A Little Trip to the Mountains

Ben and I took a little overnight trip to the mountains for Memorial Day. Our first stop was at Chimney Rock State Park. It involved LOTS of stair climbing to get to the top of natural rock formations with great views of the mountains. My legs are sore today!

Tired after all those stairs!

The town of Lake Lure in the valley below:

I was SO SWEATY by this point, at the very top of the whole park.

The last scenes of The Last of the Mohicans were filmed here.

This waterfall was apparently also used in the "I WILL FIND YOU!" scenes in the Last of the Mohicans but they must have done some crafty editing because it wasn't nearly as big as it looked in the movie.

And then we drove on to Asheville. Asheville is a hilarious place, a mountain college town, which makes it full of a wide range of weirdos. Hippies everywhere playing hackey sack and bongos in the park, etc. Surprisingly, these people rocking out in the square downtown were evangelical Christians. They were pretty into Jesus.

We ate dinner at Rosetta's Cafe in downtown Asheville.

I got a baked tofu and avocado sandwich with some kind of herbed/spiced Veganaise. This was AMAZING. Nice and greasy, too.

Ben got a vegan reuben.

And, naturally, if someplace has vegan cheesecake available, we're going to go for it. I got cherry chocolate and Ben ordered NY style with blueberry sauce.

Um, I don't know. We saw this thing and thought we should take a picture.

This morning we stopped at a bookstore with a coffee shop for an hour or so. Salted caramel soy latte and a maple banana walnut cookie! Asheville is one of those rare places where you can you ask, "Are any of your baked goods vegan?" and they will not only know what you're talking about, but answer, "Yes!"

Then we met my friend Amy and her son Carson at the Laughing Seed Cafe, one of Asheville's best known vegetarian restaurants. It totally lived up to the hype.

Ben ordered hot and sour soup to start:

And then strawberry almond waffles.

My blue plate special - scrambled tofu florentine, rosemary roasted potatoes, seitan sausage, and a biscuit with vegan gravy. It was perfect.

I LOVE Asheville. It's a vegan's paradise! There were a ton of other restaurants I want to try there that we couldn't fit in on this quick trip. Hopefully we'll be back soon!