A Weekend Away

Although my summer break has started we had yet to really take a break and relax together. Trey has been busy at work and I was in a two week workshop for my first two weeks of summer. Last weekend we took a much needed getaway to my aunt & uncle's house in Valle Crucis. Our friend, Rick, was biking in the Blood, Sweat & Gears 100 mile bike race up there so he and Jennifer were going to be up there for the weekend. We also learned about Peabody's Cellar Sale so we wanted to check that out too. 

Friday Trey picked me up from my workshop and we hit the road. We stopped at the grocery store as we got in to town to pick up food for dinner that night and breakfast for the weekend. The dogs were super excited about being up there, they love the land to run and the river to play in. As soon as we opened the back door to let them run around Tyson sprinted down to the river & jumped right in.

It was a gorgeous night, we let them run around and play frisbee. Tyson just couldn't get enough.

Relaxing:

Saturday morning I woke up as the race was about to start... it started at the Valle Crucis Elementary which is basically just across the river from the cabin. I could hear them announcing directions, etc and saw the bikers go across the main road in the distance!

After dropping Rick off to bike, Jennifer joined us for breakfast and we let the dogs play in the river for a while. We enjoyed a lazy morning :)

The Peabody's Cellar Sale started at noon. Some people got in line super early to get the best selection but we weren't dying for too many things in particular so we just showed up in time for it to start. We were towards the back of the line but still got quite a few nice beers, which were either already aged for about a year or so, or are very difficult to find now. They had a food truck and a tasting tent following the sale. We hung around there for a few hours and enjoyed trying beers from NC breweries. 

Jennifer had gone back to pick up Rick from the finish line and then they stopped by to enjoy a few beers too. 

We went to downtown Boone for dinner at Mellow Mushroom. Trey had one of the delicious beers from the beer tent on draft, Mother Earth Brewing's Windowpane Series Blackberry beer.

We headed in pretty early that night just to relax and hang out with the dogs :)

 

Sunday morning we got up and wanted to go hiking somewhere. I had been googling places to go hiking but information on locations, trails, etc is not all that readily available! We finally decided to go to the Moses Cone Park area, but even in that there are a lot of trails to try to sort out. After driving around not really knowing what we were doing we finally stopped at the Moses Cone Manor, hoping for signs or a trail guide. I took a picture of the trail map at the top and we decided to hike down to the lake below. It is about 2.5 miles down, 1 mile around the lake and 2.5 back up... I didn't GPS it though and their mileage signs seemed a little inaccurate, so we aren't totally sure. It was a gorgeous day though and most of our walk was in the shade, which was nice. The dogs were really excited when we got to the lake, Tyson wanted to go swimming... of course! 

We stopped and ate the sandwiches we had packed and let the dogs put their feet in the water. We headed back up, with a detour to see the "Apple Barn" which was literally just an old barn, no information signs, history lessons or anything anywhere to be found! Weird... 

 The climb up was not quite as easy as going down, but it really isn't too steep and it's all gravel and easy footing. The dogs were pretty exhausted by the end... Vegas found the AC coming out of the floor in the car :)

It was such a nice weekend relaxing just us and the dogs with a little bit of fun thrown in there. Definitely the rejuvenation that we needed :)