Behold the mountain of food! This was my latest couponing adventure, and the total for all of that food was a mere $11.65. Granted, some of this is absolute junk food (4 boxes of pop-tarts, 2 packs of cookies) but some of it is real quality food: a gallon of soymilk (which alone would normally cost $6) Morningstar Farms meat-type products, Kashi Granola bars and cereal.

How did I do it, you might ask? The fine art of couponing! Combining manufacturers coupons with store sales and coupons. Plus, Kellog's has a rebate right now - buy 10 products and get a $10 rebate. So technically, I'm still waiting to get that $10 back. But I will, and it will be a glorious day.

Wow. I've been at this for, what, 3 posts and I'm already behind? Great. Oh well, I'm just going to gloss over the stuff I skipped and move on.

We went to a 4th of July cook-out at our neighbor's (Mark and Evie's) cottage. It was a lot of fun and I was proud of myself for remembering that the socially acceptable response to a dinner invitation is to ask "What can I bring?". OK, so I'm a little socially awkward.

Last week we got to meet Trent's dad, stepmom, and little brother as well as his Uncle Paul (my youth pastor during high school) and his family in Gatlinburg. It's only a two hour trip for us, so it was really great to get to meet up with them for part of their vacation. We mostly hung out at the pool and walked the strip, but the boys had fun driving at the Nascar Speed Park (Nancy and I went shopping instead!) We bought a giant box of taffy..but it's almost gone already. Guess we'll just have to go back!

We've gone riding a few more times. Last time we went out, Peggy gave me a lesson on her 3-year old quarterhorse gelding, King, while Trent went and took pictures. Here's one he took of the shelter in the pasture:
We've been doing a lot of just hanging out still looking for jobs. We rent movies out of the Red Box often. We rented Slumdog Millionaire a while back (good movie) and got Bolt last night. Also a very good movie. It's actually a children's movie, not an adult movie thinly veiled as a children's movie (ahem, Shrek and every other Dreamworks flick I can think of). Beyond that, there are some good themes about love and loyalty, and it actually uses a relatively advanced vocabulary. Kids may actually learn a few words from this movie! And not 4-letter words, either!

I like to make fancy desserts to eat while we watch movies. During Slumdog we ate chocolate-covered cheesecake-filled strawberries. Sadly, there is no photo of those because we ate them all before we thought of it. Here are some tasty brownies I made one time:And that pretty much brings us up to this week - which is a reasonable amount of time to cover in one blog post. Despite the fact that I've already ruined this one with lots of rambling and disjointed ideas.

Wednesday, we went hiking again, hooray! It was beautiful weather for a hike, too. This time, we drove out the the North Carolina border to Roan Mountain state park, where we took the Fred Behrend trail - 2.7 miles round trip. An enjoyable little hike, but a little disappointing in that it didn't lead to anything really. Just a big circle. Anyway, here are the pictures from the day:


In other news, we cleaned the house today and it looks fantastic! Alright, my belly is growling so it's time for some dinner.

I should really have some cool way of signing off...that might make this whole ending thing less awkward. Hm.

Trail: Cherokee National Forest: Rock Creek Falls
Distance: 1.5 miles each way...if we stopped when we were supposed to...
Elevation gain: not a clue.
TNT Time: 2 hoursish

Hooray for another hike! This time we went out to Unicoi County for a hike through a national forest. Sounds like fun, eh? The first while on the trail was really deceiving. We felt more like we were strolling through a botanical garden than hiking. We have learned a few really important lessons while hiking. One is keep your mouth shut. As soon as you say "this is easy" or "I'm glad that hill is over" you are in for it. So just bite your tongue. The other was:

The importance of a Tennessee mile. Those of you who already have experience with the Dominican Minute System will have no problem at all grasping this concept. Today's hike is labeled as "1.48 miles each way" (though this does not include the approach hike to the beginning of that trail). There is no way in H-E-double-hockey-sticks that the hike we just did was only 3 miles. And I can assure you that yesterdays was also longer than advertised. Here's the current theory:

Imagine in the above triangle that A represents our starting point. B represents the summit we are hiking towards. C is an unattainable point somewhere inside the mountain. Some well-meaning man somewhere is sitting in his office with a GPS, calculating the length of this trail. His GPS calculates the supposed distance, which the GPS informs him is 6...which would be true if it were possible for us to go THROUGH the mountain. But since we are not superhuman or miners, we must travel to B...the distance to which is actually 10. But the sign says 6 because this kind gentleman and his GPS fail to understand basic geometry!

OK, well, enough complaining. Here is some of the trail pictures. This is a log we had to cross to get over the creek. Trent walked across it too! It was kinda scary.

