Paige & Wes get hitched!

We travelled to Hot Springs, NC this weekend to see our friend Paige (from Bham) get married!  Hot Springs is about an hour northwest of Asheville, right smack dab in the middle of the Appalachian Trail. We had an absolute blast!  We arrived Friday night, just in time for the post-rehearsal dinner party. 

We stayed at the Iron Horse Station (one of three "hotels" in Hot Springs) where the party was being hosted.  We got to catch up with some old friends from Birmingham that we haven't seen since we left and some new friends of Wes's that we met a few weeks ago.  AND we got to have some YEUNGLING!!!  I was beyond excited!  Go figure, you can get Yeungling in the middle of the mountains, but in Chicago they won't sell it!  After the party, we experienced Hot Springs night life at the Spring Creek Tavern with live music and plenty of drinks, dancing, and conversation.

Live music at Spring Creek Tavern

The soon-to-be newlyweds

Saturday morning we didn't get up in time for breakfast, but had an awesome lunch at the Smokey Mountain Diner (complete with fried green tomatoes)!  After lunch, we took a drive up to Max Patch and hiked about a mile up the mountain for some ahhhhhmazing views. We met Luna at the top, a local dog who likes to go on hikes with vacationers (a couple staying at a local B&B brought her along on their hike).  She was so good, Bailey never would have hiked up and stayed with complete strangers!! Once we got to the top, there was a large clearing with a 360 degree view of hundreds of miles of mountains.

This is what it looked like when we started out...thankfully it passed over before we got to the top!!

Luna, the town hiking dog

After the hike we walked around the town for a little bit and went to this cute little ice cream shop for root beer floats.  They were delicious!!  And a perfect way to cool off after being up in the mountains!

The weather was in the high 80's all day and it seemed to cool off exactly at 6:00, when Paige and Wes got married.  The wedding was outside at the Mountain Magnolia Inn and it was beautiful!! After the wedding Tom and I entertained, (or rather were entertained by) Noah (Ashley and Tony's baby - who is no longer a baby anymore)!  Ashley was in the wedding so she was summoned for pictures and Tony unfortunately couldn't make it to the wedding.  Tom and Noah played "catch" or "baseball" or "hockey" (it changed each time) and we laughed at Noah's favorite phrases, "See that?!" and "I'll be right back."  After dinner we danced into the night and had a great time!! 

Noah still must be working on his aim ;)

Sunday we got up, said goodbye to everyone, and headed back to Asheville. We had some time to kill before our flight, so we stopped at the Stoney Knob Cafe in Weaverville, NC. I highly recommend this place if you are ever in the area! It's about 10 minutes north of Asheville and it was sooooo good!  I got the shrimp n' grits (I couldn't pass up grits since we were in the south) and Tom had biscuits and gravy.  After brunch we checked out Asheville and then finally headed to the airport to head home. We had a fabulous time!!