ON THE ROAD WITH ORSO – MARS HILL & ASHEVILLE, NC – 12.26 TO 12.30.2011

12/30/2011

We left Savannah on the 26th fairly early in the morning in search of snow in North Carolina. We reserved a cottage in Mars Hill, one of North Carolina’s ski areas located about 30 minutes from downtown Asheville. This was a great plan but we were missing one crucial component – SNOW! There was no snow, so we were out of luck with our plans to go skiing and snow tubing. The cottage was really cute and decorated nicely, but it was so far from everything. There was also a neighborhood dog named Russell who lived on our porch the whole time we were there. He would not leave. Orso was not very happy about this. He was incredibly sweet and so cute; he looked like Luna but with long hair. He even had similar eyes as Luna’s! We felt terrible for this poor dog. It was raining and freezing outside and he was always out there on the porch. It broke our heart. We wanted to take him home with us but Orso would be really pissed if he had to share the minivan with a strange dog, so we left Russell in Mars Hill.

The last pitfall was that there was absolutely no cell phone signal or internet, which made planning activities a challenge. It was incredibly inconvenient. On one of the days, we drove all the way to the Biltmore Estate just to be told that their tickets were sold out for the day. We would have known this with phone or internet connection since we always plan our travel days ahead of time using the internet. We also managed to bury our minivan in the front yard because there was no driveway and the ground was very moist – AAA had to help us out of this mess! There was also something living in the basement of the cottage that would make awful noises at night. It was pretty freaky. It felt like these 4 nights were pretty disastrous from a logistics standpoint! I did spend almost 12 hours working on a 1000-piece puzzle to stay busy. I couldn’t believe that we drove all the way to North Carolina and paid to stay at a cottage and the only productive thing I did was put together a puzzle, therefore making it the most expensive puzzle on this planet, LOL!

Regardless, the area is absolutely beautiful and we stayed busy by driving into Asheville every day, but the distances were tough on us. Asheville is a great town – very cool place with a hippie feel to it and very good dining, specifically a restaurant called Fig. It’s also extremely pet-friendly. Had it snowed, our experience in Mars Hill would undoubtedly have been different. Orso did have fun playing in the yard and getting all muddy and we took tons of photos of him outside – there wasn’t much else to do – so this blog entry will have a bunch of action photos! Below are our absolute favorite shots, enjoy!