First comes wedding, then comes honeymoon.

A photo-heavy post is straight ahead.
Writing about the day we wed was easy (so thankful for all the love everyone has shown!). Trying to recap the joy that was our honeymoon is going to be tough. We did so much in such a short amount of time (three days). I decided to wait until the dust settles surrounding the general excitement, and now I don't know which part to write about first. In the words of Fraulein Maria, let's start at the very beeeeginnning.
Since J had a 4-day weekend approaching, we decided to take a quick trip to the Smoky Mountains as our newlywed retreat. The timing was perfect: the weather was warm enough for outdoorsy activities, but it was the weekend before Memorial Day so it wasn't as crowded as one would expect during a holiday weekend. We stopped in Blue Ridge on the way to North Carolina, and spent the late morning/early afternoon at Mercier Orchards. First up on the itinerary was fishing! But not before spotting a trail of geese.

My grandparents had a lake in their subdivision, but as a kid, I was never old enough to actually try my hand at catching some fish. I was always the onlooker, and sometimes I'd get a chance to ride in the canoe (yes - canoe!). J, on the other hand, went fishing frequently as a boy. He showed me how to bait the hook and cast the line, and about 30 minutes of fiddling around later, I caught one! It was small, so I reeled it in with ease and handed the rod to J, but just as he was about to show me the proper way to unhook a fish, it jumped off all by itself.

Ah well... We just kicked him back in the pond and returned our fishing rods. Next up was strawberry picking. It's strawberry harvesting season, and Mercier has a large patch full of sweet ones for snacking and more tart ones for baking. We grabbed some buckets, hopped on a tractor and rode down to the party.

Both of our buckets were full within an hour or so, and the berries tasted as good as they looked. We ended up using one bucket for some homemade punch, and we stuck the other bucket in the freezer until we could gift them to our neighbor (she loved them, by the way). After picking our strawberries, we grabbed some lunch at the Mercier cafe, did a little shopping around the store then headed to our ultimate destination.

Our "Cozy Cabin" was an AirBnB find, and it was perfect. I was worried about bugs and cleanliness, but neither of those issues arose. Our host, Debbie, was wonderful, the sights (pictured above) were gorgeous, the environment was calm and peaceful, and the whole experience was nothing but positive. Nearby activities included mini golf, gold mining, skeet shooting, and paintball. We did some of those rode into other nearby towns to explore as well.  At the end of the long weekend, we walked away with so many new inside jokes! Let's see... the town preacher also owns the town pub, which has hundreds of different local beers on draft. We were offered dinner by a sweet family from Tennessee, at 11am - ELEVEN A. M. There were snakes in the middle of the winding roads, just hanging out. The only place we got cell service was at the top of this one hill, and even then, we only got one bar of reception. All in all, it was a very country experience, but it was certainly one for the books! After we checked out on Monday morning, we decided to make our way to the lake Debbie had told us about when we checked in. She wrote down direction on a piece of paper and drew out a map for us to follow. It looked super sketchy at first, and we drove as far as we could on the gravel road. Then we decided to walk the rest of the way, and that's when things started looking even sketchier. 

However, there was indeed a light (and lake) at the end of the tunnel (trail). 

The view was definitely worth the hike.

*Swoons* ♥