I grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast but haven’t had the chance to visit since my family moved away after 6th grade. I finally went back in February for my grandmother’s funeral. I could only stay a few days but despite the sad occasion it was nice to be able to show Brandon where I grew up and see some of my other family.

I’ve never been much of a beach person, despite living right across the street from it for several years, but I honestly forgot how beautiful and peaceful it can be sometimes.

I was starting to like Nashville and think maybe it would be a good place to finally settle down but winter has made me reconsider. I miss snow! It’s been depressingly cold and rainy all week resulting in a few short flurries but nothing substantial. Today has been especially frustrating because it snowed in Alabama and now it’s snowing in East Tennessee/North Carolina and to the north in Virginia where I used to live. So it’s snowing all around, but completely skipped middle Tennessee. How does that happen??

Last winter when we were still in Charlottesville it was very warm and only snowed—lightly—a few times. This winter they’ve already had a few snowfalls and will probably have several more. I guess I’m just sad I didn’t get a normal winter before having to leave that state and move to one with an even warmer winter.

Most people probably don’t care about snow one way or another but having lived in the South all my life I still regard it as something really special. Snow makes me feel pure joy. Every single time it snowed in Charlottesville I excitedly put on my thermal underwear and layers of flannel and went outside to walk around, sometimes for hours. Most of the time I wouldn’t see anyone else. Or I’d get looks from people who had to walk their dogs, like “Why are out with a camera in the middle of this!?” But I didn’t care because I loved it! I barely even felt the cold because of how happy I was to be out there.

Hopefully, one day I’ll be able to finally move North to a state that has a real winter. Until then I’ll just have to look at old pictures. I still have a ton of unposted photos from last year and these are all from the two snowfalls we have in Charlottesville last January and February. The second snow day (starting with the photo of the fence) was on my birthday which is, hands down, the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten.

After a long break for Christmas, I’m finally posting the last of my vacation photos. These are all from Chimney Rock near Asheville. Crazy people can actually hike up the series of stairways (about 500 steps) from the parking lot to Chimney Rock, but I am not crazy so we took the elevator. The actual rock is smaller than I thought it would be and not very flat so it’s difficult walk around on. But since it was almost winter, it wasn’t busy so I really got to walk all around and get pictures from all sides which was nice.

Once you get up to the rock there are even more stairways that lead to other views and the highest peak of Chimney Rock park called Exclamation Point (ha). I wasn’t really planning to bother with that because I hate hiking up stairs and inclines, but the hiking trail to the waterfall I wanted to see was closed so it was either go up or go home after only 15 minutes. So we went up and up and up some more, at least 10 different sets of stairs and I almost died. I guess it wasn’t that bad. Once in high school I had to hike 8 miles up a mountain and it was probably the worst thing I’ve ever had to do (and I love to hike and was in waaayyy better shape back then so that’s saying something). This was only a mile or two so it was doable. Still, I was proud of myself!

After hanging out at exclamation point until I wasn’t going to die anymore we headed back down all those stairs. Then I went crazy and decided it would be fun to go down the 500 stairs from Chimney Rock back to the parking lot instead of taking the elevator. Because going down stairs is so much easier, right? Unfortunately, the muscles in the back of my legs did not agree with that after about 100 steps but thankfully there were places to rest along the way. Hopefully, one day we can go back so I can finally see that waterfall. I’d love to see the view in the spring or summer when all the trees are green.

So, despite a rocky (har har) start to our vacation it turned out to be pretty awesome. Asheville was a nice little town that I felt very at home in. Besides Biltmore and Chimney Rock we ate at some really excellent restaurants. I had pork belly for the first time and now I understand why people on Top Chef always go crazy for it! Ideally, I’d love to come back next year and do it all over again!

These are pictures of the greenhouse at Biltmore. There were a few sad looking roses out in the gardens but it was mostly barren. Hopefully, one day I can go back in the spring! But the greenhouse was giant and filled with all kinds of exotic, beautiful flowers so it worked out okay.