Now, for this picture to have its full effect, you have to understand that a person would be lucky not have to duck on this trail...much less carry a hang glider.
This tree is cool.
We found a pile of rocks sitting on another rock in the middle of a stream. It's fun to think of who did it and why.

Trent really likes this long-exposure picture of this mini-waterfall.

This was what we went out to see! We made it to the falls! We actually encountered one couple that didn't...they had turned back before they made it. And it's no wonder! It was a pretty rough uphill hike. Definitely not a flip flop and polo shirt kind of hike. But we made it and contemplated hiking past it, except that we wanted to eat dinner. Badly. Hiking makes us ravenous.

Trail: Buffalo Mountain: White Rock Trail
Distance: 3 miles round trip...if done correctly...
Elevation gain: 1500 feet
TNT Time: 3 hours

So today's hike was also a bordem killer. After vowing to give our bodies time to rest and recuperate after yesterday's arduous journey, we went right back to the internet to find a new hike today. This was following the drop-off of yet another job application. One that we felt pretty optimistic about until I saw that there were two other guys getting applications at the same time I was dropping mine off. So much competition for a restaurant job? I guess so. Ok, s on with the hike.

This hike was most certainly more difficult than yesterday's. As you can see, it was quite high up there, and was very steep in several places. Here are the pictures:

Um, this is a tree. And it fell. And Trent took a picture of it. Yep.

I thought this was neat, but maybe I'm just a dork.

After we'd been going for about 45 minutes, we saw a clearing..and light. "This must be it!" we exclaimed (the first time of many). We soon discovered it was only a clearing for the power lines.

The view from the top (or somewhere near the top, I'm not really sure)


OK, I'm hot and tired and ready to get off this mountain now.


So, the way back down. Ha. We had some disagreement about exactly how to go back down the mountain. Retrace our steps back down, take a path that was on the map at the trailhead (we think?) or try to take a path we can't quite find that is mentioned on the website page we had printed. We opted for the one we saw on the map. After wondering a while, we found ourselves going back uphill again. Not a good sign for someone trying to get off a mountain. Eventually we ran into some guys who instructed us to follow the blue blazes off the mountain.

For those of you less acquainted with hiking (as I was 2 days ago...) a blaze is a smear of paint on a tree that lets you know you're going to right way. Of course, there are all sorts of colors and such to help you out, but only if you know what they mean...which varies from trail to trail. So we're following the blue blazes, and we begin to see red blazes. And warning signs about forest fires. Great. Well, we didn't see any fires, but we did see some damage from a fire a while back. And we did eventually get off the mountain. And eat a lot of dinner. A lot.

Trail: Laurel Falls (part of the Appalachian Trail)
Distance: 4.5 miles round trip...if done correctly...
Elevation gain: 670 feet
TNT Time: 2.5 hours

This was just an adventure all around. Bored out of our minds (this is what happens when you can't find a job and are waiting for more phone calls than you can even remember...), we decided to go for a hike to fill our afternoon. So, after dinner we packed up the camera and headed out. And promptly got lost. "What was the name of that road? Douglas something? Dillon Beech Road?" None of the locals were very familiar with the trails, and since we didn't know the road name, the GPS wasn't helpful. A quick phone call resulted in a google search which got us back on our way.

It was a nice hike overall. We got a little off the correct trail and ended up at a shelter where we accidentally interrupted a backpacking couple's...erm..."preparations for later activities". Which was awkward. But they did direct us down to the falls, where we were headed.

OK, enough rambling. Here are the pictures.
This is the creepy little bridge we had to cross. I mean, it's not even that high, but it was a little shaky, and it only had a rail on one side!

A pretty view looking up. Pretty typical of what we saw during our hike down the the falls. Much of it was cut out of the rock, with lots of trees, naturally.

Hooray! We made it...about an hour before sunset. "Let's get the heck out of here before it gets dark!"

And here it is. The way out. See those rocks going on a diagonal in the photo? Yeah, that's the path. According to one of the online hike guides we looked at, those "steps" (and let me tell you, each of them is a TALL step, and it's a steep climb!) comprise the first 1/3 mile of the hike back to the trailhead. Ouch.

We got back to the car and down off the mountain (including the scary road it took to get there!) before sunset, which was a plus. It was a nice, though slightly stressful hike due to time constraints.

Since we are so far away from friends and family, we figured we'd hop on the blogging bandwagon to keep everyone up to date! Theoretically, this is a place we'll post news, pictures, and ramblings relating to our lives. Hopefully, this will be a step above my high school Xanga addiction. We'll just have to wait and see ;-)

We've been married for exactly one month today!