Sunsets, gardens, tea-time, sunsets

In a few weeks, we'll be missing this amazing view from our couch:

I can't think of anything better than watching a sunset over the Blue Ridge Mountains from my home:

On Saturday, we spent a little time at the NC Arboretum in Asheville. It's always so beautiful there, and the weather was perfect (75-81 degrees...another thing I'll miss out on in Alabama's June).

I liked this shady spot under the pretty American Yellowwood trees:

After a little hiking around the arboretum, we went to Biltmore Village to 'have a spot of tea.' I've always wanted to indulge in the 'Afternoon Tea' service at Chelsea's Tea Room. We had Earl Grey tea that came in this adorable pot with a lovely silver strainer:

The setting was very flowery and feminine. Luckily, I have a sweet husband willing to join me for tea at this adorable establishment:

We also ordered a little tray of bite-sized sweets that were delicious! We had a pork tenderloin sandwich, Quiche Lorraine, Reuben, zucchini bread with brie, spinach artichoke dip with cracker, scone with strawberry jelly and Devonshire Cream, traditional English trifle, white cake with strawberries, fudge brownie, no-bake chocolate/PB/oatmeal cookie, key lime pie, and a macaroon. We finished everything!

Saturday evening, we met up with the Ambrosino's and Adam at Sky Bar. In my opinion, this is the third best place in Asheville to watch a sunset (#1: Grove Park Inn's Sunset Terrace, #2: our apartment). Unfortunately, there is a new cell phone tower blocking a previously pristine view :( 

Asheville Historic Trolley Tour & Grove Park Inn's Spa

On Thursday, Harrison and I checked a few more things off of our Asheville Bucket List. We did the Asheville Historic Trolley Tour (The Gray Line - even though the trolley is red) which was pretty neat. I thought that we were going to know everything that the guide has to tell us, but we learned a lot.

We enjoyed a yummy dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants: Mayfel's. We sat in their cute courtyard area, which is reminiscent of NOLA's French Quarter. Harrison always orders the Muffuletta with sweet potato fries. I love their shrimp and grits, but this time I tried Loretta's Meatloaf and it was fantastic! The roasted potatoes were equally as impressive.
http://mayfels.org/

After dinner, we indulged ourselves in twilight passes to The Grove Park Inn's Spa. We have always loved the Grove Park Inn. It's the place where many famous people over the years have stayed, it's steeped in history, and the architecture is beautiful, as are the views from the sunset terrace.
http://www.groveparkinn.com/Leisure/

Here's a view taken from the sunset terrace overlooking the underground spa:

After checking in, we were each taken separately by our male and female concierges to our locker rooms. We were assigned lockers, given plush robes and slippers, and then given a tour around the facilities. The women's locker room was lovely. There was a quiet room with fireplace, a lounge with club chairs, snacks, and tea, a steam room, a sauna, and a Jacuzzi tub with a connected 'cold plunge' pool.

Ladies' lounge:

 Ladies' lounge quiet area:

 Ladies' lounge snack bar:

In the main pool area, where I was able to meet back up with Harrison, there were five more pools to choose from. There was a lap pool that was a little colder than the others, a large indoor pool that was a very comfortable temperature, two warm/hot side pools that had streams of water trickling down from rocks above to beat down on your back (for a hydrotherapy massage), and an outdoor pool that was about 88 degrees. We had a great time being pampered for four hours! I took a shower using all of their fantastic rosemary-mint products. My skin was so smooth by the end of the night.


We weren't supposed to take pictures (so as not to disrupt the other guests), but since we were the last to leave, I took several shots:

Main pool:

Looking over to the lap pool:

The lap pool with the starry ceiling:

The outdoor pool at sunset:

Outdoor area:

Here's the lovely sunset that we caught as we were leaving:

Navitat - zipline canopy tour

On Tuesday, Dr. Anderson closed the office early and took all of the staff to Navitat for a zip-line tour! Navitat is an awesome outdoor adventure course just 20 minutes north of Asheville. The only other course is in California. I'll leave you with a more detailed description at the end of my post.

Fifteen of our staff members went to Navitat and had a BLAST! As the shirts say, "We came, we saw, we zipped." We were divided up into three groups with two guides per group. My guide happened to be one of mine and Harrison's good friends! He and Harrison met several years ago when they worked together at SUWS, an outdoor therapeutic wilderness school. He proved to be a great guide and calmed all of our fears as we zipped across ten different lines, traversed two suspended bridges, and did a little repelling.

Jennifer (office manager), Brooke (receptionist), Amy (LPN), Lara (CNA), and John (Amy's husband), posing before getting on the first bridge:

 Kelly (phlebotomist/CNA), Stacey (medical assistant/CNA), & Elizabeth (allergy lab tech) preparing to zip:

 Dr. Anderson (a.k.a. Rob) 'zipping:'

 Valerie (MA/CNA) 'zipping:'

The whole thing took about 3.5 hours, so we were starving for dinner by the time we finished.

About half of the group headed out to Papas and Beer, a local favorite Mexican restaurant. We had such a great day. I'm really going to miss the camaraderie that we have at Biltmore Family Medicine. I would be so lucky to have coworkers like this again in the future. Dr. Anderson holds a big Christmas party at his home every year, there's usually a BBQ at someones home each summer, and then his family organizes group activities like Navitat that also bring everyone (and there significant others) together outside of the office. The BFM motto, "Let our family take care of your family," could not be more accurate.

Here are some more details about Navitat taken directly from their website:
http://www.navitat.com/asheville/
*FYI if you're a "local": there are discounts (I think 20%) on Tuesdays
A 100% tree-based adventure, our zipline canopy tour allows participants to experience a secluded mountain cove from high in the treetops. 

