Read Thy Book - Sam's Blog
  • Home
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact
  • Pics
  • Home
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact
  • Pics

Picture

July 20th, 2018

7/20/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
Well, it had come along eventually.  The last day of the Birthday Mystery Trip.  We elected to go into town and poke around Asheville for awhile.  Some people had specific shops they wanted to check out and others of us (like me) were just happy to wander around and happen across wonderful things.  If we didn't walk on every single street in downtown Asheville, we covered at least most of it. We are intrepid shoppers.

Inexplicably,  we found, right on the streets of Asheville in a large open area, a cornhole game set up.  Naturally we had to play.  Julie won handily and as it turned out, she had never played before!  Beginners luck?  Or  is she just a natural?​

We admired the artwork, both statues and murals that we saw along the way and enjoyed listening to the streets musicians as we strolled along.  We went to multiple bookstores, where Julie and I both found some wonderful reads and Jessie found an adorable pair of "reader" eyeglasses that I loved but did not buy. (If I hadn't already bought the book they would definitely have come home with me though).  We darted in and out of a lot of clothing stores seeking the perfect tee-shirt for Jessie, Chocolate stores primarily for Hurley but honestly, we all enjoyed the chocolate stores, a potato chips shop where Julie and Hurley found wonderful treats and walked by shops of every shape, size and specialty imaginable.

One of the ones that cracked me up the most was a yarn store that knit "cozies" for the lampposts outside the shop. Looked like the lampposts were wearing afghans.  One of my favorites of all the shops we saw happened to be the last store. It's called the Mast General Store. It was glorious.  So much to see everywhere you looked and most of it had a rather retro vibe. Including an old fashioned candy section that was enormous!  Barrels upon barrels in row upon row of Mary Jane's and Toffee's, Jelly beans and lollipops, Pixie sticks and root beer barrels and everything in between.  You could choose just one lollipop or a dozen because they priced it by the pound.  That was so fun!  Julie found a very pretty amber suncatcher and Jessie finally found her perfect tee-shirt.  Hurley and I contented ourselves loading up our buckets.

​Once done, we Uber-ed back to the house to spend the remainder of our time together once again, talking, laughing, watching the ducks, watching movies, eating good food and making great memories.  Corbin very thoughtfully brought some unusual snacks for Hurley to review for his Instagram site (including one from Scotland that was Whiskey and Haggis flavoured!)   It was interesting to watch Hurley with Jessie as his "camera person" film his review.  Mostly, we just enjoyed the novelty of being together.
We had some great meals too.  One of my favourites was a place called, Louellas, which I neglected to take any photos of.  It looked a little shabby on the outside but inside it was clean, the people were very friendly and the food was terrific!  They had hulahoops and yet another set up of cornhole outside for patrons.  I cannot hulahoop but Jessie hula'd the heck outta those hoops.  Hurley and Corbin took another crack at the cornhole game too.  I thought that was a wonderful idea and I wonder why other places don't offer things like that.  Probably has something to do with potential lawsuits.  Seems that most things do anymore.  

One of the things that bind groups of people together (and particularly our family) is good food. We found a lot of it here and applied ourselves with great enthusiasm!  I was too busy enjoying the food to remember to grab photos of everything, but here is a cross-section of some good southern cookin'.
Sunday we were up and out and on our way, the kids to the airport where they flew home (eventually - due to delayed and cancelled flights.  It was an unfortunate mess but eventually  everyone safely arrived where they needed to be though it was a realllllly late night for Corbin and Julie in particular) .   Tim and I got back in the car and drove the eleven plus hours to our starting point. 

So that's kind of it.  The entire story.  I'm sure I missed a few things but you got the gist of it.  Start with Awesome and move forward from there.

Once again, it was the best surprise of my life and the best birthday of my life.  Everyone in my family is now forever absolved from ever having to celebrate or even acknowledge, my birthday again.  I left with a heartfull of wonderful moments.​
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Yup, this is me. Some people said, "Sam, you should write a Blog".   "Well, there's a thought", I thought to myself. And so here it is.

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly