A Birthday Trip to Asheville!

This weekend was fabulous! We dropped off the puppy, gassed up the truck and headed out west to Asheville. I've never been to the western part of the state, so I was pretty excited! And yes, it's still a one tank trip!

I love big birthday celebrations...so I planned this weekend as Danny's birthday present. I had so much planned for our two days....the fun started the second we got to the city!

Asheville has a ton of breweries. Seriously, it's been voted Beer City USA for THREE years in a row. So, you know we had to hit up one of the places it's famous for - Asheville Brewing Company! We tried a little bit of everything...the favorite was Ninja Porter and the most interesting was Fire Escape...jalapeno flavored beer. Weird! But the one thing that really stuck out about Asheville...hippies. Lots and lots of hippies!

After a quick costume change, our next stop was the Asheville Zipline Canopy Adventures - yep, ziplining! Never in a million years did I think I would do something like this. Come on, I'm afraid of heights and speed! I had a few butterflies while I was pulling on the harness and helmet but as soon as we were 54 feet up a tree and traveling down a zipline...I couldn't help but enjoy myself! Our tour guides were awesome. We did 13 ziplines, a few bridges...and learned all about Asheville. I 100% recommend you do this at some point in your life!

We spent 3 hours in the trees. I didn't expect it to be that long!! I wanted a shower before our next adventure, but instead we checked into the hotel and I headed out with helmet head....to the LaZoom Haunted Comedy Tour! They guarantee you will see a ghost...and we did! We sat on the bus for an hour with our decently-funny tour guide...and there was lots of yelling. Unnecessary, made my head pound yelling. When I called my Mom to tell her about it I said it was the "obnoxious version of the KuKu Kunuku." If you have ever been to Aruba, you know what I'm talking about....and you know that's saying something about the quality of this tour! I'm not saying it was bad, the historical stuff was great...I just wish I knew I was going to be yelled at for an hour!

After the tour I wanted to walk around downtown. But man-oh-man Asheville's downtown is tiny and crowded. Instead we headed back to the hotel and passed out like the old people that we are. And might I add, in a King sized bed. I wanted to steal it. So comfy!

Sunday morning we had a huge and free breakfast at the hotel. And then we were off for our second day in the city! We went back downtown to see everything we missed the night before. I love Asheville because the buildings are old and unchanged. You can see still see original store fronts and details. I loved it! We saw gorgeous churches and basilicas, historical monuments, and people enjoying their morning coffee. Asheville is gorgeous. I've decided everyone should move to western North Carolina!

No trip to Asheville is complete without a visit to the Biltmore. The Biltmore left me (more so than ever) wishing I was a Vanderbilt. This gorgeous building was someones personal home. It's so big you could fit the White House in it four times. There's a bowling alley, 70,000 gallon swimming pool, a huge library, 250 rooms. Seriously, why can I not live here!? The only sad part of our visit...no pictures allowed inside. So sad! We spent 2 hours exploring the home, then moved further onto the estate to the winery. We did a wine tasting and left with two bottles of yummy wine! We were going to stay for lunch but all of the restaurants had incredibly long waits. We decided to get back on the road and make the journey home.

About twenty minutes into the trip, we decided we need food! We got off the highway and instead of a restaurant we saw a winery. The South Creek Winery is in middle of nowhere North Carolina, so tiny and so cute. They are dry Bordeaux style wines...not my favorite, but I liked this place! I love that the grapes were right on the property. Of course, we left with a bottle of their Chardonnay!

We got back on the road to find something to eat...and we ran into another winery! The Lake James Cellar Winery was a cute little place. We tried some sweet and dry wines, and ended up buying their watermelon wine. It was so yummy, the perfect picnic wine!

Finally, we got some food into us! We went to Judge's Riverside Restaurant. I love trying local places, it's rare that you are disappointed! We had the awesome fried pickles and I got probably the biggest thing they offer: half rack of ribs, beans, potato salad and hush puppies. I'll be stepping up the Zumba routines this week to work it all off!

We had such a fun time in Asheville! I wish we could have spent more time out there exploring and trying all the yummy food they offer! We will definitely be making the trip back out there someday!

And as a sidenote to the anonymous commenters who like when  I post about alcohol - a tasting is not an entire glass, it's a sip. So, with all the tastings we did...I maybe had a glass of wine. And it's totally ridiculous that I have to explain myself but you people really need to get lives.