A Gathering on The Ridge • Immerse yourself in a unique 4 night & 5 day experience package designed and produced by Novel Adventures. July 6th-July 10th, 2016 at The Mast Farm Inn, with special guests Seven Nations & Outlander Kitchen. Novel Adventures is the experienced and creative experience travel specialist, where your favorite best selling novels become the basis of your vacation, and become the best adventure ever!
“When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it”. ~ Julian Barnes
Immerse yourself. Learn more below about Outlander, Drums of Autumn, Fraser’s Ridge, Diana Gabaldon, Novel Adventures, Outlander Kitchen, Seven Nations, Grandfather Mountain, Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, The Mast Farm Inn, Simplicity at The Mast Farm Inn, Over Yonder, and Valle Crucis North Carolina.
• Immerse yourself in a 5 day & 4 night special experience package. Exquisite lodging in authentic historical buildings of the 1800’s at The Mast Farm Inn, all meals prepared by private gourmet chefs in fresh farm-to-table fashion, tickets to the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games including the torchlight opening ceremony with a ‘calling of the clans’ where our group will participate as the official “Clan Outlander”, waterfall hikes with low impact degrees of difficulty, optional horseback riding, whisky and moonshine tasting, community cooking with Outlander Kitchen, storytellers, crafts, museum excursions, live Celtic rock band with bonfire, gourmet s’mores and more!
• Call Kim Puhrmann at 720.331.0227, Andrea Taylor at 303.919.9531, Email noveladventures@outlook.com, or Click here for more information, to apply or register.
About Outlander, Drums of Autumn, Fraser’s Ridge, Diana Gabaldon, Novel Adventures, Outlander Kitchen, Seven Nations, Grandfather Mountain, Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, The Mast Farm Inn, Simplicity at The Mast Farm Inn, Over Yonder, and Valle Crucis, North Carolina. Click on the respective titles below to visit websites for more information.
Outlander • Outlander is the first in a series of eight historical multi-genre novels by Diana Gabaldon. Published in 1991, it focuses on 20th century nurse Claire Randall, who time travels to 18th century Scotland and finds adventure and romance with the dashing James Fraser. A mix of several genres, the Outlander series features elements of historical fiction, romance, adventure and science fiction, and fantasy. A television adaptation of the Outlander series premiered on the Starz network in the US on August 2014. The Outlander series is composed so far of the novels Outlander, Dragonfly In Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo In The Bone,Written In My Own Heart’s Blood. “In essence, these novels are Big, Fat, Historical Fiction, à la James Clavell and James Michener. However, owing to the fact that I wrote the first book for practice, didn’t intend to show it to anyone, and therefore saw no reason to limit myself, they include history, warfare, medicine, sex, violence, spirituality, honor, betrayal, vengeance, hope and despair, relationships, the building and destruction of families and societies, time travel, moral ambiguity, swords, herbs, horses, gambling (with cards, dice, and lives), voyages of daring, journeys of both body and soul… you know, the usual stuff of literature.” ~ Diana Gabaldon
Drums of Autumn • “DRUMS OF AUTUMN is the fourth book in the OUTLANDER series, following VOYAGER. Here Claire and Jamie, with Jamie’s nephew Young Ian, seek to find a place for themselves in the colony of North Carolina, treading a dangerous line between Governor Tryon’s patronage and Claire’s knowledge of the brewing revolution in America, between the help of Jamie’s Aunt Jocasta, last of his MacKenzie kin (“MacKenzies are charming as larks in the field–but sly as foxes with it.”) and the unwanted obligations of her slave-run plantation. As they find mountain land and begin to build their first cabin, their newfound life is bittersweet, with the thought Brianna–the daughter Claire has left behind, the daughter Jamie will never see–always near.”.
