Gatlinburg!

Before embarking on this trip… we were having dinner with some friends on Thursday evening… and I asked Angel’s husband, Todd, what he thought of Gatlinburg… he said “It’s Myrtle Beach, without the beach.” … What a perfect description this was.

For those that haven’t been to Gatlinburg lately.. let me fill you in. There are certain things that Gatlinburg is a Mecca for: Airbrushed T-Shirts, Custom / Novelty License Plates and frames, NASCAR Memorabilia, Beef Jerky, and Fudge / Candy.

The reason for our visit to Gatlinburg was none of the above… our visit was to visit Arrowmont.. to see:

 

Jennifer. She’s at Arrowmont, doing a residency… she seems to be having a good time…

The above is a quick look at Jennifer’s studio. She appears to be getting a lot of work done… With us to distract her though… she didn’t seem to get as much done…

Friday evening, we walked up to a lovely steakhouse for dinner and a little preview of what was around town. The remaining time Friday evening was restful.. we just hung out..  watched a movie… went to bed at a decent time…

Saturday, we started off with breakfast at one of the many pancake “Cabins” in the area… I’ve got to give them credit.. they made one heck of a breakfast… the place was PACKED as well… it was a good start to the day for a little people watching… After packing ourselves full of food, it was a short walk up the hill to the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum.(Click on that link to go to the website, and you can even go on a virtual tour of the museum)

For those who don’t click on the link, at this museum, you’ll find over 20,000 pairs of salt and pepper shakers. That’s right… over 20,000 pairs. They’re categorized by type to include: Christmas, Wood, Food, Alcohol, Cats, Dogs, Monkeys, Cities, Cows, Chickens, etc, etc, etc.

It was rather amazing. Personally, I was a bi fan of the salt and pepper shakers that looked like something you would ever use salt or pepper on… like Ice Cream… or Bourbon bottles…. or other oddities. Best of all… if you’re interested, the entire museum is for sale.

After the museum, we noticed a “winery” up the hill from the Museum, so we went to check that out.. it was the typical wine for this area… mainly sweet stuff. nothing that falls under the realm of normal wines…

After such a busy morning, we went back to Arrowmont to get the grand tour there… There’s definitely some interesting stuff going on around there… lots of workshops and classes offered… in the above picture, we stopped at the Arrowmont library for a little break…

Then, we were off to the Ripley’s Aquarium.

These folks at Ripley’s had all sorts of stuff all over town… the Aquarium, the Ripley’s Museum, Ripley’s Mini-Golf…. a little bit of everything.. But for an aquarium located 500+ miles from the nearest Ocean… it’s amazing what they had… really the whole 9… sharks, fish, rays, all sorts of stuff!!

After a walk around the aquarium, we headed up the street for a Moonshine Tasting at the Ole Smoky Distillery . They had some corn liquor, some white lightning, cherries soaked in white lightning, and “Apple Pie” … which was their White Lightning with apple juice, apple cider, cinnamon, and sugar… it was the only one that really went down smooth, but given the ratio of the mixture, it wasn’t too surprising… it’s roughly 1 gallon of apple juice, 1 gallon of cider, 2 cups of sugar, some cinnamon sticks, and one quart of 100 proof white lightning. But, the tasting was free… so, totally worth stopping by to check it out.

This got us up to lunch on Saturday, at which point we stopped at a Greek restaurant with live bluegrass musicians playing… a few gyros, and a few glasses of iced tea, and we were recharged and ready to go…. … Sort of… … more like ready to go back to the house and take a nap… Which we did with gusto.

Jennifer made some burgers for dinner topped with mushrooms and muenster… accompanied by twice baked potatoes, and grilled corn on the cob… These artsy folks know how to eat…

Virginia and I didn’t last too much longer after dinner… so we packed it in early, and got some good sleep for the drive back today…

We woke up this morning, packed up… Jennifer cooked us some egg and cheese sandwiches for breakfast….

Then, we came back to Boone via Maggie Valley and Cherokee… It was a nice trip… I wish I would have taken more pictures… but I’ve been trying out a new lens… and I’m not the biggest fan of it… hopefully there will be more blog updates in the near future before the weather turns all crappy…

Today is our anniversary!

Believe it or not… it’s already been a year. With that in mind, I decided that it was time for a new look for the blog. So, hopefully, everyone (all 4 readers) like the new layout.

So, being our first anniversary of actual marriage… the decision was made that one day of celebration was not enough.. so, the celebration kinda lasted all weekend.

To start things off, I had to enlist the service of our good friend Josh. I needed both his muscles and his truck for the gift I had decided to get for Virginia.

See, Virginia always likes to climb into the recliner with me…which isn’t too surprising because I tend to exude a good amount of excess heat, and as anyone who’s ever come to visit us knows…. the futon in the TV room isn’t the most comfortable place in the world to sit.

So enters “The Cuddler”

Yes… it’s really that big…. let’s take another look…

So… finally, it’s a recliner that we can both share…. The only problem is that it’s pretty difficult to close the thing up by yourself… Also, parents be warned… the next time parents visit, they made be made to share the cuddler….

