The green city :)

Hey all you readers,

After our hike up on Looking Glass Rock, we went to the bad Wolf (Restaurant in Etowah) to eat ribs :) MIAM!! Half a rack for each one of us ! Naturally, we were starved after the hike... so much that the waitress said to me: 'Everythin' aw'right?' Me: -Excellent! She: 'A'm surprised y'ate that all on ya'own... s'little as y'are !' See! :) Never judge a book by it's cover, when I'm hungry, I really am :)

We've been off to Greenville just the next morning!

And I did not tell you about it right away... sorry for that :)

So, not too much to say about Greenville though... it's a green city, that's amazing :) Lots of trees and a waterfall right in the middle of town ! They built a pedestrian bridge, so you can view it from up in the air (sort of...) :)

The city is really nice ! Davy and I agreed on keeping the address for afternoon strolls through a city that's full of restaurants and bars :) (They do have a very lovely gourmet kitchen shop though... I love those little shops ! They have everything, from the fridge to the little baking spoon - nothing is missing!)

The one thing we liked most about the town though is that it seems like it was built after a concept... a clearly structured view of how the town should look, what the purpose of the main street should be etc.
What I mean is, it's not one of these american smallish towns where everything is built on the side of the one main road, without respecting any architectural, color or height indicators. Greenville is a town of it's own, exactly how Davy and I like it :)

After homemade ice cream on main street, we drove off to the Outlet Store in Gaffney ! As a girl, I should say our shopping spree was short and very structured! :) (I had to make sure this wasn't the last shopping tour Davy would accompany me on :) ... so I was quick in scanning the shops and choosing what to try on :) ) American Eagle Outfitters offered us enough pairs of trousers, so I could buy four and Davy three.
Among other thing we bought, I have to pause here for a minute and tell you that I got 4 pair of jeans for the price of one in Luxembourg... now that's what I call shopping :-) LOVE IT ! :)

After the shopping part, we wanted to drive home...

Tuh Tuh Tuuuhhh !!

Or not :)

The white car we took wouldn't start... at all... :( Fortunately some Americans from Texas, done with shopping too saw we had problems (and saw we didn't look like we could fix them all on our own... haha :) ) came and helped us jump start the car... we tried twice until the car didn't die on it's own as soon as Davy removed his foot off the gas pedal...

That's a battery problem for sure... but as it was up and running again, Davy and I could finally drive home !

Here's why I didn't write about Greenville before : ... ah nope sorry :) Y'all will have to wait for our next post, which will uncover where D and I have been for the last two days !

TTFN,

AnD

Main Street

Court House and West In Hotel

The falls in town

The suspended bridge

Hiking without a fully packed backpack is totally overrated :-)

Hello you readers !

We're back again ! And it's quite funny because we never really left...

No hiking ?? - you're going to say... well, no... that's not really it :-)

We did go on a hike ! Such a nice one, through the Pisgah national forest, covered with different flora every 2 kilometers or so ! Really nice ! As I said to Davy, it felt like in a Disney movie, jungle-like, trees and tunnels of plants that covered you up so you couldn't even get a glimpse of the sunshine any more :)
What I like even better are trails which are that much off road, that you don't meet other people. That way you can have fun interpreting the footprints or mountain bike prints, imagining who walked here before you did... my favourite way to forget that the trail doesn't stop going UP the mountain... exhausting :) !

Now here's the thing... we should have been sleeping at the buttercup shelter. Such a funny place by tthe way! I would have liked to stay there... but (you've seen that coming haven't you... :) ) it was only 4:30ish pm when we reached our shelter ! What were we going to do until it got dark ?
The card game we had with us (Fifty Nifty States) would have kept us occupied for an hour max. ... Guess we've just hiked too fast... :) (and Davy calculated the mile to kilometer somewhat wrong... but psst, don't tell him I told you, otherwise he'll be all *grrr with me :D )

Natural conclusion : We have the key to a house... why not go back there and hike all the way back to the car (the hiking we should have been doing today...). With a backpack fully packed for one night outside... double amount of kilometers... (13 to be accurate)... let me think for a minute here... yes ok, it's not getting dark until 8 at the earliest, so we've got time to do some more hiking :)

THIS IS WHY D and I are now convinced that hiking without a fully packed, heavy backpack is totally overrated... :-) Kind of ironical though... hiking to our night shelter and then finding it nice but not nice enough to keep us in the woods at 5pm :-)

Dinner at Eagle Chase Lane and a new hike today !

You didn't think we'd miss out on our two day hiking ! :) Desination: Looking Glass Rock.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/209758934

The Looking glass rock trail (click on the link for further detail) goes up some 550 meters in about 4.5 kilometers... no easy thing to do when the weather here in North Carolina resembles sauna-atmosphere... hot, yet humid with pretty much no breeze at all... BUT, we made it and the view was awesome !!

There's such good hiking around here, it's incredible ! And it's all pretty much next door ! Amazing :)

Tomorrow, the plan is to go check out Greenville and see how green it really is :D

TTFN

AnD

right before we reached the buttercup shelter

the shelter

 

top of looking glass rock

just chillin'

little visit in the garden this morning :)

Thunder storm warning

Hey there,

As you can see we are still connected to the internet... meaning that we didn't actually leave for Pisgah national forest yet.

