Never heard of it? Me either. But they do have awesome recreational activities there:
I know you can't see it...but that's me. In the front of a raft. In the middle of a class IV rapid on the French Broad River. Woo hoo! I'm pretty sure this was taken just before I thought I was going to fall out of the raft and grabbed the rope on the side for dear life.
I'd never been whitewater rafting before but Chris, being the manly ex-youth minister he is, has been several times. So I thought this would be something neat to do together--and it was! I had lots of fun (so did he, I think) and no one got sent overboard, so it turned out really well. But don't you know that we chose to travel to the mountains on the two chilliest days of the past several weeks??? The day before we got there, 80 degrees. The day we left, 80 degrees. This day, when we were soaking wet and there was a wind strong enough to make my ears hurt and it was raining not on us but at us...
...this day was about 65. Go figure. Still fun, though!
After all that excitement, there was a good bit of this:
*not my actual husband*
Once we'd had enough of that we headed for dinner in what my uncle called "South Asheville". We had reservations at a restaurant called Frankie Bones, and we had them there for a very specific reason--their Early Dining menu. My husband ate prime rib, some really good potatoes, and a Caesar salad. I had a wonderful chicken/vegetable/pasta dish that was too large for me to finish and a salad as well. Our drinks (sweet tea--is there anything else to drink with dinner?) were even included. The cost?
His dinner: $14.99
My dinner: $13.99
This was an AWESOME find! No, I don't have a picture of our food. Sorry to disappoint. :)
The day did not end with dinner...our "dessert stomachs" were still very empty. And my uncles certainly had the cure for that! We met at their house, which has an AMAZING view, and they drove us to downtown Asheville. It reminded me a lot of Chapel Hill--you know, 5,000 people and 200 parking spots. Our ultimate destination was a place called the Chocolate Lounge. Oh yeah. Before we got there, though, we stopped at a different chocolatier where each of us had a mouth-watering truffle. Skip ahead about a block and a half and we all had ice cream too. Notice a pattern? And we still haven't made it to the Chocolate Lounge! We stopped to see the Drum Circle, a Friday night occurrence in Asheville. It was...very interesting. There was definitely a time in my life (when I was much younger, much less inhibited, and much more naive about people's perceptions) when I would have really gotten into the whole scene. But not now. And not in a white linen skirt. I do have a picture of the crowd, the capturing of which made me look even more like a tourist:
And then...the icing on the cake. We arrived at the Chocolate Lounge, where there lay a plethora of adorable little things that looked something like this:
As full as I was from dinner (and truffles and lemon sorbet...) I managed to scarf another truffle, about half of a luscious brownie topped with cinnamon and cayenne pepper (very interesting taste--hurt so good!), half of one of my uncle's truffles, and several bites of a lavender creme brulee. Oh, and some decaf coffee that I purposefully doctored to consist more of milk and sugar than coffee. Nearly too stuffed to talk, we headed back to my uncles' house and relaxed (as much as possible with their very large dogs) on the couch watching TV. Then we finally headed back to the Grove Park, collected our things for check-out the next morning, and collapsed into bed. Ahhh...
Still more to come about the last day, but not nearly as much activity as this one!!!
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