I apologize again for the month long unintentional hiatus but life has been crazy the last few weeks. I started a research internship as well as a part time position with the education department at the zoo so I haven't had that much blogging time, however I'm excited to recap a couple trips and have some holiday posts in the near future!
Before life becomes taken over by all things Christmas, I wanted to share a few photos from our impromptu trip to North Carolina in early September. Remember that hurricane that barreled through all of Florida two months ago named Irma? Well she was the motivation for this "evacuation vacation." My town is on a barrier island on Florida's east coast which means almost every hurricane causes a mandatory evacuation due to storm surge. At the time, Irma was looking like a cat 5 with a possible track up Florida's east coast so we made the decision early to evacuate to my Grandpa's house in the Smoky Mountains. Let me tell you, worst drive ever. We left at about 11am to make the 10 hour drive to my Grandpa's and didn't make it into bed there until 4 the next morning. But......
After that, we made the best of our time and enjoyed a great week in beautiful mountain weather (which was 60s-70s all week, hello blessing to Floridians)! We are so thankful that Irma left pretty minimal damage to our house and we were able to evacuate to a safe place in time and stay until our power was back on. Others were not as lucky and my heart goes out to those in Houston, the Florida Keys, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.
My Grandpa's house is in Bakersville, NC, up high in the mountains. It's so beautiful up there and our Nyla girl absolutely loves being able to roam free looking for squirrels haha.
My sister and her roommate who both go to USF in Tampa evacuated with us as well and ended up finding an orphaned baby chipmunk on the road in the middle of the woods our first day there. They we able to rescue it and we even got to take it to an wildlife rescue in Elizabethton, TN the next day. We named her Irma of course!
Baksersville is very close to Johnson City and Elizabethton, TN. If you'e ever in the area looking for something fun, you should check out the downtown area of Elizabethton. We walked around downtown that Saturday and did some antiquing as well as festive fall coffee drinking at the Coffee Company (which is an amazing coffee shop by the way). They had an old car show that day as well so it was really neat to see those next to little antique shops and old store fronts. They really seemed to fit in :)
The next day was Sunday and we decided to make a trip to Grandfather Mountain. We used to go all the time as kids and it really is a cool place. We took the Blue Ridge Parkway to get there which is absolutely breathtaking and a must see if you're ever in that area and on our way up, I realized on my phone it was Grandparent's Day. My sister and I were taking our Grandpa (dad's side) and Grandma (mom's side) to Grandfather Mountain on Grandparent's Day! Quite serendipitous in the middle of a hurricane, don't you think?
The peak of Grandfather Mountain is one of the highest points in Appalachia so it's home to more cold weathered plant and animal species, which sounds lame but to a couple biologists it's actually really cool and you can definitely tell the difference in ecosystems from those in lower elevations. They also have a mile high swinging bridge which is fun and a small zoo with local wildlife like bears and a mountain lion. The zoo is pretty unique since the enclosures are built into the natural landscape of the mountain, giving the ability to see the animals in their natural habitat which I loved.
Of course we had to have a photo shoot on the mountain top. And Victoria and I can never be serious so here's a picture of me shoving her face down the mountain lol (don't worry, no sisters we harmed in the making of this post)!
The next few days we simply relaxed at the cabin as we waited for the all clear to come home and enjoyed big bowls of my Grandpa's yummy chili in our "cold" fall weather.
I'm sure there are little mountain towns just like this one all over the area, but the one closest to the house called Burnsville is the cutest in my eyes. I took my grandma to Burnsville one day that week and let me tell you, it is very Stars Hallow-esque with lots of antique shops, a small theater, town square, book store, and delicious coffee shop. If you ever make it to Burnville, you must go to Appalachian Java. Bonus points if it's fall and you're lucky enough to get a pumpkin spice chai latte and big slice of pumpkin cheesecake! Thanks to them, I'm now addicted to pumpkin spice chai and will have extremely high standards for pumpkin cheesecake for the rest of my life haha.
Despite the context in which we went on our forced vacation, we all really enjoyed that week of cool weather and little taste of fall :) Hopefully we will get the chance to go back to North Carolina after Christmas and see some snow this time, fingers crossed!
On another slightly disconnected note, I wanted to share a few recent fall-ish recipes I've tried in the last two months. I haven't been cooking/taking pictures of too many meals recently so I didn't have enough recipes to warrant their own post, but I hope to get back to that!
First off, this butternut squash soup. Just like every other basic fall-loving gal, I wait around all year for Autumn Squash Soup at Panera so I was super excited to have found a copycat recipe on Pinterest. It was much easier to make than I anticipated and was really delicious. It wasn't exactly as decadent as Panera's, but it was MUCH healthier so I'll take it!
This one is a little more of a "what I ate" because my mom actually made this white chicken chili last weekend when the temps dropped below 60 (yay)! I had to share it though because it was soooo good and spicy. Warmed us right up! P.S. my mom made it a little healthier by not mixing in the sour cream and served it on the side instead.
Random little simple recipe of mine, but I love roasted vegetables this time of year. I found these organic baby rainbow carrots at Aldi for super cheap and tossed them in a little olive oil with salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, and garlic before roasting them in the oven. So yum and hearty!
These peanut butter spider cookies I made on Halloween while watching Hocus Pocus were just too cute not to share :)
Lastly, I love this pumpkin sage and sausage pasta recipe a la Rachel Ray and used to make it every year around this time. Since I've been trying to eat healthier I haven't made it yet this year, but I hope to before fall is over because it is seriously so delicious. I think I found it while watching Rachel Ray's 30 Minute Meals in elementary school and begged my mom to let me make it that night for dinner. Don't judge me though, I know I was a weird little girl for watching food network and the
Martha Stewart show instead of Disney channel.
Ah, you made it to the end you little trooper you! I hope you had an awesome Halloween and are getting excited for Thanksgiving before going all out Christmas, because I know I am. Keep an eye out for a blog post soon on my September trip to NYC with my Mom :)
No comments :
Post a Comment