Weekend Happenings

Justin and I are taking a vacay just the two of us this weekend. We've both been crazy stressed with work and wedding happenings and he's been out of town for 3 weeks in a row. So we just want to hang out and focus on eachother this weekend :) We were suppose to do northeastern highpoints and have a 2 days trip to DC, but that plan had to change (I'm slightly bummed-I REALLY wanted to go to DC). Anyway, we've decided to take a roadtrip to do the southeastern highpoints instead. For those of you who don't know, Justin and I have a goal of going to the highest point in each of the 50 states. A lot of times this means we get to go mountain climbing, but not this trip. The highpoints in the southeast are relatively flat so they are all either drive-ups or consist of a mile walk or so to get there.

We're leaving Thursday at 5pm to drive to Hiawassee, GA to stay in a hotel. This is very close to the GA highpoint, but we won't go to the highpoint until the next morning because by the time we get to the hotel it will be close to 11pm.

This is Brasstown Bald, Georgia's highest point (4,784 feet). It includes only one mile of hiking to get to it.

Friday is definitely our LONG day! Friday morning we'll wake up and go to the highpoint at GA and then drive about 2 1/2 hours to South Carolina's highpoint, Sassafras Mountain.

This is the USGS marker for the "summit" of South Carolina's highest point. It's devastating that these highpoints involve little to no hiking. I miss mountains :( Sassafras Mountain is 3,560 feet in elevation and involves a whopping 10 minutes of hiking time to get to it.

After leaving Sassafras Mountain, we'll get back on the road to drive for 3 hours to get to Mount Mitchell in North Carolina. This one is the different one of the bunch. We are choosing to drive to the top of the summit in order to have time to get in all the other highpoints, but you can hike Mt. Mitchell and we are planning on coming back to do that.



Excuse the random guy in this one, but I loved this picture of the view :) Justin and I have been trying to do this hike for months but the summit was closed and we didn't want to go if we couldn't be at the "true summit" of the mountain, so we waited. It recently opened up!

After leaving the NC highpoint, we're driving for another 3 hours to make camp in Virginia. On Saturday morning, we'll wake up and do the ONLY actual hike for the whole trip. Mt. Rogers (yes that would be my last name, for now at least. There's also Mt. Marcy in New York!) is Virginia's highest point and takes about 5 hours to hike it round trip. The best part about this hike is that it is known for its wild pony's that wander around.



These are the wild pony's from Mt. Rogers. Justin plans on feeding one....I plan on watching them chase him when he runs out of food :)

After leaving Virginia we'll make our last stop in Gatlinburg to camp in Cades Cove. (This will make 3 times we have been to Gatlinburg since we've been dating...I wonder what our favorite national park is....). We'll get into Cades Cove relatively early, so we'll probably do some small hikes in the area. Justin is desperately hoping to see a bear, he's crazy.

On an unrelated note, we took our engagement pictures last weekend! Our photographer, Amelia Strauss, met us at her studio and then we went off to various locations around the Birmingham area to take pictures. We started at the Bessemer airport to take pictures with a private jet, which Justin LOVED! He wants to get his pilot's license someday so he was very intrigued by the jet. We even got to sit in the cockpit and put on the little headphones and everything. It was awesome!

Then we drove back to Birmingham. Amelia is big on trespassing, as she says. She loves taking pics in random fields that usually end up being property owned by someone. We pulled off on the side of the road by the airport because she saw a field of flowers in someones front yard that she liked. We also took some by the railroad tracks near the airport. Our final stop was at Morris Ave. which was an absolute MUST, if not for the contemporary brick walls and road, then definitely for the name of the road itself! (My new last name will be Morris). The weather wasn't amazing that day but we were lucky because there was about a 4 or 5 hour time period in the day where it didn't rain and it just so happen to be the time period when we were taking pictures. LITERALLY, it started raining while we were in the car on the way home from Morris Avenue.

Amelia will post the pics on her website and give me a login id and password and as soon as she does that I'll put it on here so you can see the pics! Justin and I are both really glad we chose Amelia to do our wedding. We both love her style and she is so cute and so much fun to work with. I would HIGHLY recommend her to anyone :)