Road Trip - Part 5: Food!

Our trip started out with great promise with breakfast at a great diner in Decatur near Atlanta. Obviously, I was convinced that I'd be starving on our camping adventure....
Once we arrived at our campsite in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we started setting up our cozy little tent.
I know it looks like Daniel was doing all the work while I was lounging about, but that's only a little bit true.
Then we set about starting the fire, which took both of us to keep going and to get nice and hot so we could cook our dinner.

This is my favorite part about camping - the foil dinners we cook over the fire! We have made many combinations of these over the years, and this one contained Italian sausage, onion, potatoes and red pepper.
Delicious!! Most delicious!!!
Ok, this looks sort of disgusting, but Daniel swears it was good (I didn't try it) - it was a peach filled with goat cheese and cooked in the fire until gooey.

When we left the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, we stopped in Ashville, North Carolina, a very charming town.

We stopped for lunch at an excellent Cuban restaurant and then drove on to our next camping destination,

Shenandoah National Park. There our campsite was next to an old orchard and forest and we were visited by many deer. Even though we made a camp fire to keep the bugs at bay, that evening we cooked on our little camp stove.

I actually can't remember what we ate, but I am sure it was delicious!
But what I do remember is the most amazing ice cream at the visitor center. There was a sign for "Hand Dipped Blackberry" and I didn't know what it meant. When I asked Daniel, he promptly got in line and got us each an ice cream cone - happy, happy!

Then, in Winchester in Virginia, we found an Italian restaurant, Violino, run by a charming married couple from northern Italy. The food was to die for! I had the most delicious ravioli,

and Daniel (who looks like the cat that ate canary) had strawberry risotto (amazing!) with quail. Of course, we had to have an appetizer first and then dessert and then happily rolled back to the hotel.
The rest of our trip was spent with dear friends and of course eating is a big part of that. First, we enjoyed an excellent meal with a New Mexican flair,
then a most wonderful Lebanese feast,
and lastly, a delicious French meal!
But the best part in all of those were the good friends who shared the meals with us.


And here's to you all!