Caleb and I recently took a trip to Asheville, crossing yet another adventure off of our bucket list. No really—it’s a real thing that is written on a chalkboard in our living room.

For those of you who don’t know, Caleb is an infantry Marine, which somehow makes my little spoon a bad ass. This bad ass infantry Marine only reads Nicholas Sparks novels…so while he was deployed, we read one together: The Longest Ride. It is a sweet story about a bull rider who falls in love with an art major from Wake Forest. We are from a small town where there are probably as many cows as there are people, so needless to say, this novel reminded me a tad bit of where we grew up. Caleb says if he could have a re-do, he would have just enlisted in the Marine Corps instead of going to college in order to become an officer (I call his bluff on that, but…); I, on the other hand, am the one who loves school—had my Bachelor’s by 21, Master’s by 23, and am now a high school English teacher. This novel had many parallels that seemed to ring true to myself and Caleb.

Long story short, The Longest Ride was set in and around Asheville, North Carolina. We are stationed at Camp Lejeune, so it is a mere six hour drive from our home. Of course we had to go! It was near the end of the school year and Caleb sent me this link to Treehouse Cabins in Hot Springs, NC. We quickly booked it without looking too much into it because it was romantic looking, and apparently that’s all I need in order to book a vacation. We arrived after driving six hours through the night to a one-lane gravel road that looked like a setting straight out of Deliverance.

We survived and saw many sights throughout our four days to Hot Springs and Ashville. We saw the River Arts and Downtown Districts in Asheville, ate some delicious food, went on three hikes (Max Patch, Lover’s Leap, and Chimney Rock), went to a rodeo, and snapped a ton of photographs.

One thing I learned about myself while on this trip is that sometimes I focus too much on my end goal. Throughout our three hikes I was so focused on getting to the top of the mountain to see the main view. With that mindset, I would have missed all the other views on the way to the top. Thankfully I have Caleb to stop me and say, “Take a picture of that.” Such simple words that it seems almost silly he has to say them to me. Moral of the story being, don’t get so wrapped up in the destination that you forget to stop and enjoy the journey.

I hope you enjoy our highlight reel as much as we enjoyed our trip!