The Felt Family Life

Thursday night showed a Friday weather forecast in Maggie Valley of cloudy and 25% chance of rain. "No problem.", I thought. "It will stll make a decent day of driving the Blue Ridge Parkway ." Well, the weatherman said 25%, but actually meant 100%. Hahahaha, psych!! Oh ye mortal fool, who actually tried to make a "plan"!! I take your plan and spit on it! Ptooey!! So yeah, it was raining when we walked out of the cabin, but I was determined to hit the road anyway. I was going to get my scenery, dammit!! This is where I was sure the universe was laughing at me. I assumed that a week of sun and 60's temps meant everything was A-okay with the road conditions. So yes, the planner (i.e. me), did not check ahead of time. Well, as we drove up the mountain towards Cherokee to hop on the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP) , the rain changed to sleet...not alot. It wasn't pouring or anything....just light rain/sleet and temps in the 40s. We hop on the Parkway, and w...

I intentionally did not do any specific day-to-day planning before coming here. I just had some general ideas of what we could do. I did, however, read up on the Wheels of Time Museum before we came, because I thought it would be something right up Brad's alley. Imagine my surprise, when I enjoyed it myself immensely!! If you like motorcycles, mechanical things, or even just history, you should make a point of visiting here. It's an extremely well-run museum that is just full of cool stuff. We dedicated yesterday to just eating a local lunch and visiting the museum. We were lucky that the museum was opening for the season on the week that we were in Maggie Valley. Yesterday was the first open day, and there were already a few people visiting when we got there. I ended up walking around and taking a million pictures. I'm more of a history buff, but I do enjoy design and an appreciation for mechanics. A lot of the vehicles, despite being decades old, still ran. Some of...

Yesterday (Day 3), we drove out to the Cherokee Indian Reservation to have a wee bit of fun at the casino. I know, there's loads of other things we could do, but this one put a little spring in Brad's step, so we went to try to win some millions. Ha! To get there, you essentially drive up a mountain to get out of Maggie Valley, and down the other side to get into Cherokee, about 20 minutes away. It's all woods, occasional glimpses of the surrounding hills, craggy rock faces, no shoulders, and run-down mountain homes and abandoned shops from a bygone era. Nothing too exciting to the average joe, but the road itself was enough to keep us on our toes. There is a sign back in Maggie Valley that says "no commerical traffic" through this road we're on. Some intrepid (and perhaps foolish) short flatbed truck driver decided to make the trip to transport 3 short steel I-beams. As I said, it's all downhill into Cherokee, and the curvy road meant...

The remainder of Day 1 was spent having a lovely dinner at the recommended The Sweet Onion and getting groceries for the cabin in the neighboring town of Waynesville. Yesterday (Day 2), I let the hubs sleep in nice and late. I got up and went out on to the porch, so I could listen to the bubbling brook and see what the morning had brought (peace and quiet). The weather was warm and sunny...a perfect day for exploring. We had originally planned to go to Asheville, but no matter how much research I did online and through brochures, I just did not see anything specific jump out at me. That's not to say I won't explore it sometime, but I do better with a place to start, a destination, before I can "wing it". Case in point.....we decided to "wing it" by exploring Maggie Valley and Waynesville, because we saw some cute shops I wanted to visit. Welllll, it turns out that Maggie Valley is the very definition of a "sleepy little town" in the foothills ...

After a million hugs and kisses to our two wonderful kids yesterday, Brad and I hit the road to Maggie Valley, NC. Allow me to backup and give you a little history....hubby and I have been married almost 12 years. the first 4 years were filled with getting married, going through 4 deployments, buying a house, moving, getting a new job (for me), and becoming acquainted with each other (hello, whirlwind romance!!). Our honeymoon was spent traveling around the East Coast to meet each other's families. Brad finally came off sea duty, and Serenity was born in 2010. Then Strider was born in 2011, and the first 2 1/2 years of his life were taking him through 3 open heart surgeries, and doing our best to keep him healthy and alive. With the exception of a weekend trip to OBX for our 10th Anniversary, all of our vacations and weekend getaways have been visiting family. And while we love visiting family, it seemed Brad and I were overdue to have a relaxing getaway, just the two of us, with...