The girls and I have forsaken Florida at the moment, and the triple-digit summer, and life problems, etc, for perhaps one of our last travel adventures all together! As great as this sounds, things can still get a little contentious several hours into an 8-hour car ride, believe it or not.

Our first stop was Asheville, NC, and I had some technology issues, so I didn’t get as many pictures as I would have liked.

We stayed with friends who host the Forest Floor program in Asheville, an amazing forest school where children learn edible plants and carve and blacksmith and generally do amazing things children nowadays don’t usually get to do.

There are two great little dogs who live there, who Clo had tons of fun with. And goats!

We immediately discovered two things. First of all, the special high-tech sleeping mats we had brought were essentially torture devices cleverly disguised as camping gear. We have come to refer to them as “the beds of nails.”

Secondly, we discovered that the tent is not really waterproof, but this was remedied by a very large, practical piece of plastic we were able to cover everything up with, so we actually stayed very dry and cozy.

It was very cozy!!! I even got some wonderful things like journaling, painting, and reading in.

We also got to go to a pool party, a cacao ceremony, and a Rising Appalachia music concert that had crowds of hipsters flailing around to the music and an amazing parade of lit-up giant puppets. Rose struggled a bit with the Asheville fashion sense, especially things like the guy we saw wearing camo pants and leprechaun socks who took himself completely seriously.

We were going to hang out at the botanical gardens for a couple of hours and ended up staying for half the day. It was so pretty and peaceful, and we got distracted by taking really silly pictures of ourselves and sending leaf boats down the creek.

On the way back I spotted someone walking on the sidewalk who was wearing a cute little green pleated skirt, green plaid crop top, and a stylish hat, and I pointed it out to Rose saying, “There’s a kindred spirit wearing an outfit you’d like!”

As we drove by we saw it was actually some guy with a huge, scraggly beard growing off of his face like a mangy piece of Spanish moss, and Rose actually screamed. Oh, Asheville.