Fraser’s Ridge • Many believe Fraser’s Ridge is located precisely on the The Mast Farm Inn estate in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. OK, so maybe not many, just me, but that’s the story I am sticking with. Fraser’s Ridge is a tract of land in western North Carolina located about 10 miles from Blowing Rock. Check! Grandfather Mountain’s Scottish Highland games at McRae Meadows are within 10 miles. Check! It may be a few hundred yards Over Yonder, but we are are smack dab in the middle of Fraser’s Ridge Country! In Drums of Autumn and The Fiery Cross, Its proprietor, Jamie Fraser, lives there with his extended family, and by 1779 there were upwards of 60 tenant families living on the land. It covers about ten thousand acres. In late summer of 1767, Jamie and Claire travel through the wilderness for a suitable place to settle, if they were to accept Tryon’s offer. By September, they begin building shelter in the form of a one-room cabin, in which Jamie, Claire and Young Ian will live through the winter. They also construct two sheds, one for storing and curing meat, and another for Claire’s herbs and other foraged goods. When John Quincy Myers returns with Duncan Innes and additional supplies, they help the Frasers bless the hearth of the cabin.
Diana Gabaldon • Diana Gabaldon is the author of the award-winning, #1 NYT-bestselling OUTLANDER novels, described by Salon magazine as “the smartest historical sci-fi adventure-romance story ever written by a science Ph.D. with a background in scripting “Scrooge McDuck” comics.” The adventure began in 1991 with the classic OUTLANDER, has continued through seven more New York Times-bestselling novels— DRAGONFLY IN AMBER, VOYAGER, DRUMS OF AUTUMN, THE FIERY CROSS, A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES, AN ECHO IN THE BONE, and WRITTEN IN MY OWN HEART’S BLOOD, with more than twenty-six million copies in print worldwide. Click here to read a chronology of the Outlander series. The series is published in 26 countries and 23 languages
Novel Adventures • Novel Adventures, Where Best Selling Novels Become Best Adventures Ever! Take an adventure where you become the main character in the story of a lifetime, a tour where your favorite book becomes the basis of your vacation! You will walk in the footsteps of your heroes’ and villains’, and prevail with your own tale to tell. Each tour is customized to please the laid back style or even the most adventurous of travellers. We will customize your trip to travel independently or organize you with a group- whichever is your preference. It would be our pleasure to turn your favorite book into the best adventure ever! We are also happy to help you with any other personal or work travel needs such as; cruises, all-inclusive resorts, hotel and/or airfare only bookings. To get started on your Novel Adventure, fill out the questionnaire by following this “Contact Us” link. Kim or Andrea will contact you within 48 hours to discuss your plans in detail. While “Independent Travel” is a primary focus, from time to time, we put together a really incredible “Group Adventure”! We are looking forward to working with you!
Outlander Kitchen • “My name is Theresa Carle-Sanders and I am a professional chef, food writer and unabashed fan of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. I was out for a walk in the woods one day when an idea for Food from Fiction popped into my head. By the time I was home, I had Rolls with Pigeon & Truffles from Voyager on the brain, and had dreamed up a short, five-question, food-related interview that I fired off to DG’s Canadian publicist within the hour. Outlander Kitchen grew out of that first email, and Diana’s generous response the next day. NEWS! The Outlander Kitchen Cookbook is underway! Watch for it in the summer of 2016, from Ballantine Books of the Random House Group. A big thank you to Diana Gabaldon for her permission to use excerpts from Outlander, and for allowing me to mine her pages for food inspiration. I also appreciate her trust in me to treat her epic story with the respect it deserves.” ~ Theresa Carle-Sanders
Seven Nations • Seven Nations is not your father’s Celtic band. With a passionate, tender, and rollicking style that winningly veers from roots and folk to dance and fusion-rock, Seven Nations has earned a growing reputation as an adventurous band with a charismatic stage presence. Through its touring schedule and dynamic live performances, SEVEN NATIONS has become one of the fastest growing live acts nationwide. They have logged in more than one million touring miles trying to make the music universal for old and new fans alike. To the five member band, that means being on tour 85 percent of the year, melding guitar and vocal elements of American pop and rock with Highland bagpipes and fiddle. The result is a high-energy performance that has fans jumping out of their seats
Grandfather Mountain • The views are ancient. The experiences are all brand new. Anyone who visits Grandfather Mountain discovers a place that inspires awe through natural wonders. You’ll never experience the same mountain twice: today you might come face-to-face with an owl, another day you may see rare wildflowers in bloom. Just talk to one of our naturalists to understand more about these living treasures and learn where to find them. There’s nowhere else on Earth that you can enjoy such a variety of mountain life in one amazing place.
