North Carolina was FANTASTIC! We have been planning this trip for a bit. My entire family was so excited to go on this trip. And boy did we get some time together. We drove all the way there. Actually all of our conversations were great. And I got a bunch of reading done. We did so much in the time we were there. Here are some great highlights.

Waterfalls: We saw a ton of different waterfalls while we were there. Where we saw the most falls was at DuPont State Forest. Hooker Falls, Triple Falls, and High Falls were all short walks and absolutely breathtaking. We had to pay to see Pearson Falls. It was ok. Definitely not worth the money. But still pretty. Mingo Falls was part of a camping ground. Sorry, but I don't remember the name. Who knew how beautiful falling water really is!

Food: I can't name all the places we ate at, but we definitely had some amazing meals. Some of the great meals that we had were authentic barbecue, irish pub food, mexican/carribean fusion, pizza, and cupcakes! We rarely did chain restaurants. Yum yum yum!

Gardens - Our family always has to go to a garden, or 4. We saw the North Carolina Arboretum right after a storm. We got to wander the gardens pretty much by ourselves. Our favorite gardens was part of Duke University. These gardens were just beautiful. It was so peaceful there. The only problem was that it was 100 degrees when we got there - at 9:00am! What a hot day! Thankfully our pictures still turned out nice, even though we were totally melted!

Biltmore house - What an amazing place. My mom received tickets for free for our family, so we felt we could splurge a bit more here. The gardens were nice, although not the best we saw over the course of the week. The house was humongous! My favorite part was looking at the servant quarters. (That might be because I am in love with the PBS series of Downton Abbey) We couldn't believe the stable. But our favorite part was the chocolate and wine tasting! When we bought those tickets we were told that no one was in the earlier tasting, so we bought that time. We were the only ones during that time! Woot! Yummy chocolate truffles and red wine! So great.

Baseball - As some relaxing at the end of the day, we went to 2 minor league baseball games. The Asheville Tourists were a cute little single A team. You could definitely tell it was a small town crowd. We couldn't even find a parking lot. I'm still not sure if there actually was one. Later on we went to the Durham Bulls. You could definitely tell that this was a successful AAA team. I love getting shirts from both of the teams.

National Parks - The one thing I asked for of this trip is that we go to a few of the beautiful National Parks around North Carolina. First we stopped at the Cumberland Gap. It was a quick stop since we were about to get dumped on by rain. So I will say I was pretty disappointed that we couldn't go to the place where 3 states met. Great Smokey Mountains were so wonderful. We hiked up Clingman's Dome to take in the view. The ranger said that day was the most clear he had seen all summer. I loved seeing the beautiful blue layers of mountains and horizon. We drove for a while on the Blue Ridge Parkway. As much as it was beautiful, it was a little too windy for me to drive on too long. I wanted to wander the Guilford National Military Park a bit longer, but the rest of the family wanted to keep moving.

I absolutely love traveling with my family. We are all very similar in the fact that nothing really bothers us too much. There were several times that something could have become something bigger, but it didn't. What a great trip!