LIVING

Allow me to go back in time and post about the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It has been weeks since we visited the park when we were in North Carolina but I neglected to post about it. I was surprised to learn that the Great Smoky Mountain National Park is the most visited national park. In fact, it isn’t even close. It has double the amount of visitors of the second most visited national park, Grand Canyon National Park. The park is huge and there are several entrance

If you don’t know what a butt trip is go ahead and click here to get an idea of what a butt trip is. Essentially butt trips are small day trips to obscure places that adults appreciate more than children. The longer the drive and the more obscure the destination the better. We did a butt trip triple play in Tulsa as we visited The Center of the Universe, the Golden Driller, and a Volkswagen Bug on “spider legs.” This trip scored a 60 out of 67 scale. We didn’t have to drive v

when we were in North Carolina we had the chance to visit the city of Cherokee and go to a gem store. They had buckets of dirt that came from mines and you could buy a bucket and go out to try your hand at finding gems in the dirt. You would put some of your dirt in a wooden box with a screen at the bottom and as the water rushed through a sluice it would clean the dirt and you would look through rocks to find gems. It wasn’t really mining and more touristy but it was still f

Nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains, surrounded by rolling green hills that are full of “nature” you will find Asheville, North Carolina. We were planning staying in this area for 5 days before moving on to Nashville but due to some unforseen mechanical issues on our fifth wheel we stayed for 10 days. Although we would prefer not to have mechanical failures on our home, we felt like Asheville was a great place to have to stay longer. The whole area has a lot to do both indoor

In my post about the huge 178,000 square foot Biltmore Mansion I mentioned that it was built upon an 8,000 acre estate. The grounds of the estate were designed by Frederick Law Olmstead who also designed Central Park. The grounds are amazing and if I lived in the area I might buy a membership to the Biltmore Mansion to visit the gardens during different parts of the year as there are plants that grow and bloom throughout the year giving a different experience each time. There

Ten months ago we sold most everything we had and moved into a 400 square foot fifth wheel. We have generally enjoyed living a more minimalist lifestyle. Sometimes we miss having more room and more stuff but we recognize that we have a lot of benefits as well. While we were in Asheville, North Carolina, we visited the opposite of the minimalist lifestyle that seems to be taking the country by storm. No tiny houses or mobile abodes here. Instead we found opulence, riches, and

When I was a kid my mom would always collect our photographs and put them in a scrapbook. We loved to go back and look through them and remember the good times that we had. Almost all of the pictures showed us having fun and getting along. We were on vacation, or eating good food, or opening Christmas presents, and it made it look like our lives were a wonderland filled with joy. My mom never put pictures in our scrapbook of me trying to run over my brother with a power rake,

Now don’t get me wrong. I have lived a life of planning and I think that it is necessary for us to plan our lives. You know the old saying, “if you fail to plan then you plan to fail.” However, one of the things that I have learned on my trip is that sometimes the best things that happen are unplanned. In addition, we can miss the best things in life that are around us right now, because our mind is planning for something in the future. As our family travels, we don’t usually