2016 Alabama Farmers Federation President's Conference

Lance is the State Young Farmer's Chairman for the Alabama Farmers Federation, which makes him a member of the (ALFA) State Board of Directors. Last week, we got to attend the President's Conference in Asheville, NC.

We started off the trip with a selfie. No point of even going anywhere if you don't throw in a couple of selfies.



Not too far out of the way, we had to make a detour to probably our favorite place on the planet, the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area. We didn't have a whole lot of time, so we decided to eat at one of those places that you always want to try, but somewhere like the Old Mill always wins out. We ate at Happy Days Diner. It was pretty good. Looks like it has good milkshakes and sundaes, but we didn't have time for that. We had to get next door to our favorite store in our favorite place on the planet.



Stages West! They have just reopened after being closed for almost a year because of a fire. Take my money! And they did. I bought a cute dress for Jade and boots for both kids. I always buy Reed a pair of boots from here. He loves his boots.

Oh, and what did Lance buy? That's not a stovepipe hat. That's an old timey device they use to measure your head in order to shape your cowboy hat correctly. That's right, Lance bought a cowboy hat and has such a crooked head that they had to bring out the big guns. The left side of his head is strangely warped up in about the shape of my frying pan. 

We finally arrived at our destination in Asheville...The Grove Park Inn. It's a historical hotel. One fancy shindig. But dang if it didn't take us 3 days to figure our way around. There's a tunnel, you take the elevator down to go up, up to go down, I'm still confused.

That night, we ate at a local farm. It was fun until the flooding rains came. Did I mention they were in a drought until we showed up? How can we make it rain there, but not in Alabama? Anyways, your welcome Western North Carolina.



The next morning, Lance had one of those important, top secret meetings he has to occasionally attend. I'm pretty sure they do retina scans and have secret handshakes. So, I hung out outside. 



Can't say it was a horrible view.

That afternoon, we ate lunch at the Biltmore and toured the house. That is one fancy house. It's always been something I've wanted to see. Now that I've seen it, I think they had way too much money, ha. We took an audio tour and heard some interesting stories about the place.



Leave your swim suit at home. Their pool has had a leak since the 80s, lol.



We just bought our new summer home! Just kidding, I really had you going there, didn't I? 

Wanting to keep up the fancy Biltmore style, we ate at the hotel that night.

Look at those teeny tiny vegetables! Bahaha!

After some more meetings the next day, we had some free time. We, scratch that, I drove the Blue Ridge Parkway (Lance napped) to Mount Mitchell. Very pretty views and 61 degrees at the top. A nice change from the 1 million degrees back home.

 



We ended the night with something we never get to do...take a picture of my feet! No! Go to the movies! But check out those seats! Couches with cupholders! There's nothing like that in the Snead Metropolitan area. We saw Independence Day 2. Lots of action, but lots of cheese. Cheesiness? Nachos. Buy nachos for this movie.

And how else would we end the trip, but with a dark movie theater selfie?!