So, after Josh and I snuck this monster into the house and set it up, it was time to start thinking about dinner… so, I didn’t take any pictures, but I made some hot bacon dressing with some salad; chicken breasts stuffed with ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan; and finished it all up with a Gooey Butter Cake… Let me tell you now.. the Gooey Butter Cake will make the food blog at some point… but it might be a little while before I make it again. You arteries harden just thinking about the recipe. But, it’s really dang tasty.

After the feast, we rounded off the night by trying to sit in the cuddler and watch TV… next thing you know, we woke up in front of a TV that had been idle so long that it shut off. So… is the chair comfortable? I’d say yes.

Saturday morning, we rolled out of bed and decided to head to a festival in celebration of the Blue Ridge Parkway’s “Birthday”… there was to be music, crafts, and all sorts of information about the Parkway. So, after driving up to Cumberland Gap on the Parkway, we finally got to the Music Center where the majority of the music was happening… Now, at this point, I suppose I should mention that it was raining when we left Boone. But, we turned on the radio, listened to NPR and kept heading North. But, it was still raining when we got to the music center.

We parked the car in a field and headed over to an information tent to see what the deal was. Apparently, there would be a “shuttle” showing up to take us to areas where things were actually happening, as the field we were in wasn’t exactly a happening spot. But, here’s the catch… all of the music stuff was in the amphitheater… which is outside… in the rain. So, we looked over at the group of people standing in the rain, anxiously awaiting the shuttle, just so they’d get a chance to hear the wonderful bluegrass music… and got back into the car.

We were a bit bummed, but at the same time, we weren’t about to sit in the rain to hear some bluegrass. We might have another trip up there on a day that isn’t outrageously crappy weather. So, we hopped onto the Parkway heading back South, and hopped off at Galax. At this point, we were getting a bit hungry so I whipped out the Droid and asked it where to eat. (For some readers : The Droid is my amazingly smart Google Powered phone.. it does a bit of everything, including telling me where to eat based on my GPS location… with reviews of local restaurants)  So, the Droid told me that I should head to Flossie’s for lunch, as apparently Flossie’s is outstanding.

As we got close to Flossie’s the road was blocked off… dang… another setback? No! This time, it was a street festival. As we parked the car, bluegrass music filled the air. We rounded the corner, and saw people flat-footing and clogging to the music. We continued into Flossie’s and immediately upon looking at the menu, we knew that we were in the right place. Virginia got a hot turkey sandwich on Texas Toast with mashed ‘taters and gravy, and I got a country fried steak with gravy, mac n’ cheese, green beans, and hush-puppies. The food there was AMAZING!! (With the exception of the mac n’ cheese… it wasn’t horrible, but compared to the rest of the food, it was sub-par) We finished everything off with pecan pie accompanied by home-made ice cream.

We walked around Galax for a little bit, found  cute little book store… but it’s all really just a blur.. what really happened in the afternoon was a herculean effort to stay awake on the way back to Boone since we were both packed with enough food to feed a small city. So, we got home, layed around… fell asleep…

We woke this morning, on the actual day of our anniversary with no real plans… until I watched the news… Who would have thought… but there was a Greek Festival in Charlotte today. So, once again, we loaded into the car and took off. Upon getting to Charlotte, we realized that the event might be a little bigger than we anticipated…

 

The place was PACKED. Think… Busch Gardens… in May… with 50% off coupons… that’s how busy this place was. I forgot to mention, today was the 3rd day this celebration was swinging… But, apparently, the people hadn’t gotten tired of it. … … For the most part… one of the Spartan Warriors may have had a bit too much.

He tried to take on Virginia… little did he know that she was all full of food and ready to rumble…

The food there was typical Greek Festival food… meaning AWESOME!!!! We shared a dinner of chicken, spanakopita, salad, a meatball, and some pasta / rice stuff… and for dessert, (which we had before dinner) we had Baklava Sundae… Other fun for us in the day included a tasting of Greek wines… some god walking around… and watching the little Greek kids dance.

Now… it’s time to relax and spend some time in the cuddler again… but, we also saved a bottle of wine from our wedding that we’ll be having tonight…

It’s been a great first year, with many more to come. We’ll try to keep things updated here as much as possible. Until next time… Take it easy.

Nicole’s baby shower and our awesome lake trip.

Okay, well that kind of brings us into August. We made a trip home this past weekend to see our folks and for me to go to my friend Nicole’s baby shower. If you follow the blog, you may remember her beautiful wedding from last June. She’s expecting a baby in the end of September, so I go to visit her and see her all pregnant and nesting. Here is her nursery. It has a cutie monkey/jungle theme:

They even made the cake at the shower fit the theme. It was so cute and amazingly delicious.

That’s the momma, enjoying her cake!

After the shower, we went down to Smith Mountain Lake on Sunday to visit our friends the Olivers. You may remember them from our wedding. Nat and Will were the twin groomsmen.

Their folks had rented an awesome 5 bedroom lake house and were generous enough to let us tag along on their family vacation. One of the best parts was going out on their boat. Smith Mountain Lake is gorgeous and neither Aaron or I had been there before. It was enough to make me think I could become a lake person.

