¡TravelSickness!

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Dorothy, Lena, Ruby Slippers, Wal-Mart

Lena’s first Beignets, from Café du Monde.

First post from August! We are slowly catching up and trying to post some photos and stories from the last few weeks on the road…

Lena enjoying her very first taste of Beignets, from Café du Monde

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Beignets, Café du Monde, Food, Louisiana, Mandeville, United States

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Cataloochee, Church, North Carolina, Palmer Chapel, Smoky Mountains National Park, United States

More hiking in the mountains. Another green forest, another little river, and more tired legs. This time at least we got to go swimming at one of my favorite swimming holes. Midnight hole is filled with beautiful deep clear water and is surrounded by big boulders you can dive from. The water is COLD though, but after a day of hiking it can be really refreshing jump in for a few minutes. We also made it to Mouse Creek Falls, which is along the same trail.

Midnight Hole

Lena at Midnight Hole

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Big Creek, Hiking, Midnight Hole, Mouse Creek Falls, North Carolina, Smoky Mountains National Park, United States

Photos from Max Patch. Max patch is a naturally-occurring bald mountain on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee. The Appalachian Trail crosses over the top of the hill, and there are beautiful clear views of the surrounding mountains. We were lucky again and found huge patches of juicy ripe blackberries on the hillsides.

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Appalachian, Bald, Blackberries, Hiking, Max Patch, Mountains, North Carolina, United States

Oh yes, Heinzelmännchen! What is a Heinzelmännchen? If you are reading in German, maybe you already know. Otherwise, I will only tell you that Heinzelmännchen is a very funny little brewery in Sylva, North Carolina. My mom was very excited to bring Lena there to try the beer and test if it was a real German Beer. The beer was good, but the owner who claimed to have grown up in Germany seemed really confused when Lena spoke to him in German… so was he a fake German then?

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American Beer, Beer, Brewery, Gnome, Heinzelmännchen, Local, Micro-Brewery, North Carolina

Lena holding up her bags full of ripe Blueberries.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is a road which runs from Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina to the West, to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, 450 miles to the East. We drove from Maggie Valley to Graveyard Fields, where years ago a fire burned all the trees and left a clearing in the forest. Here, wild blueberries have grown all over the hills and were ripe much earlier this year than usual. So, we spent the afternoon picking blueberries for our special batch of blueberry pancakes which we wanted to make the next morning.

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Blue Ridge Parkway, Blueberries, Fruit, Lena, Nature, North Carolina, Picking, Wild

Lena enjoying her first Root Beer

Sunday afternoon, there was a small music festival in Asheville, the nearest city to my mom’s house in the mountains. We decided to get out of the woods for a day to give Lena’s little feet a rest, and to see what the big city had to offer. Lena got her first root beer in an American diner, and her first Mardi Gras beads (even though we were 1,000 miles from New Orleans) all in the same day.

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Asheville, Diner, Festival, Mardi Gras Beads, Music, North Carolina, United States

Just a few random photos from North Carolina… Nice views.

We are trying to add some more beautiful photos and exciting stories on this little website of ours, but we have no time, so I think maybe it will be mostly photos for a while…

The "View P in " (The Best View in the Smokies)

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North Carolina, United States, View Point