thanksgiving in west virginia

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend gorging on turkey and shopping till you dropped. Here's a little recap of our trip to Snowshoe, West Virginia to visit Kurt's parents.

Our trusty steed was a Ford Focus. It is generally not a great car but got great gas mileage, even through the mountains. Not that I would know any of this because I didn't drive a minute in that car. Kurt and Erik were kind enough to chauffeur me around for a few days. Thanks, guys!

We left NYC pretty early on Wednesday and stopped in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania for lunch.

Even though I adamantly suggested we find a Chick-fil-a somewhere, we settled for Philly cheese steak sandwiches before hitting the road again.

After 8.5 long hours in the car we finally got to see this sweet face!

And of course this guy too. Opal and Oxford were quite the entertaining duo.

I don't have too many photos of our Thanksgiving Day meal, but I made these appetizers that were delicious! Stuff dates with gorgonzola and goat cheese, wrap in bacon, secure with a toothpick, and bake for 30 minutes at 400 degrees. Definitely good party food.

Kurt spent most of his time tending to the fire. The weather was pretty mild but he did a good job keeping us all warm.

In order to avoid a post-meal coma, we took a walk around the little Snowshoe Village.

Kurt wasn't quite as excited about the giant Adirondack chair as I was.

Most of the condos and houses on the mountain were pretty cheesy, but there was this one little quirky, space age house made up of several pods. I want to stay there!

SNOW!! I was a little horrified when we first arrived and was suddenly hit with winter, but thankfully the rest of our stay was unseasonable warm. The resort thought they might be able to open the slopes for Thanksgiving but sadly the weather was a bit too hot for skiing.

We had to get to back to the city, so we headed out midday on Friday. If the museum had been open, we would have loved to take a tour at the Green Bank Telescope very near to Snowshoe.

The drive took us through West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and finally to New York. Phew!

We stopped for dinner in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania at the Firehouse.

As I'm sure you can guess, it was an old fire station turned into a bar and restaurant.

Across the street is a walk-thru window at Dunkin' Donuts. Pretty hilarious. We would like to see the line on  a typical work morning or after bar hopping on a Friday or Saturday night.

Ugh. Now it's back to business in the big city. After a two day week, it might be tough to get back into the grind of work today. Christmas vacation can't come soon enough!