Our Mountain Weekend

When I left work last Friday, I was overcome with excitement about heading two hours away to the mountains.  Boone has become such a special place for me.  A big part of that was getting engaged at Ian's family mountainhouse and then having our engagement party there, but besides those great evenings, we have created so many fun memories in those mountains.

We were joined on this trip by two other couples -- our good friends and my sister and her husband.

Saturday morning we woke up early, had a hearty breakfast, and went to hike at Beacon Ridge off of the Blue Ridge Parkway.



After returning from our hike, we got ready for the day and spent our afternoon at Oktoberfest at Sugar Mountain.  You can read my recap about it in this post.

Once back from Oktoberfest, I poured my favorite fall cocktail for us, honeycrisp apple sangria.

And for dessert, in lieu of cake, I made the birthday boy his favorite seasonal dessert, Pumpkin Crisp.

Our friends left on Sunday and we stayed an extra night as we both decided to take Monday (Ian's birthday) off from work.

So on Sunday evening, we did presents and a nice dinner -- just the two of us.

This sign is for the garage -- Ian's man-cave.  He saw a sign with this saying at Folly Beach this past summer and loved it.  I was able to track this one down on eBay.

We got ready for dinner and grabbed a bottle of wine from the house to take to our dinner reservations at The Gamekeeper.  Definitely a new favorite restaurant.

We totally splurged on dinner that night!  We started off with a wild game sampler platter that we shared.  This is me, about to take my very first taste of rattlesnake sausage.  True story.

Also on the platter: venison andouille sausage, elk, ostrich.  And the most amazing crispy homemade fries ever.

For dinner, we shared a salad, and Ian had the venison osso bucco, and I had the ostrich.

We were stuffed after dinner, but not stuffed enough to resist their offer to send us home with some bread pudding for dessert.  It was divine.

The next day, we returned to Charlotte and spent the rest of Ian's birthday relaxing around the house.  It was the perfect weekend.  And I'm now officially four years younger than my husband ... at least for the next 2.5 months!