Did you figure it out? I've never seen watery particles congealed into white crystals in the air falling to the earth before. For those of you without a dictionary, that's SNOW! Mr. C sought to remedy that this past week when he had me pack suitcases for our family so that we could head North a bit in search of... SNOW!!!
We hit the road after our Wednesday night prayer meeting and arrived at the Dillard House before midnight. Mr. C had reserved a lovely suite with a fireplace. Three of the kids shared the fold-out couch while Bookworm opted for pallet on the floor.
We awoke the next morning to find ice. Everywhere. Now, those of you who are accustomed to (and sick of) ice will not find this amusing, but we were just as tickled as could be to find the doors of the Suburban frozen shut. The kids were so surprised to see icicles hanging from the truck. Mr. C carefully removed the sheet of ice from his window so that he could see. 
We had breakfast at the Dillard House restaurant. I've heard people rant and rave about this restaurant for years, and let me just say that you have never really eaten Southern cookin' until you've eaten at the Dillard House. I think even Paula Deen would agree with me on that one. :)They serve the food "family-style," so everything is brought out to the table in bowls and platters. I can't even begin to tell you what all we had for breakfast (definitely grits with biscuits and gravy), but you can see part of the meal in these pictures.
We were absolutely stuffed after breakfast. Unfortunately, none of the forecasted snow presented itself :(, so we decided to head about 40 miles away near Lake Toxaway, NC. We have some friends that own a huge Christian retreat on the top of Cold Mountain (yes, the one the book was based on). The owners graciously gave us the code to get through the security gate even though no one was home. It took us about 1 1/2 hours to make it those 40 miles along winding mountain roads. We then made the six-mile drive up Cold Mountain. We saw lots of frozen waterfalls along the way.
When we arrived at our destination, we were a little disappointed that instead of falling snow there was just a light "wintry mix", whatever that is. So, we decided to take a walk around and show the cabins to the kids. When we reached the chapel building, we saw this.
Yes, those are some very small piles of SNOW!!!! Apparently the rain had not washed these piles away yet, so we took advantage of them and had a little snowball fight. We only missed the actual snowfall by a few hours. The kids were absolutely thrilled to be able to pelt their Daddy with snowballs.
We continued our walk before leaving the mountain. We followed the path of a small train track designed for the "kiddie train" at the camp. The large cabin is the main lodge where the owners reside. It was once the vacation lodge for E.M.Backus, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and some other smart, rich men from the early 20th century. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. We look forward to going back for an extended visit during the summertime so that we can hike further up the mountain and visit some of the waterfalls and lookouts.
After the ride back to Dillard, we were ready for supper at the Dillard House. We were so stuffed after our huge breakfast that we didn't even eat lunch, so we had worked up quite an appetite. We weren't disappointed. I think I counted 17 different foods that were brought out to our table. We saved the leftover biscuits and ham for our breakfast the next morning.
