Modern Geekery

Beautiful day

Christine and Robert came up yesterday to spend the 4th with us. I was hoofing it back from Raleigh as well, having gone down the mountain to visit with the posse from my undergraduate department. Sort of a mini-reunion. We had a lovely dinner at the 42nd Street Oyster Bar downtown. Going with a sushiesque theme, I ordered the special, which was a seared filet of Ahi tuna, with a ginger and wasabi cream sauce. Delightful. I intend to try to duplicate it in house.

Last night, I got to cook one of my favorite dishes, eggplant parmagiana, for Christine and Robert. The dish turned out pretty well, even considering that I cheated and used oil when baking the eggplant instead of butter. We'd planned to go hiking this morning at Chimney Rock Park, but I wasn't sure the weather would cooperate. Fortunately for us, it was a lovely day, and we had a blast. We took the Hickory Nut Falls trail to the base of the falls themselves, which is a beautiful walk - about an hour - and then drove into Lake Lure to have a picnic in a gazebo by the lake. Pictures follow.

This is the platform at the end of the trail we hiked. Hickory Nut Falls is behind us and the whole area was just lovely. We chatted with a neat couple from Florida there who had just adopted a Russian child. The girl was about 8 and absolutely enthralled with Meg. The little girl and the older sister kept playing peekaboo and tickling Meg while the parents chatted with us. Meg seemed to find it quite amusing.

This is the view of Lake Lure from the top of Chimney Rock itself. Meg didn't seem particularly interested in the lovely vista; instead, she found the small children scrambling about to be much more fascinating. The scrubby little spruce growing out of the rock also got her attention. We didn't spend too much time up there, since it got crowded quickly and we were getting hungry. The gazebo at the Marina where we ate lunch is just off the edge of the photo to the right.

Posted by brent at 19:51