Family Vacation Part 2

We had such a great time in Boone and here are the rest of our family trip highlights!

We debated going to Tweetsie railroad since we were so close to it, but after seeing the price ($35/person!! Ruthie would have been free) and realizing Ruthie would probably only last an hour or so and might be afraid of a lot of it, we decided to give her another year or two before we try that so we could try and get our money's worth.

So we started looking for other options. We spent a lot of time at the Valle Crucis and Banner Elk parks and had a great time. They both have great playgrounds for little kids separate from the big kids play area which I really appreciate now. We decided to go to the town of Blowing Rock which is a place I really loved. We really enjoyed the ice cream shop and park there also. We had lunch at Mellow Mushroom and highly recommend the Philosopher's pie if you're able to go there. It is the best pizza we have ever had and has a garlic base, artichokes, feta, steak, portabello mushrooms, and olives. YUM!! Now my mouth is watering and I've totally lost my train of thought ;-). Pizza does that to me.

Okay, back to our vacation. We decided to go visit The Blowing Rock (We thought it was funny they always call it The Blowing Rock). This isn't something we would go back and do again. It is very nice for people who may have more trouble accessing some of the hikes/views, but it wasn't exactly what we were expecting. However, they had GRAVEL. Apparently, gravel is our child's absolute favorite thing. I think she would've stayed there for hours picking it up and dropping it. It was so cute....and so dirty! See her all the way on the right over there picking up gravel??? Loved it.

Ruthie was really excited when she made a friend, Belle. We probably spent 10 minutes with this dog and she loved every second of it. After Belle left, Ruthie realized she could start Rock Climbing like Daddy and off she went! So, Joel took her up to the top and she enjoyed that, but was really more interested in the gravel!

After leaving there we hit up the outlets and got Joel two work shirts at the Gap for $8! I was able to get some things at Ann Taylor loft for about $5 each. We were excited.

The next day, I decided to look for a petting zoo and found one at the Valle Crucis farm that was $5. They had horses, bunnies, goats, chickens and sheep and it was PERFECT. We were the only ones there and were able to feed the goats leaves which quickly turned into Ruthie's favorite animals. They were very friendly and the lady in charge said if we let them out of the pen they would follow us around like dogs and want to be petted! It was funny.

Those are the main highlights of our trip that I have pictures of! Our other favorite activity was ping pong at night after Ruthie went to bed. The home had a pool table with a ping pong table you could put over the top and we had so much fun! Apparently, our new baby and being pregnant has made me really good at ping pong. I am usually really bad at ping pong so this was a total shocker. We had world championship matches that came down to the last point. We each would win a game, then lose, it was intense and so much fun! I wish I had pictures of it. We're now hoping we can find a ping pong table that we could keep under the bed and put over our kitchen table ;-). It was as close to playing a sport as I've come in months so I really enjoyed it!

Hope you enjoyed our vacation recap, we loved it!