Mini Vacay

Back in May Blake's work started talking about shutting down for 2 weeks in July... no big deal, right? Soo after I got over the fact that money would be tight in July we decided to use this extra time off to our advantage and to go off on a mini vacation. After my dreams of a cruise were crushed because I haven't updated my passport (URG!) we thought about something cheap and close to home... so we decided to go to Biltmore.

Living in NC you have to visit the Biltmore Estate at some point in your life... most people choose to go in the fall or at Christmas but we had to be different. We went when it was a million degrees outside!! We drove up to Asheville on Monday (which is a LOOONNNNG drive btw) and spent the night downtown thanks to an awesome Priceline.com find. We got up Tuesday morning and explored the Biltmore. It's pretty beautiful and awesome.

We then drove to Charlotte because Blake is a NASCAR lover and he wanted to tour as many race shops as he could. On the way in to Charlotte we saw a billboard for the Summer Shootout Series at Charlotte Motorspeedway so for $14 we had an evening of entertainment. 

We spent the night in Concord (again, another -- even better!-- Priceline deal on a hotel!) then Wednesday was full of race shops and driving home. We really enjoyed this trip to places in our own state that we'd never seen before. Blake's time off ends this weekend but he has off every Friday so we'll take advantage of that while we can :)