It's Snowing in Parsippany, NJ

It was a cloudy Sunday and I was literally staring at the sky waiting for the snow! The Weather Channel announced that it would snow heavily on 26th Dec in the entire East Coast. Not only that! It was going to be the first snowfall of this winter in New Jersey. And the wait was not in vain. It started snowing at 11 in the morning and continued till 7 next morning. It was a heavy snowfall with snow storms and heavy blizzards. The news channels were continuously telling not to go out in this bad weather unless there is an emergency. In the 20 hours of snowfall, it became 25 inches of snow.

The next morning we went out to save the car, but what we saw outside was a terrible scene. It was almost impossible to step out of the door. The snow in our doorway was knee high. First we tried to clear the doorway with a shovel and then slowly stepped out. The car parking area was in a terrible condition. The car was totally under the snow and it was really hard recognize which car was ours :). We gradually started clearing the snow from over the car and it took around an hour to make the car look like a car.

Then I looked around and it was all white everywhere. I thought why not make a snowman? I began to create one with a small ball of snow and then my husband also gave me a hand. We created a little snowman near our doorway and I was so excited :). Snow is not that bad. It is fun if you love it. But yes you must be careful so that you don't catch a cold.

A Trip to the Colorful Smokey Mountains

It was Fall and we were spending our last few days in North Carolina. Some of our friends said let’s go for a last trip together, who knows when we meet again! So, we decided to go to the beautiful Smokey Mountains. The Great Smokey Mountains National Park lies in the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. The mountain range is a part of the Blue Ridge Mountains and it is the most beautiful and cherished National Park in the entire United States. So, staying in North Carolina and being so close to the National Park was really a privilege for us.

We started our journey at around 8 in the morning. Generally, it takes roughly 5 hours from Raleigh to the Smokey Mountains. However, we took two breaks for having our breakfast and lunch. The journey was itself amazing as we watched the colorful trees all around. It was first time I was in the US during Fall. I was literally amazed to see the wonderful colors of the trees. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life.

We reached Smokey at around 4 pm and the sun was still bright. We didn’t get much time for that day to explore the place, but tried our best. We found a nice trail and started walking. It was cold and we enjoyed the speedy walk that warmed our bodies. In the course of our walk, we saw a river flowing through huge boulders. Maybe that was an extension of a waterfall. It was so scenic that we decided to spend a little time over there. We sat down on the boulders and enjoyed the view for a while.

Then we continued our walk through the trail and took some snaps of the amazingly beautiful colors around wherever we got a chance. All the trees around us were as if transformed into some spectacular works of art. The green leaves had magically become yellow, orange, red pink and so many wonderful colors. I had already fallen in love with Smokey and the colors of Fall will never fade away from my heart.

It was getting dark and we came back to our car. Then we went to the downtown of Smokey which is a very busy place with all the attractions and shopping malls. It was the Halloween weekend and people were walking through the roadside in their weird costumes. Starting from kids to older people, everybody had turned into something horrible. Some were dressed like ghosts and some were skeletons and so on. Then we went for a rope-way ride called Sky Ride. It was a nice experience riding to a peak of the mountains. The view from the top was amazing. We could see the entire mountain range from there and the whole city.

At around 8 pm we had our dinner at a restaurant and after that walked for a while and enjoyed the Halloween views, before we went to our hotel. The next morning we started early so that we can enjoy morning beauty of the Smokey Mountains. We had our breakfast and started driving. We stopped in various view points to enjoy the spectacular view of the mountain range and took as many photographs as we could. During the way back to home, we stopped so many times at different points and enjoyed the scenic beauty of the place to our heart’s content.