Road Trip: Hillbilly Hotdogs (From Diners, Drive-ins & Dives)

Over Labor Day weekend, my parents and I went to visit my Grandparents (my Mom's parents) in W.Va. Every year, since about 1999, we have passed this place called Hillbilly Hotdogs on Rt. 2 in W.Va. We always thought the place was a dump, and every year when we drove by, joked about how we would never eat at that place, and how could this place still be in business!

Abby and I in front of the Hillbilly Hotdogs sign

Well a few weeks ago, Hillbilly Hotdogs was featured on Diners, Drive-ins & Dives on the Food Network. I called my Mom and Dad and told them to make sure to watch, and we were all amazed that this place was so popular! There were people from FL and CA that had stopped by to visit, all because of the show!

Dad ordering us some hot dogs

Well of course my Dad and I decided we just had to stop on the way to visit the Grandparents. I don't think my Mom was all too excited, but she was a good sport. We each had a hot dog, and they were only about $1.59 each (a pretty good bargin for a place so famous!).

Their indoor dining is in the school bus (this cracked me up!)

They are very well known for their Homewrecker which is a huge hotdog that sells for $14.99. If you can eat the whole thing you get it for free.

Here's Guy on the show enjoying the Homewrecker.

Ok, I'll admit the hotdogs were pretty good, and they were a bargin at only $1.59 each! Not sure if we will make this a regular stop, but it was fun to see what that place was all about. And now we can say we have been to a dive featured on Diners, Drive-ins & Dives!

This is my second Food Network restaurant (Paula Deen's The Lady & Son's was my first), and I am hoping to visit even more in the future. My next stop is hopefully Neely's BBQ restaurant in Nashville, TN (now if only I can convience my boyfriend to go on another road trip!)

Pink Saturday - 8/14/10 - Glamping

Happy Pink Saturday everyone! Our family is attempting to have a garage sale this weekend, so hopefully we can sell some of our junk (or treasure to some!)

Last week, when my boyfriend and I were sitting by the pool on vacation, I was reading the Aug 2010 issue of Southern Living Magazine and came accross this article about Glamping. I turned to my boyfriend and said, "Wow! I might actually consider camping if it was like this!" He turned to me and said "Jen, that is not camping"

Glamping is a form of upscale camping using tents with plumbing (including hot water and toilets), natural cooling and furnished with European antiques and luxurious bedding. According to The Martyn House website (the company featured in the magazine), glamorous tents have been around since 200 AD when the Ottomans used these tents for cultural or royal ceremonies. A form of Glamping immerged again in the early 1900’s in Africa to cater to the needs of wealthy, demanding American and European travelers who sought adventure in the wild.

According to the article in Southern Living, prices start at around $180 per night for a min 2 night stay. I am not sure though if this is per person, or per tent, but it looks really cool! My aunt stayed in something similar to this in Africa when she went on a safari, and she said it was awesome!

If anyone has ever stayed in one of these, please share your experience/thoughts on it. I don't know if this is something I'll do in the near future, but maybe someday!

Thanks for stopping by, and check out Beverly's blog for more info on Pink Saturday and to see the list of participants.

Biltmore Estate - Part 2 (The Conservatory and Bass Pond)

I am slowly getting through my Biltmore pics. Today I will share the Conservatory and Bass Pond. The Conservatory is probably my favorite part of the whole estate. There were tons of displays of pots of flowers and plants. I kept taking pics, and had to keep telling my boyfriend to get out of the shot. He kept saying, "are you done yet?"

Here is the Conservatory:

Here are some of the displays within the Conservatory:

This was my favorite display. It was a little water fountain, and the water was coming out of 3 wine bottles set on their sides. If only I could recreate that, I'll have to figure that out.

This is Bass Pond. There was a little boathouse off to the left (you can barely see the dock) but my boyfriend and I stopped and rested in the boathouse for a bit to get out of the sun. It was starting to get rather hot at this point.

This is a waterfall on the other side of the pond. We didn't walk all the way around the pond, we had already done plenty of walking by that point, but we did get to drive by the waterfall, so I asked my boyfriend to stop the car so I could get a picture. It looked so peaceful!

I still have pictures to share of Antler Hill Village, which had shops, restaurants, the winery, and the little farm. I'll try and get those posted soon, so be sure to check back.

Biltmore Estate - Part 1 (The House & The Gardens)

Last Friday, as part of our road trip to Asheville, we visited the Biltmore Estate. This place was beautiful!!! I would love to just stay there forever! I was bummed though because you could not take pictures of the inside of the house, so I only have pictures of the outside and the gardens to share.

Biltmore Estate - America's Largest Home:

America's Largest Backyard:

Italian Garden:

Main Garden:

I'll share more pictures of the conservatory and the pond tomorrow, so be sure to check back!

Road Trip to Asheville, NC

I thought I would skip Tips Tuesday this week and share some pics from my road trip to Asheville, NC. I am going to do this in a couple of posts since I have a ton of pictures.