These photos are from our visit to Biltmore on our first full day in Asheville, NC. It would have been nice to be able to get a shot of the house without those ugly tour buses in front, but I guess that’s a good indication of just how large it is. The house is beautiful and the interior was fully decorated for Christmas (but I wasn’t allowed to take pictures inside). We walked all around the house and the grounds. The view behind the house of the mountains and river is especially stunning. I would love to wake up to that view every day!

One day I’d love to go back in the summer because the miles and miles of gardens around the house are not as pretty in November. But there is a huge green house with tons of exotic flowers which was fun to walk around in. I went a little crazy in there so I’ll have a separate post on Thursday with those photos.

I’m still really sad that one full day of my vacation had been taken up with a work emergency, but what can you do? The next day we had to be out of the cabin by 10am. (But not before I snapped a few more photos of that view!) Thankfully, it was a nice day and our next destination, Asheville, was only an hour away so there was plenty of time to do the hiking that I had planned to do the day before.

The server had come back online late the night before but I was still in tech support mode because many client’s sites weren’t working correctly on the new server and they were having to be fixed one by one. The worst part of the day was when we drove to town to eat breakfast and I got a notice that the server was down again. It took all my effort not to have a kicking, screaming, temper tantrum in the middle of that restaurant.

I was not going to let work ruin my day again so we headed out to Deep Creek, a large area with hiking trails and 3 (smallish) waterfalls. At one point I was standing at the base of a lovely waterfall (See the photo labeled Juney Whank Falls below) and instead of taking in its beauty, I was on twitter telling people the server would be back up soon. Sigh. Thankfully, it actually was an easily fixable problem this time and the server came back up for good. I was able to enjoy the rest of the hike and, for the most part, the rest of my vacation.

There were a lot more trails in Deep Creek and around Bryson City in general that we didn’t get to explore, so I’m hoping we can make this a regular thing and go back every year or so. This trip came about pretty randomly (after seeing a deal on the cabin on Living Social), but next year I’m going to try to plan early to reserve a date when the Fall colors will be at their peak.

After the hike we headed up to Asheville. Next week—if I can finish editing them—I’ll post my photos of the Biltmore Estate and Chimney Rock.

I’m slowly working through all of my photos of our vacation to North Carolina last month. These are of the cabin (and the views surrounding it) where we stayed at for the first part of the week. It was stunningly beautiful out there despite much of the Fall color being gone by the time we arrived (I heard from a park ranger in Asheville that Hurricane Sandy had blown away most of the leaves when it passed by). I’d love to say it was absolutely perfect but there were definitely some hitches.

Finding the cabin was difficult because it was located waaayyyy out on a curvy, treacherous road, then up, up, up a one-way dirt road and then a sharp turn and up even farther…you get the idea. There were several other houses up there and I just can’t imagine having to make the drive every day. As you can see, the view is beautiful, so I understand the appeal but you couldn’t pay me to do the driving out there. Even Brandon, who is a great driver, was pretty terrified on that steep, one-way road.

Anyway, it was huge relief to finally get to the cabin but it was not so great when we walked in and found that the power was out. Apparently, it was out for the whole area but the power company said they were working on it. So we went all the way back down the treacherous road to nearby Bryson City to get something to eat and stock up on groceries. By the time we were done it was dark, which made driving back up to the cabin super fun (that’s sarcasm if you couldn’t tell). When we got back the power was still not on. But technophiles that we are, we both had our tablets so we settled down to read in the dark. Just like the pioneers. Or something.

Thankfully, the power was finally restored within an hour. We settled in for the night and I didn’t even miss any of my Sunday night TV shows. Vacation back on track! Unfortunately, the weather didn’t want to cooperate. It rained off and on the next day. Because of the roads I didn’t want to go driving around in the rain so we just hung out in the cabin. I walked around when the rain slowed and got a bunch of photos of the lovely view. Honestly, I think it was even prettier in the fog and rain than when the sun was out. In hindsight, it was actually a really nice, relaxing day and hands-down the best day I had out there, so the rain probably did us some favors.

