Fall Escape

I just luv this picture. While in Blowing Rock (Boone) North Carolina, Todd and I took our cousins Toby and Diane for a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. This drive is so tempting, you so want to stop at every look out point, but if you do that your half hour 6 mile drive will take several hours. We drove until we came to Linnville, then to Valle Crucis to the Mast General Store. This store still has its own working post office and pot belly wood stove for heat. There are great big rockers in front of the stove for patrons to sit at while they talk all that mountain gossip and more rockers and swings out back on the porch. This is one of my favorite places to visit and shop while in North Carolina. Now, before we took this trip to the Mast General Store, I had to get in my shopping in downtown Blowing Rock. I love to shop, especially for home interior stuff. I'm not a girly girl who likes to shop for clothes and make-up, nope, pretty plane jane in that department, but I like stuff and the Last Straw has stuff from the front door to the back door and from the floor to the ceiling, oh how exhausting. Todd and Toby sat outside while I did my damage. Ok, so on this trip we have Todd and me, Toby and Diane and our 2 dachshunds Kimber and Reese, so with all the luggage, people, and dogs in my Mazda there wasn't much room for more stuff. So I carefully walked through the Last Straw with minimal purchases in my arms.....I made sure not to pick up a basket that I could fill, then out of the corner of my eye I saw a sign that said WE SHIP!!!! I became this mad woman, grabbing everything that I wanted, even got my own personal assistant to pick out items and carry them for me and to store them at the back counter until I was done shopping. I could go on and on about this but, there is so much more to my trip I would like to share beside shopping. While in Damascus, Virginia, that's where we bought our property a few years ago, there is this wonderful bike trail that was made from the old abandoned rail road that use to go from the top of Whitetop Mountain to Abingdon, Virginia. For a whopping $25 bucks you can rent a mountain bike and get hauled up to the top of the mountain and your off for a 18 mile bike ride down hill to Damascus. Now, this ride takes about 3 hours, but with all the stopping it took 4. Ouch, my bum hurt for few days after that. I have several videos, but I can't seem to attach them to my blog. I will need to get help with this. By now, you can see I'm having a great time on vacation, no cell service, no Internet, no cable tv at our cabin, no land line telephone, just good old mother nature all around me. But, how is Todd doing on vacation, well he loves it too, but I always take a day out of our trip to do something he really likes to do!!!! GUNS.....Yep, I said guns. before we go on our trip, Todd lines up all the gun shops and surplus stores in the cities we go through on our trip. Now, I usually sit in the car with the dogs or go antiquing, but something made me go in this one shop in Johnston City, TN and look who I found the Gunny!!! Too much FUN..... I bet you're wondering were Diane is this trip, she's here, I promise. Diane is such a fun fun person to be around. Bless her heart she gets sea sick while riding in a vehicle. With all the mountain roads she did very well. I like shopping for stuff and Diane likes shopping for food. Check it out, we went to the largest craft show in the southeast, in Bell Buckle, TN. So,much stuff everywhere and food too. Here is Diane getting a caramel chocolate covered apple, and then Diane enjoying some sweet potato chips, and some kettle corn. Funny how certain things make people so happy. This was an amazing trip and so much more was seen and done,you'll have to check out the rest in my scrapbook I'm putting together with CTMH Studio J. I've been working on it for the past few days. This program is so easy to use and neat, no paper, ribbon, glue and all that other stuff laying around in my craft room for days and weeks until I'm done. Once complete I will make the book 3 dimensional by adding embellishments and found objects from our trip. Check out my blog in a few weeks for previews. Hope you enjoyed this post. Have a great day.