• 10 ziplines, ranging from 120 to 1100 feet in length
• 2 rappelling experiences, 2 suspended sky bridges, 3 short hikes
• Take in beautiful long-range views of the Blue Ridge Mountains from artfully crafted tree platforms
• Explore the forest from 2 feet to over 200 feet in the air!
• An approximately 3.5-hour tour on well over one mile of suspended cable
• 8 guests maximum per tour departure time accompanied by 2 professionally trained Canopy Guides An all-weather adventure, exhilarating rain or shine!

Camping trip

Harrison and I had a very fun weekend, even though our plans changed pretty drastically. We planned to camp at Lake Santeetlah, in Robbinsville, NC with about eight of our Asheville buddies. Harrison went to claim the campsite early on Thursday and then Christen, Adam and I met up with him on Friday night. We were pretty tired, so we talked by the fire for about an hour and then climbed into our tents for the night.

On Saturday, we ate breakfast and made some delicious coffee with Christen's French press. Afterward, we reserved a boat for the afternoon to take out on the lake when the rest of our friends arrived. While we waited for them, we floated around the slew in our inner tubes and got a little sun. About an hour after the rest of our crew arrived, the sky turned black and a massive thunderstorm ensued. We sat in our cars, hoping that it would just 'blow over,' but when the rain let up, we realized that the campsite was a muddy mess and we wouldn't be able to stay there for the weekend.

Luckily, we were able to cancel our boat reservations. Christen made some calls and was able to reserve three yurt cabins for all of us at the Nantahala River which was about 20 minutes away. We quickly packed up all of our gear and began Plan B. The yurts were adorable! They were well-decorated with a queen size bed, a double size futon, and mini-fridge.

There was a large hot tub that we all jumped into almost immediately upon our arrival. It was so nice to soak in it after being soaking wet from the cold rain! Unfortunately, pregnant Lesley could only dip her toes in the water :(

The rain had tapered off and we were ready to cook dinner. We had a ton of food that we were planning on grilling at our original campsite, so we piled everything together and made a smorgasbord at the pavilion. It had a nice size charcoal grill and we also used Christen's camp stove. We had chips, dips, burgers, dogs, burritos, corn-on-the-cob, veggies, and quesadillas! The food was so good!

After dinner, Harrison and Andy took our canoe out on the little lake/pond near the yurts. Christen was showing Melissa how she casts her fly fishing rod and she unfortunately caught a Melissa! It was a tiny hook and it got her in the arm. Melissa didn't even notice it.

I got Harrison's Leather man (to use the wire cutters) and a pair of tweezers and performed a little outdoor surgery on the spot! Melissa was a trooper and the hook was out in no time. Look at how great she handled the whole ordeal:

SUCCESS!

Later we went to the girls' yurt, which had the most amazing view overlooking Lake Fontana and mountains in the distance. The sunset was breathtaking!

We spent all night on their porch just talking and having an amazing time! We're going to miss these friends so badly when we move :( but we still have one more month to spend time with them all!

Checking things off our NC Bucket List

Harrison and I had a great weekend. On Friday, I accepted my job and we met up with The Walden's at Highland Brewery when I got off work. Lesley told me that she had gotten a job too! She'll be teaching 3rd grade at North Buncombe! Congrats, Lesley! We had dinner with them at our favorite pizza place, Asheville Pizza Brewing Company.

On Saturday, we decided to check some things off our Western North Carolina Bucket List. We drove along the beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway and eventually hiked up to Craggy Gardens. The Rhododendrons were beginning to bloom and made the trail look spectacular! The skies were sunny and the temp was just 65 degrees!

We found a great place to have our own private picnic. What a view!

We then drove to Mount Mitchell. It's has the highest elevation east of the Mississippi River! The views were lovely, but a storm began to roll in, so we had to leave in a hurry.

We ate dinner further down the road in the quaint, small town of Blowing Rock. The downtown atmosphere is very cute with all sorts of clothing shops and antique stores.

When we got back to Asheville, we went downtown to meet up with Kedron and her husband, Chris. Kedron is a good friend of mine from NP school. She and her family are doing great, and we had a fun time catching up on everything. I'm going to miss her when we move back to Alabama! This is an old photo of us at graduation last year:

On Sunday we went to Mass and then roamed some Asheville neighborhoods, taking pictures of the architectural details that we find attractive. There's so much inspiration around Asheville! This English Colonial has some very unique features:

The next few things we'll be doing to cross off our list will include the Asheville Historic Trolley Tour and an afternoon at the Grove Park Inn Spa.

A job for me!

I accepted a job yesterday! I'll be working as a Nurse Practitioner in Bullock County, AL (Union Springs) at Tri-Med Family Health Center. The 45 minute drive will be worth the great benefits and having Fridays off! I start work on August 8th. Harrison and I are both so relieved that our job searches have successfully come to an end.

On another exciting note, Paige, Nate, & Kellye spent the whole week at the beach! Paige got to see the ocean and play in the sand! She's doing well...15+ pounds!

A job for Harrison!

Harrison and I are so thrilled! He just accepted an great job offer to teach ninth grade World History at Auburn Junior High School! He is so relieved to have finished his master's in history so that he can teach once again. This school is just down the road from where we'll be living, and it is a very respectable public school. I'm still on the job search, but I'm pretty optimistic.

Here's the lovely school where Harrison will be shaping minds shortly:

We got to share the news with his parents this weekend, since we were in town for Harrison's ten year high school reunion. I can't believe he's already had his, and mine is just next year! We had a good time catching up and reminiscing with old friends (for him) and meeting new ones (in my case).