The next day I awoke to find the sun shining and I was happy…until I checked my email to find that one of my servers that hosts about 30 of my client’s websites was down. This is a terrible thing to happen on a normal day but on a day when I’m supposed to be on vacation it was just about the worst thing that can happen. Did I mention that this happened at about 7am after maybe 5 hours of sleep? So at 7am I’m having to answer emails from clients who are yelling at me and I’m yelling at the server guys to get the damn thing fixed. And of course this wasn’t some simple thing that could be fixed with a reboot. Basically the whole server was fucked and they had to take emergency measures to try to fix it. When that didn’t work they had to move everyone over to a brand new server. Naturally, this took the whole day and I had to put out fires with angry clients all day long. It got so bad that I was nauseous for much of the day and actually threw up at one point. What happened to relaxing??

Late in the day I realized this was our last full day at the cabin and I just got really mad. The whole day was ruined! Then I decided that I was on vacation, dammit, and I was going to act like it. At that point, there was nothing I could do about the server but wait, so I was going to make the most of the time I had left. I got in the hot tub and stayed in there for a long time. Brandon got in with me and we watched the sun set and the stars come out. It was peaceful and relaxing and just plain wonderful. Just what I needed! It almost made up for the hellish day I had.

On Thursday, I’ll post photos from the next day when I finally did get to go out and enjoy the wonderful scenery around Bryson City!

I went on vacation to North Carolina two weeks ago and it looks like Fall officially ended while I was gone. Before I left the trees in front of my apartment were still filled with brilliant red leaves but when I got back they were barren. It’s been a nice Fall here, so I’m sad it’s over. Especially since it’s not terribly cold yet, which is really the only good part about winter.

I’m still editing my vacation photos but in the meantime these are the last of my Fall photos. I took them at the end of October when Brandon and I traveled up the mountain to Sewanee to visit our old high school. There was a lecture that Brandon was interested in seeing but I mostly went because I knew the Fall colors would be lovely up there. I was not disappointed!

I’ve been really motivated to go hiking this past month because I didn’t want to miss the fall colors. Brandon and I headed to Long Hunter State Park on October 21st and we definitely lucked out by going that particular weekend. The following week many of the leaves started turning brown and falling and I was really glad to have gotten these pictures!

Long Hunter State Park is large and pretty area by J. Percy Priest Lake here in Nashville. We hiked the Volunteer Day Loop trail which I really liked. I’m not a fan of lots of uphill climbing and this trail is fairly even without being too easy. The hiking trail at Radnor lake is definitely too easy (though very pretty) and we tried another trail at Warner Park that was basically climbing up a mountain (and not very pretty) so this is a nice middle ground between those. Between that and all the wonderful colors, this was one the best hikes I’ve ever been on. I’m not sure Brandon felt the same way since I made him stop every 5 minutes so I could take pictures.

Here are a few shots of the wild turkeys I mentioned the other day. I’ve never seen a wild turkey before and they are sooo big! A large group (which google tells me is called a “rafter”) walked by, and didn’t seem at all fazed that there were a bunch of people staring at them. Unfortunately, that part of the trail was completely covered with trees so it was almost too dark to get photos, but I lucked out with a few shots where the sun was shining through.

The other photos are the rest of my deer photos which are too underexposed and noisy but I still like anyway. This experience taught me that I really need to practice more action photography. Since I mostly take food photos or still nature/landscape shots I’ve gotten dependent on the aperture priority mode on my camera. I had to switch out of that right quick to get shots of these animals that weren’t blurred, but since they were moving quickly I didn’t have much time to figure out what the best settings would be. I feel like I’ve mastered aperture but shutter speed still messes me up. Definitely gotta work on that. Still, I’m just happy these shots came out clear instead of blurry. For me, that’s progress.