gentlemen. I think there are 7 now that own and operate the winery. They harvest and make wine using volunteers, the winemaker is one of the 7 hand picked gentlemen and every bottle of wine is $8 and tasting are free. A bottle of wine here is cheaper then 2 tasting at most places! And all $8 of each bottle purchased goes to a local scholarship for kids to pay for college. How do you not love that! The winemaker, volunteer guy that did our tasting also gave us a really quick tour of the area. He was just so nice and so were all the other people that were there enjoying there wine overlooking the beautiful North Carolina mountains. They even invited us to grab a glass and come join them. Unfortunately, we had to get back on the road but it was an experience I will not soon forget.

After the wineries, it was a mad dash to get home. We did make a stop for dinner at an Italian place called Sorrento Pizzeria & Italian. It wasn't the best but the trip itself definitely was the best. We had so much fun making memories and sharing life together. I am so glad we got to take this trip.