Adventures in the mountains

As I mentioned in the last post, Chris had fall break this past week so I decided to take some time off work to hang out with him. We had hoped to go visit friends in NYC for the week but plane tickets were super expensive and we've had a few unexpected expenses lately (new tires, fixing the roof in the new house...) that we decided to still take a little vacation but keep it budget friendly. We decided to go to a bed and breakfast and got the recommendation from my mom's friends of this great one in Waynesville, NC. It's called the Andon-Reid (www.andonreidinn.com) and we highly recommend it to anyone looking for a quick get-away! It's only 1.5 hours from Knoxville too! The Inn is great...we had a suite the first night and do to internet-booking problems spent our second night in another room.

The owners, Ron and Rachel, were very nice and have maintained the home very well. The house had 5 rooms and we stayed in two...the white sulphur suite and the mountain view (due to internet-booking issues the suite got double booked for one night we were there!) It also had a great game room (pool, shuffleboard, darts, etc) and a great workout area...this was the selling point for me!! =) Rachel is a great cook too...our breakfasts were 3-course meals! Monday we had a yogurt/fruit parfait, blueberry waffles, eggs, sausage, and dessert was a grilled lemon pound cake topped with strawberries. We were so full we didn't have to eat lunch!! Tuesday morning we had a baked apple with cranberries and cinnamon, homemade cinnamon rolls, Smoky Mtn eggs, and dessert was a strawberry-lemonade frozen pie. It was soooo yummy! She also had homemade snacks out at 5 every night for happy hour! We ate dinner Monday night at this great restaurant in town called The Sweet Onion which we also highly recommend!! We plan to go back to the Andon Reid for sure!

Our main source of "entertainment" was hiking since we are blessed with such beauty so close to home! The weather forecast for Monday was cold (high 52) and rain so we decided to do our big long hike on Sunday on our way to NC. We chose Mt Cammerer which is a 12 mile round trip hike to a viewing tower on the east side of the Smokies. The trail was pretty deserted due to the fact that the Cosby campground was closed to paving. There were only 2 men on the trail slightly ahead of us and they turned around about halfway up the hike. About 5 minutes later Chris and I came around a bend and we heard this loud noise and saw a bear running!!! We were both startled and Chris immediately said we had to turn around. Now I've hiked with bears around before because usually they aren't aggressive and they go on their way. I think we startled this one and he fell from the tree...he wasn't that big which meant Momma bear was close by! We turned around and I was not happy at all because we had almost made it to the AT where the hike would get a little less strenuous. But with no one else on the trail and a bear sighting, along with the sign posted at the trailhead saying a campgroup on the AT was closed due to aggressive bear activity...we headed back down. We never saw another bear but heard one close to us for awhile which was pretty unnerving! We made it back down the trail and decided to head on over to NC and hike Mt Pisgah off the Blue Ridge Parkway. This hike was not easy either but the views were great at the top! The weather was starting to cloud up so pictures didn't turn out awesome but what we saw in real life was still really pretty as the trees were starting to change colors! After hiking that we went and checked in at the B&B...enjoyed the hot-tub and free wine and headed out to dinner in town!

Monday was our next day to hike and the weather was cold and rainy so instead of hiking to views of the mtns, we chose to do some waterfalls instead! We went back to the Blue Ridge Mtns and hiked Graveyard Fields which had two waterfalls...upper and lower. Both were pretty and the hike wasn't too strenuous compared to Mt Cammerer! It misted but never rained hard so that was nice! It was very very very foggy up on the parkway also so no good views that day but it was cool in its own way! We went back to the B&B and rested before dinner at the sweet onion. We had an absolutely wonderful time on our little getaway and can't wait to go back either...we think it would be alot of fun to go with a group of friends and rent the whole house =)

If you want to see all the pictures from our trip, just click on the slideshow above to the right of our favorite pics and it will take to you our picasa web albums. Enjoy!