Trip to Damascus!

So... last week, we were planning on making this trip up to Damascus, to walk around, but the car wasn't cooperating. So... I fixed the car yesterday... and the trips happened today. Full Album here : Linky!

I'm debating on whether or not to tell the story of the car... it has a happy ending... but it got me rather upset during the process.... we'll see later on..

C'Mon ride that Train!! Virginia hops on a train sitting at an entrance to the Virginia Creeper trail in Damascus. She looks like she's having a good time!!

This little squirrel was hard to catch on the camera. We were walking across a bridge, and I heard this little guy eating... So, after looking around for a bit, I tracked him down... but he was right in the sun.. and I really couldn't get a very clear shot.. 

Crappy lawnmower + old barn style shed + good lighting and color = artistic shot.... I Like how it came out...

This was the scene at the Shady Valley Country Store... we stopped there, had a BBQ sandwich... Virginia almost bought some chaps... but they were fake leather... so... we passed on those.. but the BBQ was good...

Some of the leaves are still looking gorgeous.... I really like some of the shots I got today... make sure to look at the full album... and let me know what y'all think!!

Fall in Boone!!

Well... fall is settling in rather quickly here in Boone... temperature have dropped like crazy, and the leaves seem to skip that whole changing color thing, and just fall straight to the ground... But, last weekend, we went out and got ourselves a few pumpkins. Virginia named the big one "Pie-Face" and the smaller one "Gordy".

The one solo worker at the "Pumpkin Patch" was also making some pretty danged outstanding kettle corn on site... as soon as we walked up, he gave us a rather enticing free sample bag to enjoy while we were walking around looking at the pumpkins....
Gracie made friends pretty quick with "Pie-Face" ... she likes chewing on his stem...
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But tell me that she's not THE cutest cat in the world... how many cats would pose for a picture like this??

Hope everyone is healthy and doing well!! Feel free to come visit us in Boone!

Nat and Erin Wedding!!!!

Well... lot of stuff over several days to post... so I broke it down into 3 sections... rehearsal dinner, ceremony, and reception... Enjoy!!!

Picture Album is here : Linky!!

Rehearsal Dinner / Set-Up

Well, this weekend was yet another gorgeous wedding. This was the wedding of Nat Oliver and Erin Fay, and it was held at Skylark Farm off the the Blue Ridge Parkway in beautiful Virginia.
The farm sits on a mountain-top and offered great views of the changing leaves all around.

The flowers were still blooming... even though all of the leaves were changing... it was really neat... the bright colors of the flowers, and the subdued yellow, orange and red on the trees....
This lovely spiral staircase was the pathway from the ground level to the 3rd floor of the house we were staying in. The width of the staircase is about 3"-4" narrower than my shoulders. The only time it was slightly a problem was carrying the luggage up.. but, the awesome room and views from the top of the mountain totally made up for that.
This is Anne pulling pork. Before too long, we took over. This was a wonderful idea. The pork was for the rehearsal dinner, and they had smoked and cooked an entire pig. AWESOME. The somewhat down-side of this, is that this cooking and smoking was done with rather large chunks of pig. In order to make that pork edible by the general public, you've got to shred, or "pull" the pork into smaller pieces. The process is amazingly complex. First, you grab a chunk of cooked and smoked pig. Next, you rip it apart into tiny pieces and put it in a bowl. The complexity comes, when you factor in the additional tasks that must be preformed at the same time. The pork pulling team consisted of myself, Virginia, Will (Brother of the bride) and his girlfriend Meredith. So... additional task for us included: Drinking beer (They had a keg of Shiner for the rehearsal dinner); talking about anything and everything to come to mind, and casually slipping pieces of hot pork into our mouths while no-one else was paying attention. All in all..... it was awesome. Give me a call if you need some pork pulled.
Here, the morning of the wedding, Virginia hangs pictures of the bride and groom around the tent that will later on house the reception. The pictures were Clothes-pinned onto ribbons around the tent and a large collage was placed in a 3 foot clothes-pin at the entrance of the tent.

The Ceremony!

Here are Virginia and Mara .... Looking all pretty... You can tell that they're both really happy to be there... and you can see the awesome view behind them...


