travel
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Weekend: Key Ingredients to My Perfect Weekend
There are Sunday nights where I just exhale a soft sigh of happiness and contentment for having had a wonderful weekend. Today I am sharing which things I consider key to having a satisfying fulfilling weekend. Of course, this will look different for each person as we all have different likes and dislikes, families and schedules. Saturday Morning Run For the past few weeks, I have been running with a group of ladies (in their 40s to 60s) for 6 miles at 6 AM. It is an easy pace, we do different routes and we get to see the sunrise! It’s a great way to start the weekend! Breakfast and…
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Savoy Car Museum
A few weeks ago, we decided to visit a new car museum that opened in the area as it was a cold Saturday afternoon. The Savoy Car Museum opened in December and displays an assortment of automobiles and works of art. It is located between Chattanooga and Atlanta just of off I75 in Cartersville. According to the website, the exhibits will change which I think is a great idea since these focused on a few eras and we were disappointed not to see some other time periods. This rusted 1954 Plymouth Savoy was discovered on the grounds during construction. The current exhibits include American Racing, the Great American Classics, Woodies…
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Grandfather Mountain, NC
The week after Christmas we took a short vacation in North Carolina and per usual planned some outdoor adventures. First on the agenda was snow tubing which was really fun despite the warm winter and it not being natural snow. Next was a hike at Linville Gorge (see post here). On our 2nd day we visited Grandfather Mountain. All of these places were chosen from my internet search for things to do near Morganton, NC where we had booked our hotel. The day was windy and a little windy but not especially too cold. After being unprepared for one hike in the fall. I now keep extra windbreakers and hats…
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Linville Gorge and Falls, NC
We took a short vacation after Christmas in search of snow. Well, snow we did not find however we did enjoy a half day of snow tube in North Carolina on some fake snow! We booked our couple hours of fun at Jonas Ridge Snow tubing and had a ball. Since it was a warm week, I knew it would be pleasant to hike to I looked up a few places near where we were staying (Morganton, NC) so we could enjoy the outdoors. It was fairly busy everywhere we went as others had the same idea but we were still able to enjoy our surroundings and fresh air. Linville…
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ZooAtlanta: Illuminights
For something a little different this year, we decided to go visit the special Chinese Lantern Festival at ZooAtlanta. There were around 80 lanterns of various sizes depicting animals and flowers. I wasn’t sure what to expect as sometimes pictures can make an event look better than it actually is, but this was worth our time and money! We loved it and really enjoyed all of the different lanterns as you will see with the number of pictures I am sharing. The festival runs through January 16, so if you are in the Atlanta area, there is still time to visit! Because we visited on a Sunday evening (before the…
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Sunsets on the Beach
I will let the pictures speak for themselves for this post. While pretty, the sunsets were not as majestic as last year. Having more clouds in the sky does make for more striking sunsets. I did enjoy these but didn’t always wait till the sun dip under the horizon before heading back to the condo. The time zone being Central time and it being fall, the sun started setting each afternoon around 4:30! We arrived too late the first day to see the sunset so this was day two. Peaceful and pretty! I took this picture from the top of the stairs (it was a steep way down) and thought…
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Sunrises at the Beach: the Beauty of the Golf
We have been to beaches in a number of places and countries (but no tropical island) and I have found that the Gulf of Mexico has some of the prettiest beach I have seen so far. I haven’t been to Hawaii nor the coast up North but we have been to California (around Malibu and Santa Monica), Long Island, the Atlantic Ocean by St. Augustine in Florida, the Mediterarneen in France and Italy and Spain. So far, the only the most comparable and might I say more beautiful in my eyes maybe was the Costa Brava in Spain. All this to say, that we love the gulf! The sand is…
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Our Stay at the Beach: The Adagio
For the 4th year in a row, we spent Thanksgiving at the beach and for the 2nd year, we stayed at the Adagio condos in Blue Mountain/Santa Rosa Beach on 30A. I will be sharing a few posts about our stay and the beautiful sunsets and sunrises but today I just wanted to share an overview of our vacation. First of all, yes, we leave all of the extended family on their own for Thanksgiving (my parents usually will celebrate with my brother) and the in laws come over to our house to visit my mother in law and head to the beach with just the kids. I didn’t grow…
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Can it get any prettier?! Cotton Fields at Sunset Take 2
Last week, before the time change, my teen and I decided to take a quick walk down the hill to our neighborhood. As we were going down we noticed that the sun was going to set fairly soon so we decided to cross the street and bridge and run to the park with the cotton field where I took pictures a couple of weeks ago. And it did not disappoint. Since everyone enjoyed the pictures last time, I think you will love these even more. The timing was perfect! Unbeknownst to us, though my 7 year old got sick at the house while we were enjoying these views and with…
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Rainy Hike at Fort Mountain State Park
Well, this hike didn’t go exactly as planned! I had seen two bloggers share this state park which was on my list to visit because the views were beautiful. I looked at the weather forecast and it looked like we would miss the rain but it turned out a lot wetter and foggier than we expected! The hike that I had planned with the views was actually closed because of a downed power line so we had to take an alternate hike there. Which means, we will need to go back to see those views. The first thing we did was pick up the pass for the day (I wanted…