We arrived in Asheville on Thursday around 6 pm. It took us 10 hours to get there because we got stuck in traffic from a bad accident in KY, which put us back about 2 hours, plus we stopped for lunch. The total trip should have taken us about 7.5 hours.

So after checking into the hotel, we decided to head into downtown Asheville to see what we could see.

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There was this cute bookstore called the Battery Park Book Exchange. They claim to have about 60,000 books, and they continue to purchase from their customers so it is expanding all the time. They also have a wine bar, so you can stop in, browse their wide collection of books and try out some different wines. It was a really cool place with a very trendy vibe.

I ended up purchasing 2 books:

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We then walked around to see what else we could see. We were bummed because most of the stores closed around 6 pm. There were a lot of cute/trendy stores.

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We then stopped into  Ed Boudreaux's Bayou Bar-B-Que for some pulled pork sandwiches. They have a BBQ bar where you can try out different types of BBQ's. It was pretty tasty!

Asheville is a really cute little town. They had some live music in the square, and they had some cute stautes all over the city such as this one:

It seemed like a great city to visit and I would love to visit again and spend a little more time there.

Tomorrow I will share my Biltmore Estate pictures, so be sure to check back!

Birthday Road Trip

It's my birthday...We gon' party like it's my birthday!

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The bf and I are headed to

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Where we are going to visit

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Not sure what else we are going to get into, but I'm very excited, and I'll be sure to recap next week.

Tybee Island

While we were visiting Savannah, we decided to drive out to Tybee Island before we headed on back to Hilton Head. By this point in time the weather was really starting to turn bad, so obviously my pictures are a little dreary, but luckily the rain held off so we could enjoy the island for about an hour or so.

We first started off by visiting the lighthouse. I love lighthouses, and I always try and get a picture of every one that I can visit. This one had a cute little community of buildings around it that I suppose you could tour, but unfortunatly the property was closed off with a gate. We couldn't figure out why it was closed. We were bummed we didn't get to see any more of the lighthouse. I didn't realize until I got home that there were those nasty powerlines in my pics. Of course because of the gate, it was hard to get a really good pic of the lighthouse.

We then drove to almost the tip of the island and visited the pier. It was fun to walk out onto the pier, and look back on the beach. There were a couple of people fishing off the pier. My boyfriend always likes to go up to them and ask them what they are trying to catch.

Here is the picture of the beach from the pier.

There was also a cute little discovery shop/welcome center behind the pier, and it had this cute turtle out front. I just loved all of the fun bright colors.

Well that is all I have to share about my trip to Tybee Island. Hopefully I can go back to Savannah again some day and spend a little more time on the island.

Savannah and The Lady And Sons

Savannah is probably one of my favorite cities, and when my boyfriend and I were discussing taking a trip to Hilton Head, I told him the only thing I really wanted to do was go to Savannah for a day. I was so excited that we were able to take a day trip, but was a little bummed that it rained that day. Of course it didn't start to really downpour until later in the day, and luckily that was the only day that it wasn't sunny, so all in all it wasn't too bad.

What I love most about Savannah, and the south in general, is all of the southern trees with the hanging Spanish moss. I really enjoyed walking through the little squares in the city. We weren't able to tour too many of them because of the weather, but the ones we did visit were beautiful.

While we were there, we had the chance to eat at Paula Deen’s restaurant The Lady and Sons. Luckily I looked it up online, because there was a protocol for getting a table at the restaurant.

We arrived about 9:15 am to stand in line, although there were people there at 8 am! The hostess stand opened up at 9:30 am to take our names. It didn’t take long to reach the hostess stand, probably because the weather was cruddy, and it was the middle of the week, in May.

Anyway, we were able to choose what time we wanted to be seated (11 am, Noon, 1 pm or 2 pm) and then were asked to wait across the street from the restaurant 15 mins prior to our reservation (which for us was 10:45 am since we choose the 11 am reservation). Once our names were called (which didn’t take too long), we were given a card, and asked to take the elevator to the 3rd floor to another hostess stand which then took us to our table.

Once we arrived at our table, they took our drink orders (sweet tea of course!) and brought us each a hoe cake and a cheesy biscuit (which were awesome!).

We both decided to try the buffet so that we could sample a lot of different kinds of food. My favorite was the baked chicken, mac and cheese and mashed potatoes. We both also got to choose a dessert and I choose the chocolate chip butter cake (which was almost too sweet, but very good), and my boyfriend choose the peach cobbler. Of course we tried each other’s desserts, and the peace cobbler was awesome also.

We really enjoyed the food at The Lady and Sons, but both ate WAY too much. We were a little stuffed, so we sat on a bench and watched these fountains for about 20 mins or so just to feel a little better.

I also went into the Paula Deen store,

I picked up an autographed copy of her book The Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook, as well as a cute platter with images of Savannah on it.

We also took a trip to Tybee Island that day, but I’ll save that post for another day.