Asheville, NC Pictures...finally.

October 11 was the beginning of our Second Annual Mother-Daughter Weekend. Mom and I got up at o'dark-stupid to meet the Edwards' ladies before we drove down to the airport. We had a lay-over in Atlanta, where we met up with Sarah. From there, we flew in to Charlotte, NC. The weather was so nice! We promptly picked up our luggage and jumped on the shuttle to pick up "Smurfette". You'll meet her later.

Our first stop was in Charlotte at the Billy Graham Library. We weren't really sure what to expect, but it turned out to be a fabulous stop! We had lunch, saw a singing cow and toured the museum/bookstore dedicated to Billy Graham. The whole place was just stunning. Check out the picture of the beams inside the barn-museum!



We then started our 2+ hour "Road-Trip" to Asheville. I say "road-trip" because NC includes some very misleading road signs, so we had a slight detour along the way. The drive was nice, though. "Smurfette" proved to be very reliable and accomodating to our comfort needs. I think we hit NC just prior to "peak" leaf-changing season, but, to us Texas girls, it was still pretty impressive. As we got closer to the mountains, you could definitely see more vivid color.

We got checked in to our hotel and quickly learned that we would be sharing space with an "Expo". It was for postcard and stamp collectors, though, so they were pretty tame as far as Expo-go'ers are. ;0) That evening, we made our way over to the Moose Cafe for some comforting Southern cooking. Yum.

Sunday morning, we readied ourselves for the all-day Biltmore extravaganza. Words cannot describe. They don't allow pictures inside the house (more like castle) itself, so enjoy the pictures I took from the outside, the gardens and the farm. Oh, and the electric blue minivan? That's Smurfette. Yep, we were cool.















After our Biltmore-marathon, we decided to try something "different"
for dinner, so we headed down to downtown Asheville. Our first stop was to load up on some chocolate at Kilwan's Chocolates (I think I bought Chris $26 worth of chocolate-peanut butter goodness). And then we made it over to Laughing Seed for dinner. Here's what Mom and I had:


Yes. We ate vegetarian.

On Monday morning, we ate a quick breakfast and then made a run-through at the Farmer's Market (you can see links to this from the Moose Cafe website that I linked above). We drove back to Charlotte, returned Smurfette and jumped on our flights back home. North Carolina was beautiful. I can't wait to see what the 3rd Annual Mother-Daughter weekend holds!