Hello friends!

Sully and I took a week-long vacation in the mountains this February. It was super relaxing and we had lots of fun mini-adventures I wanted to share with you guys. Read on for mountain overlooks, the most charming bookstore, mysterious stone buildings, hotel crafts, and possibly the smallest church and largest pencil you’ll ever see.

One of our first stops on vacation was this miniscule church. It was just off of the road, open to the public. Pretty cute and SO TINY.

We did a lot of driving around and sightseeing during the trip. I took plenty of landscape pictures, but I’ll save most of them for another post. I did want to show you a town clearly named after me: Allisonia. Hehe. Sully visited once while we were dating and finally fulfilled his dream of bringing me there. 😛

We spent part of one day roaming around downtown Wytheville, which reminded me of our own small town except not quite as cute. 😉 But it did have this giant pencil outside an office supply store! Very huge! Very pencil!

We got an unexpected tour of a beautiful Episcopal church when the priest walking around outside and invited us in. I asked if I could take pictures of the stained glass windows because they were stunning. What incredible art!

It was about time for lunch by then, so we checked out a locally famous restaurant called “Skeeter’s.”

The hot dogs were cheap but… tasted like hot dogs. This was my first time eating chili fries so I don’t know how they compared. Sully didn’t find them quite as disgusting as his expression denotes, haha.

These neat patterned bricks were in the courtyard behind the church we visited. And now for one of the highlights of our trip – we happened upon the loveliest little secondhand bookstore called Oracle Books.

The visit felt like something out of a book itself. The sign said it was closed, but we peered in the window at the older couple sorting books and they motioned for us to come in anyway. We got a “private appointment,” so to speak, since we were the only ones there. The couple was super friendly and the books were beautiful. I mean…!

They had newer books as well, of course, but Sully and I were especially intrigued by the old ones. He bought this fascinating Lutheran worship book and I got beautiful old editions of Little Women and A Tale of Two Cities.

We went hiking in multiple places, one of them being a random overlook on Route 11. We stopped to see the view while driving to another destination and found two separate and quite interesting paths to explore. Look at that mountain view, ah!

One of the paths had, like, an old ghost town? There were a bunch of crumbling stone buildings hidden among the trees.

Sully obliged me by peeking through a window. 🙂

I saw this rock and immediately wanted to get photos on it, but as Sully discovered, the light and shadows were not ideal. Oh well, it was still a really neat spot!

We also walked along the New River and under an impressively tall bridge.

These pictures turned out really aesthetic.

We got a couple of selfies from our hikes that day. Sully looks sleepy in the second one but that’s actually his I’m-melting-because-my-wife-is-cute face, HAHA. Ohhh Sully.

We also went hiking at Foster Falls (I think?), which had this very nice red barn by the parking lot.

The trail ended in a shot tower, which was a structure used in years past for pouring and making bullets. Pretty cool! Sadly you couldn’t go inside though.

When we weren’t hiking, driving, exploring, shopping, or eating at restaurants, we hung out at our hotel room which was old but had a beautiful view! The second photo is one of my favorites because SULLY LOOKS ADORABLE. A bonus of getting married as a photographer is always having a model to take pictures of, or someone to take pictures of you.

We decided to eat out once a day and “eat in” for the rest of our meals. The complimentary hotel breakfast was actually quite impressive, plus we went shopping for some fun vacation food for lunches. The refrigerator didn’t work so every day we had to get ice to keep a few of the things cold, haha. That wasn’t a problem for ice cream – we ate that as soon as we got it. 😛

It took me a bit to get used to vacation being so chill and relaxed since I’m used to adventurous road trips with my family. But once I settled in (and picked up some craft supplies), it was sooo nice. We read aloud from Howl’s Moving Castle, watched shows (after multiple days of Sully figuring how to play from his phone on the not-smart-TV), enjoyed the jacuzzi bath, played phone games and card games, etc. I also made a lot of art with coffee, supplies from my purse, and a cheap ballpoint pen. Fun times.

I took WAY more photos than I had space to share today, so look out for more mountain landscapes and nature photos in an upcoming post. I hope you enjoyed this recap of our adventures for now! ❤

Mountains or beaches? Hiking or bookstores?

Thanks so much for reading, my friends, and have a lovely day!

***Allison***

P. S. Photos taken with my Nikon D7200. Edited with Lightroom.