Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Yeah, I get it, I have a hard time just sitting and doing nothing for days.  I want to see things.  I'm pretty relaxed at home.  I can do nothing here if I choose, though usually we do things daily, nothing exciting of course, but things.

We went to the library yesterday for example.

I'd rather do a cruise for about the same money, but a cruise in Europe or Asia, maybe Canada.

So, with the building AC off here, my wife and I went to Asheville for two nights.  We've been there twice before together, but stayed near downtown and went to dinner there.  Call me unimpressed, probably won't go back.  I've never seen so many homeless wondering about begging.  (I've seen more out west of course, but in tent cities etc., not really begging.)  We had dinner at a place called Tupelo Honey which had good "ratings", to me it's a tourist trap with so so food.  My wife said she liked it.  She also told me she was uncomfortable several time with where we parked and walked about.  Bear in mind we walk about midtown ATL daily.  It was pretty bad, in my opinion.  But we had AC and stayed in a new Cambridge suites which was still a nice motel.  (They tend to Walmart in a few years.)

The AC here was not fixed so I made a reservation in Helen, GA mostly so we could drive about in the mountains some.  Helen is not our cup of tea, but when you know it's going to be hypertouristy it's not so bad.  Stayed in a HI Express which was quite nice also, had a deck and jacuzzi.  The area around Helen is nice enough.  The day was pretty cloudy, foggy at higher elevations, we drove around and stopped in Dahlonega which is still fairly nice.   She loves antique shops.  I ended up buying books at one of them.  She laughed.  We had a decent lunch there.  The gold museum is pretty neat but we'd done that before.  Drove back yesterday, pretty heavy traffic on GA 400, a major interchange rebuild is underway at I-285.

Regular gas in GA is around $4.20, I saw $3.83 at Costco heading out.  Gas tax holiday helps.  Car was getting 36-7 mpg on the trip which I count as a win, a lot of mountain driving in there.  Went up Mount Mitchell which I had not done in ages, she had never been there.

View from top of Mt. Mitchell, Elias Mitchell is buried at the summit.

Mountain creek below the falls near Helen.  Helen in an interesting story, was dying as a town, the local lumber mill had closed.  They dressed up a few stores as looking quasi-Swiss and it took off, now the theme is Swiss, sort of, and the town has massively expanded for the tourists.  It's a bit like a smaller Gatlinburg, closeness to ATL no doubt helped a lot.  The area around it is pretty nice, as noted, it's at the base of some mountains, including Brasstown Bald.

Are you at an AirB&B thing?  Or on a boat?

The All Inclusive places are great if you just want to relax and not think about anything.  As long as the food and drinks are good, it makes things quite easy.  And I've been to several that had excellent food.

Then sometimes you want your vacation to be an adventure, and/or experience local culture.  In those cases, the All Inclusive tends to limit you.

It's really two entirely different types of vacation, and I'm partial to both, depending on my objectives.

That was our objective on this vacation.  Did nothing but sit on our balcony right on the ocean.  go down to the pool, drink and chat with people. Grab food for lunch at the pool.  Go to one of the 12 restaurants for dinner.  Then relax in the lobby area with entertainment or go back to the room and sit on the balcony and watch the ocean.

Hate to say it but I couldn't care less about experiencing the Mexican culture. Now if we were at other places that would be a different story. 

As a fully retired person, I think I'd rather stay home than do some all incl.