The Baranko Family: Yoga & Hiking Retreat

The last weekend in April I went on a yoga and hiking retreat in Asheville, NC with three of my friends Lisa M. (who I currently work with at Walgreens), Lisa G. (friend from Lake Forest) and Kristin W.(former Walgreens colleague, still friend). The retreat was 4 days and was led by the young and talented Kelsey Stoll from the yoga studio that I go to. Kelsey is in her early 20's, but her Mom owns the studio so she basically grew up there and now runs a satellite studio herself. She is awesome, and did a great job on the retreat. So when I heard about this retreat, combining hiking and yoga, two of my fave things ever in a place I have always wanted to go to - I recruited three of my friends who all didn't know each other, but by the end of the weekend were great friends. It was amazing how well the three of them hit it off. By the last day the four of us were choosing which "Sex in the City" characters we were! The food, prepared by our own amazing private chef named Aleks, was absolutely amazing. The yoga was open air (love!), challenging, fun and stress releasing, and was complete with aromatherapy, yay! And the hiking was just awesome! Swimming in the waterfalls was a highlight. The wine and laughs weren't too bad either. All in all it was a perfectly amazing experience and one I'm soooo glad I did. What made it extra interesting was that during this yoga weekend I received, negotiated and accepted a job offer to go work for Abbott Laboratories. More on that in another post, but it all worked out and I had a great support system in my friends there and a couple of the other people on the retreat, who I didn't know before, actually work for Abbott so they helped too. Thanks to Matt, as always, for holding down the fort.

Lisa, Lisa and I went to Asheville a day before the retreat started to see the city. It was so cute and we had a great girls day with eating, drinking, shopping, massages and a fancy farm to table dinner out. We stayed in a adorable hotel that had once been an old fashioned shopping mall. We think our room used to be the women's clothing changing area!

Cute candy and soda shop

Spring was in the air!

Chocolate shop like in I Love Lucy

Shopping silliness

Live music

Our house was called Fox Hollow

It was huge and lovely. We shared a tiny basement room with no windows and two bunk beds, but we got a great deal! I got top bunk!

Open air yoga studio

Gathering of the retreaters at the house

Our first hike

Smoky Mountains

First yoga practice - me, Lisa M, Kristin, Lisa G.

Kelsey would have a little fire going in the fireplace during yoga, which I also loved.

The house was so amazing that we stayed in and had a ton of decorations. This fox became our little mascot and the retreaters played jokes in hiding it in people's rooms and having it show up out of nowhere.