Spring Break 2016 Part 1 (Picture overload - You have been warned)

Dan and I decided to selfishly use spring break as an opportunity to go on a little trip and leave our kids with my parents. Before we did that, however, I tried to be a good mom and do a few fun things around town.

Saturday we went to the temple and made great time. We learned that if you leave the temple by 1 or 1:30, you have enough time to hit the toll road before it closes at 2 and starts heading the other direction. So that's made a big difference for us.

Sunday was Easter, which I already wrote about. Monday I took the kids swimming at our gym's pool. Eli screamed his head off, so I just sat on a bench and held him for an hour while the big kids splashed around and had a great time. Tuesday we went to the park and got ready, then headed over to Earlysville once Dan got off work.

Wednesday morning we headed out. Our first hike of the trip was one recommended by one of Dan's older, Eagle-scout toting co-workers: Spy Rock, near Montebello, Virginia.

Apparently, troops would use the mountain as a good lookout place during the Civil War, hence the name. The hike was mainly a dirt road, which eventually turned into a nice trail. We didn't pass anyone on the hike up, saw a few people at the top, and passed a lot more on the way back down.

It was a gorgeous day, but unfortunately, the foliage still hadn't caught up and everything was still really brown.

After our beautiful hike, we drove the rest of the way to Asheville, North Carolina, checked into our hotel, and headed to dinner.

Dinner was so delicious. I relied on Tripadvisor for most of the restaurants this place did not disappoint. I'm glad I made reservations because by the time we left it was totally full. Our waiter was bad, but the food was amazing.

(Note: Every other year or so, for the last seven years or something, Dan and I try to take a trip. We take turns planning it. This was my year. I didn't want to go too far away since Eli is so little. Plus I'd been wanting to do some hiking so Asheville seemed like the perfect spot! I'd planned everything down to the hour pretty much. And like a month in advance. Where to hike, how long each hike was and how long it would take to do, where to eat, where to pick up boxed lunches, etc. The weather totally messed with my plans and we had to improvise, but we still had a lot of fun.)

After dinner I wanted to try this chocolate place that everyone seemed to recommend.

It was kind of a chilly night so Dan got Mexican hot chocolate with some blueberry ice cream and I got a piece of chocolate cake. It was very cocoa-y. More bitter than sweet, but still good. We don't know if it was caffeine in the cocoa or something, but we had a really hard time sleeping that night. We woke up to rain and mist Thursday morning and decided to stick with our scheduled hikes and see how it turned out.

We headed down southwest of Asheville and hopped on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The mist was so bad in places that we could barely see in front of us.

Nevertheless, we pressed onward to Sam Knob.

I can imagine this hike is really beautiful in the spring or fall on a clear day. For us, it was fun in a different way. Apart from a tent hidden in the trees once we got to the top, we were the only ones on the trail. And it was super windy, which made it more exciting.

 I didn't want to pull on my nice camera in this terrible weather, so these are all phone shots. But I love the picture above.

Once we got to the top, the view was breathtaking.

 Only because it was so windy it was taking our breath away. Ha!

It was kind of weird to have no idea what we were missing out there. How far away were the other mountains? Was there a drop off? No idea. Here's what our view should have been on a nice day.

Kind of makes me want to weep, but it was quite an experience.

The other hike I had planned for that morning was another summit, which I didn't think was worth it since it was so misty. So we scrapped it and headed back to town the long way on the BRP. We saw four wild turkeys. We hit up another tripadvisor place for lunch:

(Dan is so sweet to put up with me!) and then visited Biltmore. I always want to call it THE Biltmore for some reason. It seems more appropriate.

We took the audio tour. It was super crowded and I felt like a herd of cattle, but the house itself was really cool to see. I loved all the different ceilings.

 (That library reminded me of the one in Beauty and the Beast.)

 This frieze was pretty amazing, too. Here's just a small part of it. It expanded over three oversized fireplaces in the dining room.

 Here's a picture from the Biltmore's website with the whole thing.

After the tour, we walked the grounds for a little while.

Then it started to rain once again, so we headed back to the hotel to shower and change for dinner.

I didn't like this place as much, but it was in a cool old home that was built by Vanderbilt to house some of his employees. That was neat. Dan liked his food more than I liked mine. After dinner we walked around and then grabbed some Dairy Queen to top off the night. At this point we were both getting majorly stuffed, but we couldn't help ourselves. I had a food baby tummy by the time the trip was over!