McDonald's

We had a great weekend - - - - met my sister here about lunchtime and had ice cream sundaes. Do you know which city we were in? The ceiling inside the restaurant looked like this.

There was a grand piano - - inside the McDonald's!

Notice that the keys are depressed with no one's fingers touching them. It is a computerized player piano.

Does this picture of the outside of the McDonald's help you know its location?

The restaurant is across the entrance from the place we went to visit.

This statue was outside the house we visited - - - the Biltmore in Asheville, NC! We had an excellent day of touring this magnificent home. The extravagant furnishings were beautiful to view but even more amazing was looking at the construction of this building during the last decade of the 1800's. The kitchen and laundry areas were fascinating, too. This place had the newest state of the art technology for that time including early refrigeration and even a laundry dryer. Our plans are to go back in the spring or summer so we can view the gardens. They alone are supposed to be worth the trip according to those who have visited before us. Our trip was a gift from season ticket holders.

Our overnight stay was at the Holiday Inn Asheville-Biltmore East. It was extremely reasonable for price and very comfortable with new pillow top mattresses. The decor had mountain-style furnishing - - rustic.

Supper was wonderful Outback. Their food is always an extraordinary treat! If possible, this meal was even better than others we have eaten because it was FREE! My sister had gift cards given to her when she listened to a presentation at Wyndham Resorts.

Our trip there was uneventful. I had used Mapquest - - but failed to print reverse directions - - - and the problem with that is there are two rockslides between here and there. Coming back, we missed the detour off of I-40 - - - but decided that we could take the scenic detours. The first was through beautiful Maggie Valley, NC. We were driving along through beautiful spring weather - - looking at a rainbow while admiring the snow on the mountain tops above us. In just a matter of a very, very few minutes, we were on top of the mountain, completely surrounded by a white environment. The roads were clear due to road treatment but the ground had snow coverings and all the trees were white with frozen fog/snow. It was not as much snow on the trees as frozen mist. We seemed to be inside a cloud. As my husband said, "It was surreal."

A few curvy roads later and we were back inside the sunshine viewing the beautiful forests. After being surrounded by gorgeous nature, it was a bit of a shock to view the gambling hotels in Cherokee, NC. Something just doesn't seem right about that in the middle of a beautiful forest but I guess the location is part of the appeal. The next leg of the journey was supposed to be on Newfound Gap through the Smokies with the end destination of Gatlinburg, TN so we could stop at some outlet shopping in Sevierville on the way home - - - - but the road was closed due to snowy roads on top of the mountains.

We ended up detouring yet again to Murphy, NC to Copperhill, TN - - - another detour due to the second rockslide - - south to Georgia and finally home to Cleveland. A trip without rock slides is only 3 hours - - - with the proper interstate detours, it is 4.25 hours. Our return trip was 6.5 hours!!! But we got home safely without going over the side of a snowy mountain! Quite an interesting adventure!

You will worship God on this mountain! Exodus 3:12b