Asheville

On our way down the mountain, all of us just kept saying “why haven’t we come here more often??” I’ve always heard great things about Asheville and we actually did come up once to run a race but didn’t really visit the city much. We and Zac + Jamie had an opportunity for some grandparent babysitting the same weekend, so we were just looking for a nearby weekend getaway and settled on Asheville. We all loved it! Jamie has been a few times to visit a good friend who lives there, so we had a little more guidance than when Matt + I had come before and now we could easily make a few more weekend trips to keep working through the list of recommendations of places to eat and things to do.

We had really, really yummy beer at Wicked Weed Brewing Co. We had some seriously delicious meals: Salsa’s on Friday night (awesome blueberry mojito), Tupelo Honey for Saturday brunch and Nine Mile for Saturday dinner. Tupelo Honey is one of those places that everyone tells you to go and you think it’s going to be totally overrated, and then you get there and there’s fifteen things on the menu you want and your meal is every bit as good as was promised and you sort of consider coming back again the next day. (In other words, I recommend it.) Saturday night we saw a cover band at the famous Orange Peel. The same band covered Poison, Motley Crue and Guns’n’Roses and they not only covered the songs, they were completely in character for each band. It was fun and sort of funny, but it also turns out that we are approximately one decade too young for these bands and actually only knew one or two major hits by them.

The highlight of the trip was our zip lining experience with Navitat. I’m not exactly a thrill-seeker… in fact, you could probably call me a safety-seeker. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into and I decided not to do too much research ahead of time so I wouldn’t psyche myself out. On Friday night, we were having drinks at this rooftop bar called Skybar and Matt said “well, we’ll be about three times as high as this” and I almost lost my cookies right then and there. But, it turned out to be way less scary than I thought and way, way more awesome than I thought. Our tour guides were great and I felt super safe the whole time, and it was totally exhilarating to step off a plate form and literally zip from one tree to the next for four hours.

There was one zip that went over this really deep valley and all of a sudden the treeline below just dropped off, and I happened to look down just then. It was this half second of utter terror when I realized it was just me and a really heavy duty cable hanging out over all these trees and I literally thought to myself “what am I DOING, I am a mother! This is ridiculous.” And then that thought passed as quickly as it came when I then realized I was probably more secure in the triple-locked zip harness than I am in my car most days. It was overall really fun and I was giving myself internal high fives the rest of the day for not chickening out when Matt had first brought it up and just making myself zip outside my comfort zone.

We had a blast and it was a great getaway with our travel buddies, the 4-C’s. I know Matt + I are both so thankful that we’ve had such great help with Bo this year, and that we’ve been able to do these kind of trips. I always feel reluctant to go at first and miss Bo terribly, but I come back a more refreshed and recharged mama, and it’s a nice reminder that we’re still Matt + Meghan and not just Momma + Daddy. (Thanks Mom for babysitting again!)