So to finish out my b-day month (that's right people, I was turning thirty so I got a month) of celebration, we decided to go stay at a friend's cabin in Sylva for the weekend. We were blessed with some great weather on Saturday morning so we set off in search of a waterfall but took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up on a great, forest trail. Here are some pics from our journey.
A cool, old hearth we happened across on our hike. 
I love this pup!!! We got him on my birthday last year!
Rocky and I relaxing after a long hike :-)After we got back to the cabin we were both super hungry and since we were only a few miles from Cherokee we decided to head over to the casino to check out the Paula Deen restaurant. The food was AMAZING! Beau definitely questioned my incredible love of Paula and her cuisine but after that, he was hooked too!
The food was good but the casino itself made me super sad. First of all, you have to understand, this casino is in the middle of nowhere. What was crazy though is the number of people that were there. Of course, you have to walk through the whole casino to get to Paula's and I am not kidding, 95% of the slot machines were filled with people. I thought we were at the end of a recession. People were spending money there like it was nothing.
I can't help but wonder, what have we learned from this recession? The greatest generation was the greatest because they learned a lesson from the hard times they experienced. What happens to those of us who fall on hard times and don't embrace the lesson we can learn from it? Like the saying goes, "those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it."
I don't know about you guys but I have no interest in repeating another recession any time soon. So we need to all take the lessons we learned from the hard times we've just been through and remember them and make changes. Save more. Spend less. Find ways to entertain yourself and your family that don't cost money. Don't live in fear but do have a plan for hard times.
It killed me to see all those people throwing, what I'm sure was hard-earned, money away on slot machines. And I haven't even talked about how smokey the place was but that made the entire thing completely unbearable.
It made me realize how lucky Beau and I are to have a love for the outdoors. Over the past couple years we've had some amazing times with just a backpack filled with water, granola bars and a trail to hike only spending money on a bit of gas. I promise I didn't spend the whole weekend depressed about what I saw at the casino but I did take it as an opportunity to learn a lesson. I also took the opportunity to look forward to spring. There were a couple twists on that trail that led to greener foliage that made me feel like I was turning the corner on spring. I can't wait for everything to turn green again!
Anyway, all in all my birthday month was amazing. I never dreaded closing in on 30 and I have to say that it's treated me well so far. I'm excited to see what the future has in store for Beau and I over the coming year as we take on our thirties together... :-)
