My birthday in Asheville, North Carolina

I can't believe I am a 25 year old now! Jimbo and I planned a weekend trip to Asheville to celebrate and to see the leaves changing colors in the mountains! My birthday also fell on Veteran's Day weekend so we had a long weekend that allowed us to travel. Before we left for the weekend, Jimbo made me an upside down pineapple cake for my birthday! This cake is a tradition for me. My dad made me one for my first birthday and every now-and-then I ask for one to celebrate my birthday. My hubby did an amazing job!

We don't own candles, so I blew out the lighter haha!

Then we were off to Asheville!

The day we got there we went to Chimney Rock State Park to go hiking since Jimbo got in for free for Veteran's Day!

A little pond in the middle of the mountains.

Chimney Rock from the parking lot

Moonshiner's Cave!

It's kind of hard to see, but this is looking down into the steep and scary cave.

At the top of Chimney Rock (2,280 ft)

A lot of people only make it to this landmark, but if you're willing to do some off-roading, you can go all the way to the top of the mountain, which is called Exclamation Point (which of course, we did haha!).

On our way up...view of Chimney Rock where we just were :)

On the way up the Skyline Trail we stopped at Devil's Head. See the outline of a Devil's Head in the side of the mountain?

View from Exclamation Point! (2, 480 ft.)

Look at the little town

Everyone carves their name, so Jimbo did it for us :)   J&S

Don't you just love that fake smile? haha!

On our way back down, these are the stairs up to Chimney Rock.

 Once we got back to the bottom you can take a 1.5 mile trail around the side of the mountain to get to  Hickory Nut Falls, which is the park's waterfall! It's one of the highest waterfalls east of the Mississippi!

On the trailThe roots of this tree were almost completely exposed.

Hickory Nut Falls

Leaving the park

Our GPS! You can see how crazy the roads were while going down the mountain. Can you tell we're from FL and don't see this often? haha!

The next morning was my birthday! We went into Downtown Asheville for some breakfast and shopping.

Downtown Asheville

Cute street our breakfast restaurant was on.

Then we took a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway!! We have always wanted to experience the scenic drive and now we have! It is just as beautiful as everyone says it is. 

We saw a ton of turkeys walking around the mountains!

We headed back to the downtown area to hit up some of the shops that weren't open earlier that morning and other parks that we hadn't been to yet.

View from the parking deck. Are you kidding me? This is what they get to look at everyday while they're parking??

We had an amazing weekend and we will go back to Asheville if we ever get another chance to. It was such a nice way to celebrate my birthday! A quarter of a century old! Yikes! :)