Awesome Place To Vacation

What do you do when a friend calls and asks you if you would like to go on a short vacation/road trip? Well, why not? Since I am originally from the North Carolina mountains and I always love going "home" for a visit and my friend, Robin, loves the mountains; it wasn't a hard choice to make when deciding where to go.

However, it took us a while to decide where to stay. We looked on-line for places to stay near Waynesville, North Carolina. Waynesville is pretty close to the places we wanted to visit. Well, I pulled up a website for The Old Stone Inn and it looked pretty interesting. I saw it had cabins and the price was right. So I gave them a call to see if they had a cabin with two bedrooms at a reasonable price and they did. And the trip was on.

Robin came by and picked me up and we were off! The drive was great and the scenery was terrific. We arrived in Waynesville and drove through town into a neighborhood.

We were thinking and chatting about the fact that this place couldn't be in a neighborhood - but it was. We drove with an apprehensive feeling that our selection was going to be a dud. We found the street to turn on and drove up this narrow drive way that seemed to keep going up. Wow! What a surprise when we got to the top! Behind all of these huge, ancient trees was this quaint lodge. The Inn was surrounded by trees and it was so shady and cool. The area at the top of the hill wasn't vast but still large enough not to feel over-run with people.

The Old Stone Inn

ready to serve dinner

(picture taken at dusk)

We found our cottage, The Hemlock, and went in to check it out. It was rustic, very large and most of all - immaculately clean in every room. The cottage had two bedrooms with a bath in each, a small den with a fireplace, adequate closet space, and a mini-fridge in one of the closets. The porch extended down the entire length of the cottage. Sitting on the porch was kind of like sitting in a tree house because it was so high, as you can tell from the picture. From there, it was difficult to tell that we were in a neighborhood. In fact, the whole area was sheltered from the neighborhood. We spent most of our time gazing out at the trees from the porch. It rained several times and we had to question whether or not it was actually raining because we could hear the rain but the trees acted as umbrellas. It know it is needless to say, but we enjoyed the cottage and sitting on the front porch.

The Hemlock Cottage

Now comes my favorite part of any trip - food. The Old Stone Inn has a fabulous restaurant with two very talented chefs. I am a meat 'n tater person and don't know much about sauces and foods in a foreign language but I had a quick lesson. The benefit of this lesson is that I learned how delicious food can be that I haven't tried before. The chefs were so customer friendly and made sure that the food experience at the inn was something that would always be remembered. Delicious! I really can't compliment them enough. Another thing was the cleanliness of the kitchen. You could see in the kitchen as you walked by and never did I see a clutter or a mess in there - cleanest kitchen I've ever seen in a restaurant. I know my opinion doesn't count for much but I give it 5 stars - food, atmosphere, service, friendliness and cleanliness.

(left) Carr - Chef

(right) Terry - Head Chef