This morning we heard that thunderstorms would be pretty bad in this part of the state as of the late afternoon, which is why we decided to go hiking in Dupond forest instead.

Our smallish hike to the Hooker Falls (no kidding, that's the name... now don't you go looking for the origin of that name! :-) ) turned out to become a 3 and a half hour beautiful hike to two lakes, and three kind of falls in the best of weather !

Obviously, Davy and I cannot go anywhere without sighting the weirdest wildlife, so... as he didn't know if we were still on the right track I decided to go have a look at the signs. That's when I screamed out loud: 'Davyyyy!!! SNAKE!!! SNAKE!!! SNAKE!!!'.
Ironically, I couldn't move away because my legs were like planted in the ground from fear... I guess shouting woudln't have helped me much, thinking of it now... :-)
I googled my black friend and saw, relieved, that it wasn't the poisonous kind. It's called black runner, long thin body with a tail like a rattle snake... Brrr.... not a fun encounter, I assure you!
Last aminal we saw was a butterfly, really big and beautifully colored in yellow, black, red and blue. It's size was about 10cm ! I have never seen such a big butterfly :-)

As soon as we got back home (3 pmish), I told Davy we could eat out on the balcony but, as soon as I had prepared the table and chairs, I heard thunder and the sky got all dark... 10 seconds to get it all back inside and swoosh! RAINDROP after RAINDROP cooled down the outside temperature.

By the way, with all this humidity, I believe Alaska gives North Carolina a loan of it's state bird during the summer... Yes, I'm talking of the Mosquito. Even though pretty small, they are really bad ! Thank  you Nancy for the anti-itch cream you have lying in the bathroom... takes the itching away... :-) We'll replace it!

Tomorrow then, we'll be off to Pisgah for good !

C ya !

Hooker Falls - lots of people in the water !
Seams to be the place to be in Summer !

Triple Falls

Lake Dense

Papilio canadensis

Hello raindrop ! :)

Hello all of you readers !

Davy and I arrived safely at Asheville airport yesterday evening at around 10pm. After a 3-hour wait in Amsterdam and another 6 hours in Detroit ...

What better feeling is there than seeing Jack, our neighbour, waving at us, not quite sure (he just as much as we) if the person we're looking at is the one we should be looking for :-)

He had already prepared the house for when we would arrive, even breakfast was waiting for us in the fridge ! Thank you so much again, Jack, because Davy and an empty stomach is not a fun thing to deal with :-)

Sadly the weather isn't as expected. Thunder and lightning greeted us at the airport, raindrops accompanied us today... but temperatures are high, so flip flops and shorts are a must :-) This however means that humidity is very high too, which is something we still need to get used to.

Today's schedule: cleaning the balcony and the porch, go to Ingles (Pringles as Davy says.. :-) ) to buy food, get red wine from Italy (excellent shop on airport road !) and hiking gear. Ah, I got an earlz birthday present from Davy !! :) Gore-Tex TNF shell in froggy green :)

So now we're all set for our hiking trips.

As an answer to the mums: Yes we've been informed that encounters with black bears, except if we went to shining rock, would be highly unlikely... though not impossible.
As a precaution we bought rope to hang up our food in trees and bear spray ! :)
Through experience you learn... true true... :)
Squirrels however would be a pest nearly anywhere :-) So this time we're hanging our food on a tree because of the mice and squirrels... ironic, isn't it ? :-)

Tomorrow we're headed for Pisgah National Forest, where we're planning on sleeping on Pilot peak in a shelter. The shelter's open on three sides and has a roof... we do not know exactly how it is going to be, but the word shelter taken literally can't be too bad, can it ? :-)

Ah by the way, I've started Yoga... :-) Learn to deal with stress was my first goal... but after finishing my first lesson (DVD - Living room Yoga), I felt taller... weird feeling, but very interesting :-) (knowing that it can't be... obviously :) )

TTFN (Love that abreviation :D )

We'll be back in two days !

Breakfast in the living room

After cleaning the porch and balcony, reading a travel guide for Chicago

Urdhva Dhanurasana (Wheel or Upward Bow Pose)

By 5am tomorrow - off to North Carolina ! :-)

Hey there you Bloggers !



By 5am tomorrow, Davy and I will be off to North Carolina !

If you want to follow us on our trip, you'll just need to click on the link below and head for « North Carolina ». You'll have guessed that from now on, all our trips will be shown as tabs on the main blog.

No more difficult online vocabulary... all you need to remember is this link :

http://www.anneanddavytravel.blogspot.com

Clicking on the North Carolina tab will enable you to follow us on our trip.

As I like to say, Davy and I will be away from wednesday to thursday :-)
...
August to september - DUH ! :-)

Don't hesitate to write comments ! We really like to read them !


See you online !


AnD

On the road ... again ! :-)

Hey there you Bloggers !

Davy and I will be off to the States soonishly !

... so stay tuned! :-)

AnD