This is the view from their house. You can see the boat dock behind the trees.

Nat and Erin in the kitchen. You can see that Erin is hard at work on a yummy diner of pork chili concoction. If we were smart we would have taken food blog pictures.

Here’s Erin’s face-side from the boat.

We spent much of our boat time tubing. I had never been tubing off a boat, and let me just say, it ROCKED!

Although I am a bit sore today…

And some fancy people went wake boarding…

This is Will looking very extreme…

After watching Will, Aaron and I decided we were too lazy for wake boarding. Although Aaron actually had one of the best tube-wipe-outs of the day, but unfortunately no one was around to record it.

Erin was great on both tube and wake board. This is moments before her plunge into the lake.

Needless to say a fun time was had by all. That’s it for now…

Although, since these last posts have been a bit Virginia-centric, if you are wondering what Aaron’s been up to check out www.svpics.com to see all his fancy new motorcycle pictures.

Virginia goes to the beach.

While Aaron was hard at work in Boone, I got to go to the beach with my family. Now, don’t feel too bad for Aaron. He was invited to come, but he doesn’t really enjoy the beach, especially the way the Pages do it which is without central air.

I don’t have too many pictures from the trip because I was only there for four days, and while we did have a great time there, my memories are a bit tarnished by the fact that I totaled our Honda CRV on the way back. I’m fine and thankfully no other cars were involved. The Honda was a valiant car and protected me from all harm, but it was still quite traumatic.

Luckily Aaron was around to come pick me up in Greensboro (it happened on I40 west). And also our insurance kicked in, but I still feel really bad. I just took my attention off the road for one second to try to block the sun and a swerved into the median. No fun.

So enough about that! Here are some pictures from the beach.

Martha and dad. I’m not sure why he looks so confused in this pic.

Silly one of me running out to rescue the car from the rain.

Me and mom, and of course me and M (who had to fly down from Minneapolis).

Long Over-due post for July… and maybe some August too.

Aaron and I have been pretty busy or at least all over the place this past month. We started July by heading home to Lexington for our birthdays and got to spend some quality time with our families and see fireworks.

I had an eye-infection which is why I look especially squinty in these pictures. But Aaron did take some beautiful fireworks photos…

But first we went to the hometown bike parade, a local tradition involving youngsters on bicycles, not the usual photos of motobikers Aaron takes.

That’s Uncle Sam leading the pack on a super-tall unicycle.

In the evening we gathered at the parade ground to watch fireworks and hot air balloons.

Here you see me modeling my lovely birthday gift, a Jennifer Wells original, www.jennwells.com.

The balloons are quite lovely, no? Also there was a light-saber battle royal.

And fireworks.

Visit to Martha in Minneapolis

Last weekend I got to go visit my sister in Minneapolis. This was my first trip to Minnie-SOTA, so I had quite an experience. Martha got to take a few days off from work and for me, it was like visiting a fairy godmother – she took me to get my haircut, we bought clothes, we went to fancy restaurants. It was like a whole new me.

First here is the Good Day Café Bad Day Bar and our gigantic apple-cake-soufflé thingy. Doesn’t it look big enough to feed to a dinner party?

Then we went to Martha’s cool stained glass shop. Minneapolis is full of specialty stores like that. In addition to the stained glass shop, I saw a cupcakery and a tattoo remover parlor. Lots of niche markets to cater to.

Martha has promised to make me a stained glass window featuring this cool swirly glass:

Then we went to the Global Market in Midtown which is an up-and-coming area of the city. The Global Market featured food from all over the world. We had some delicious Italian ice, and Martha posed with this giraffe.

In the afternoon I got my haircut and we ate cupcakes. Then we went for dinner at Crave, where I had a lovely fresh ravioli with bolognaise – see what I mean by being spoiled?!?

In the evening we met up with some of Martha's friends and went to a beer garden. They even had “Das Boot.”

On Saturday Martha took me to visit the Walker Art Museum. It’s famous for its huge sculpture garden.

 

There were all kinds of super cool modern and contemporary exhibits. One of our favorites was called “The Talent Show.” You could be part of the art by making yourself a human sculpture.

There was also an artist who wanted to draw people together into the artistic space. One whole room was full of hammocks and they played Jimmy Hendrix and projected pictures onto the walls.

Then we went to eat soup and pie at the Turtle Bread Company.

On Sunday we went shopping for a raincoat for me. We had a great time.

I think my favorite part of Minneapolis though was the outdoorsy stuff. Now Boone is pretty outdoorsy, but for a big city Minneapolis was very impressive. Martha actually lives in walking distance of three different lakes. Lakes are a very big thing there. Each lake has a different personality and all have walking and biking trails all around them.

There was also this really cool downtown area with waterfalls where the flour mills (like Pillsbury).

For my last dinner we went to Burger Jones, a really nice burger place where we got a tower of fries (parmesan waffle, sweet potatoes, and traditional) and some awesome sliders.

Until next time, here’s a fun picture of me in a giant chair outside Martha’s apartment.