Our trip to Asheville, D.C. and Gatlinburg

We left church and headed east about a week ago. We had no destination this particular evening. Our goal was to drive as far as we could. We made it to Crossville. The next morning we left the hotel and headed to our first destination--The Biltmore in Asheville, North Carolina. Unfortunately, our camera card started acting up and we don't have any pictures from the Biltmore. I can just sum it up for you...it was a really big house. We stayed the night at Ridgecrest just outside of Asheville (for $34 a night b/c Fred is a pastor!!). Once we got settled in the hotel we headed back into Asheville for dinner at Tupelo Honey Cafe. We discovered this on foodnetwork.com with Rachael Ray. It was delicious!! I highly recommend downloading the recipe for sweet potato pancakes! After a wonderful nights rest we headed to D.C. We had a LONG drive in for an appointment at the capital. After a few tense moments we made it to our tour...an hour late. We headed into Georgetown later for dinner at an Ethopian restaurant--interesting experience. Saturday the Shackelford storm hit the city like nothing it had seen before. Here are a few pictures from the day...

We got a little turned around at one point and it seemed like every time we turned a corner we came to a new Department of Agriculture building. We took a picture of it for that reason and for our good friend Alex Bomar.

We had lunch in Chinatown.

Arlington National Cemetery

At the end of our day we headed back to the train station. It had rained on and off all day and this is what we saw when we got off the train...

We had a really full day: Arlington National Cemetery, National Archives, White House tour, Chinatown, Union Station, National Gallery of Art and the Air and Space Museum.

Sunday we woke up early for a run. Since we are both training for a 1/2 marathon we had to fit our runs in. Fred mapped out a run for us past all the major monuments and through Capital Mall. I don't have any pictures from this part of our trip, but if I did it would just be a picture of the back of Fred since that's all I saw!! After our run we headed to Capital Hill Baptist Church for worship. It was so nice to just go to church and sit by Fred. We then had lunch and headed to Gatlinburg, Tennessee where we finished our trip. A lovely cabin in the woods awaited us and we thoroughly enjoyed it! We shopped, layed around, read, ate, relaxed and didn't tour anyones home!! All and all it was a really good trip. We are so grateful for the opportunity to do something like this...thanks to all our family and friends for making it possible!!