SOME MORE SUMMER...

And the fun Summer of 2015 continued...

Wednesday, 6/24/15 - We attended a second showing of Jaws - The 40th Anniversary
tonight on the big screen at Opry Mills Theaters.  Still funny, still scary and still a summer classic!

Friday, 6/26/15 -  We headed up to our beloved Asheville, North Carolina, today for a fun long weekend with our friends Wayne, Mike, Danny and Brenda.  It's amazing that it's been four years since we've been back up here.  That is way, way too long!

We rented a really great 4-bedroom house about 12 miles east of Asheville with this stunning view from the upper deck.
Below is the link for it because we will be coming here again when we get the chance!!

https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/6064874?euid=e47f1fc8-d647-1adb-53ff-ca76234d1e10

After checking into our house, we headed to downtown Asheville for a 40-minute tour on the Amazing Pubcycle.
This was our first time on one of these rolling pedal taverns, but it won't be our last.  What a ton of fun!!  It's set up for 13 people and we were lucky enough to get a private tour for just our group and our driver, Danny.

It was a happy and historic day in the U.S. today as gay marriage was legalized in all 50 states by the Supreme Court.  We stumbled upon this rally downtown and Ashlee and Brenda even got interviewed by a local TV station.  

Another great place we spied from our Pubcycle tour was the Asheville Pinball Museum where for $12 you can play all the vintage pinball and arcade games you want!!  What a hoot!!  And they sell beer!  What a combo!!  It sure made me miss my vintage pinball machine that I owned several years back.

The main reason we chose this particular weekend to head to Asheville was that fact that one of our favorite musical acts, Michael Franti and Spearhead, had a show scheduled downtown at the New Mountain Amphitheater.  It's a great little venue and the show was awesome as always and, of course, Michael, spent a lot of time during the show among his people in the crowd.  Below is a little clip of some Franti free-stylin' about heavy things that have been going on in this country as of late. Preach it, Mike!!

Saturday, 6/27/15 -  After sleeping in, we headed down south to another one our favorite North Carolina mountain towns, Brevard, today where we had lunch at Rocky's Grill and Soda Shop downtown.  The food was as tasty as the throwback theme of this quaint place which has been open here since 1942.  We stopped briefly at the new Oskar Blues Brewery, but their food truck wasn't open yet and we were starving.  But we will be back because this place looks great!

After lunch we plunged into the nearby Pisgah National Forest and then took the plunge down
famous Sliding Rock Falls where we took the exhilarating trip down the big, smooth rock
 into the 8-foot deep pool of 60-degree water.  Whooo-weee, that will make you feel alive!!

Wayne, the birthday boy.

We headed back to enjoy our awesome rental house for dinner on the upper deck of delicious take-out pizza from nearby Piazza in Fairview.  Dessert was a huge ice-cream cake from Marble Slab Creamery in honor of Wayne's upcoming birthday.

Sunday, 6/28/15 - After a nice sleep-in and enjoying some more time on the upper deck of the house, we  grudgingly headed back westward today stopping for a great brunch in Knoxville at The Tomato Head in their quaint downtown Public Square area. It was another great trip to Asheville and the mountains of North Carolina.  I guarantee it won't be another four years until we are back here again.

Saturday, 7/4/15 - Today we hosted Ashlee and Mike's Inflatable Waterslide Party (sponsored by Rob...and he doesn't even know it).  That's right, grown adults with no children rented a waterslide for our backyard to celebrate our nation's birth...what's more American than that??  We had a large time with a good gathering of friends all acting a-fool and other than a little mud in the backyard afterwards, it went through without much incident (and without any major injuries).

We stole our party theme from comedian, Greg Warren, but gave him credit, of course.

"One person at a time", "only go down legs-first" and many other rules were broken
that fine Independence Day in our backyard.
 (Editor's note:  We liked the water slide so much we rented it again during a visit by our niece, Ella, on August 8th)

Monday 7/6 thru Tuesday 7/7 -  Amazingly, after all the craziness in the backyard over the weekend, a baby fawn spent the night in our backyard.  The grass hadn't been mowed in a few weeks where he was because there had been a lot of rain, so Momma must have thought it was a good place to hide him for a day or two.  And, yes, it was a him because we named it Fred.

Friday, 7/10/15 - We caught a show by Matt Nathanson, The Fray and Train at the Bridgestone Arena tonight with our friend, Emily.  We all had dinner beforehand at Suzy Wong's House of Yum along with Ashlee's young cousin, Alexis, and her boyfriend, Hunter, who were also going to the show.  Good seats in the lower bowl and three great performances made for a great night of music.

Thursday,7/16 - We went to the pre-opening night of the new Marvel movie, Ant-Man in IMAX with our friend, Wayne. Despite luke-warm critical reviews, we thought it was very good. The next night we saw the hilarious and well-written comedy, Trainwreck, with Amy Shumer.

Wednesday, 7/22 - We joined our friends, Lisa and Toney, for dinner and drinks at Wine Down Wednesday at the new Natchez Hill Winery which is now located at one of our favorite Nashville locales, Fontanel, over in White's Creek.. There was also a show by the Nashville Improv Company that was actually pretty funny.

Thursday, 7/23 - We attended a Jimmy Carter book signing this afternoon at the downtown library in Nashville. There was a huge crowd of hundreds of people, so we were glad we got there early to get in line to get our copies of "A Full Life" signed. While our encounter with the former president was just a brief "Hello", an exchanged smile, and a "Thank you, Sir"after he signed our books, it was reported that he was there for over two hours. Pretty impressive for a man who's about to turn 91! We had dinner after at The Slider House to celebrate Burger Week afterwards and then some ice cream at Jeni's who is finally back open now after a listeria issue.