Grandfather Mountain Highland Games • Selected twice as one of the Top Ten Events in the Southeastern United States.Taking place half an hour from the Inn, The Grandfather Mountain Highland Games is a 4-day Scottish festival held each year on the second full weekend in July at MacRae Meadows near Linville, North Carolina in the mountains of Western North Carolina. It’s mission is to carry on and promote the annual Grandfather Mountain Highland Games and Gathering of Scottish Clans, to foster and restore interest in traditional dancing, piping, drumming, athletic achievement, music and Gaelic culture, and to establish scholarship funds to assist students from Avery County High School to study at American colleges and universities.
The Mast Farm Inn • “Historic, Rural, Organic, Natural.” Come Set a Spell. The Mast Farm Inn is a Historic Hotels of America boutique hotel. Historic Hotels of America is the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation for recognizing and celebrating the finest Historic Hotels. The Inn is also a Select Registry country inn and two restaurants in the Valle Crucis Historical District of Watauga County, North Carolina, which has been welcoming guests since the 1800s. While there have been extensive historically accurate renovations and improvements, the hospitality remains rural mountain, traditional, attentive and sincere. Here you will find each room, cottage and cabin unique and different, as befits a North Carolina mountain farm estate built,transformed, and restored over a 200 year period.
Simplicity at The Mast Farm Inn • The Name of our Restaurant is “Simplicity” at The Mast Farm Inn. Gourmet organic fine dining. “Slow Food In A Fast World”. What we offer is gourmet slow dining of extreme quality and freshness; a meticulous cuisine prepared with “Mindfulness”, mindful of our mountain region’s heritage, and mindful of the high quality of the natural ingredients, with a level of care and personal service second to none. Simplicity was selected from among hundreds of fine dining restaurants in North Carolina, and awarded 4th place in 2010, and 2nd Place in 2011, for “The Best Dish in North Carolina Award”. Best Dish is North Carolina’s Official State Restaurant Competition presented every year by The North Carolina Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services and sponsored by Our State Magazine.
Over Yonder • Over Yonder is a new destination restaurant & bar in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. Located near Blowing Rock, Boone, Banner Elk, and Linville, in The Western North Carolina High Country Mountains. Designed, owned and managed by the award-winning Mast Farm Inn, and Executive Chef Andrew Long, Over Yonder restaurant tells the story of historic Appalachian cuisine in a picturesque setting atop the rolling hills and peaks of Valle Crucis, North Carolina. Located across from the Original Mast General Store, a few hundred yards from The Mast Farm Inn. Over Yonder has a full Spirits, Beer, Wine, Mixed Beverage Restaurant ABC license and features a full service bar.
Valle Crucis, North Carolina • The Mast Farm Inn is situated in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. Valle Crucis is pronounced Valley-Crew-Sis and in Latin means Valley Of The Cross, so named for the rivers and streams which cross our valley. We are on the Watauga River in a beautiful mountain valley a little under a mile long, by about a quarter mile wide, surrounded by mountains, forests, rivers and streams, and our population is eight hundred. Our location, history, geography, climate, and authentically friendly people, all contribute to making it quite simply a treasure… a natural sanctuary & haven of peaceful calm. It is a great place to live, and a great place to spend a few precious days. We are not just in the sticks… we are in the twigs. That is partially true. While you have the impression you stepped back in time and are in the middle of rural nowhere, in fact some of the most vital, diverse and attractive small mountain villages in the United States are within 10 miles, as is the Blue Ridge Parkway, the second most visited National Park in America.