This is the Altar.. it was pretty awesome... flowers beside it, flowers on top...and a hummingbird stopped by to enjoy the flowers before and during the ceremony... That was pretty awesome. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the hummingbird... but those things are FAST.
Finally, here is the Happy Couple!! Nat and Erin had a gorgeous wedding on the mountain-top. Everyone had a wonderful time, and we were all glad to be a part of it.
As an added bonus, here are the beautiful Page sisters... We had a little photo-op time... since it was so beautiful on top of the mountain, it was hard to pass up taking as many pictures as possible.
Here's the view opposite from the altar. In the not too-far distance is the Blue Ridge Parkway. The one thing that I found really amazing was that ... well.... the location was within earshot of the Parkway... and it was a gorgeous day... in the middle of the ceremony I half expected a huge group of Harleys to go roaring by... I'm glad it didn't happen... but I was also suprised...

The Reception!!!

The reception was held in this lovely tent... the catered food was awesome, the main course was : Ravioli, Prime Rib, Crab Cakes, Asparagus, assorted bread and an awesome "Blue salad" with Blueberries and Blue Cheese. ... After that, we had some of the AWESOME wedding cake, and some peach cobbler. The peach cobbler was an awesome touch on a night that was slightly chilly..

Here is the bride and groom's first dance. They both look so happy, and they're all sweet looking into each other's eyes..


Here's the father - daughter dance. Erin's dad actually had some good moves! They both look like they're having a good time.

Here's Will (Nat's Brother) and his lovely girlfriend Meredith. They were both a good time. They both have a great sense of humor and were awesome to hang out with during the reception. Really, everyone at the reception was fun to hang out with... All in all, a great time...
After things began to calm down at the reception, we went to hang out at the fire-pit. It provided an amazing amount of warmth as the night got cooler, and of course, being a few drinks in.... It was a lovely time to take some pictures... This picture is about a 2 second exposure... and captures the trails of the sparks nicely...

And Gracie... Gracie spent most of the weekend hanging out with my mom and dad while we were doing wedding things.. I think she had a good time... dad's cat, Tyger, doesn't really care much for Gracie... but I think she's just jealous of Gracie's awesomeness and cuteness. So... Tyger keeps Gracie running around, and dad spoils her... He feeds her a can of tuna on Sunday morning... but, it works out well, because after some tuna, and getting chased around the house... she hops in the car and falls right asleep. she does amazingly well in the car... She really doesn't like her little travel box, and she cries and cries until you let her out. But, once you let her out, she walks around the car once or twice, and then settles down and falls asleep. She'll get up and use her litter box if she needs it, and she stays quiet. She actually slept all of the way home this time, and for the better part, this is just how she slept. Ain't she a cutie??

Banner Elk - Lees McRae

Picture Album for this post : Linky!

All Albums : Linky!

Since today was such a lovely day, we hopped in the car and drove down to Banner Elk. While there, we decided to walk through Lees-McRae College.

Here we are, relaxing in the school's rocking chairs... nice chairs... but they were chained to the wall. I got this shot by setting the self timer, and putting the camera on the sidewalk. If you look in the album, you'll see what happens when the timer goes off faster than I expected.

It's a good looking campus, with a bunch of good looking stone buildings.. it has a pretty awesome look to things.


Directly behind the above building was this one though... really kind of surprising... Banner Elk is a really nice town.. All of the buildings have a certain look, everything is really clean... nice cars driving around... rich people... but that's the main drag going through Banner Elk... apparently.. the back streets are a little different.

Below is the Water Tower on Campus.. Kind of a cool building... from the looks of it, it no longer holds water... it looks more like it hold scrap lumber. But, I thought it was neat looking.

Right next to Lees-McRae campus was this little Church with the Neat-O steeple. All rainbow stained glass and what-not.

Below, Virginia walks into the graveyard... the graveyard was mainly graves from the late 1800's, but there were a few from recently. A lot of the names were along the lines of "Banner" and things like that... Also, there were only maybe 8-9 different last names in the entire graveyard. Something tells me that average Joe doesn't get invited to be buried there.


A view of some of the headstones... They really weren't very elaborate, but the carvings were all very clean and straight for being rather old stones... I was surprised.

And of course, fall is beginning to set in... the leaves are starting to change, and things are getting pretty before they get freezing cold. and....a recent pictue of Gracie... she likes to sit on my lap and watch House with us.... She's finally starting to put on a little bit of weight... so she's not so fragile anymore...