Asheville is my second home so visiting was much overdue and well worth the drive, the waterless cabin, my questionable navigation skills and all the other strange roadblocks that seemed to creep into the trip. I think every time we left for somewhere we had to turn around – so there was lots of seeing things twice. We never got irrevocably lost, but it was kind of a pain and made me more than a little aggravated with myself. Anyway, I digress. As you know from the earlier blog, my sister and I had a great little cabin in the woods…it took us an hour to find and since it was only 6 degrees outside, the pipes had frozen so we had no water. Rather than trust that the balmy forecast of 34 the next day would thaw the pipes and make our cabin dream come true, we caved and checked into the Days Inn. The people here were the nicest people I have ever come across in any hotel – they were awesome, but it was hard to love the room given the cabin we had left behind and even harder to love when in the morning we realized the room had one of those stupid pod single cup brews. Now this was a suite so it was pretty likely there would be more than one person in that room so why the single cup brewer? No idea. I tried to make a makeshift filter out of Kleenex in the room, but that failed miserably. We got enough coffee in us to make into Asheville and eat at a delightful little place called Green Sage Café. It was delicious. And the setting was awesome, socially conscious with its own recycling bins and compost bins and the milk choices included soy and rice milk.
Our day of hiking was great. Chilly, about 35 and sunny, but that’s great for hiking; no bugs, no sweating…awesome. The sky was clear blue and it was lovely. We came across vistas of the Blue Ridge Mountains that perfectly described their name and stumbled accidently upon a mostly frozen creek on which you could see and hear the water moving below the ice. It was excellent.
We came off the mountain to get lunch and found a delightful little Mexican place called Papas and Beer. We didn’t understand the Papas part, but we knew the beer part would be to our liking. We went in and the place was packed with locals, always a good sign. We were seated and served warm tortilla chips with a warm bean dip – perfect. The place boasted a salsa bar which we tried, but settled on the bean dip happily. I got fish tacos and Suzanne got a quesadilla. Filled to the brim we headed back to the mountains and walked a few more trails before heading into Black Mountain.
We spent most of our summer in this part of the world so it was nice to go back to Black Mountain and shop around – we then drove up the road into Montreat and stopped by a few of our old haunts including a frozen Lake Susan.
We headed back to the Days Inn (sadly, not the cabin, but we’d moved past that at this point) and took our first hot showers of the weekend! AHHH. We found a great little Irish Pub called Jack of the Woods. It was cozy and again full of locals. It took us some time to find a seat and we decided to ask to join a table with two empty seats. Turns out the table joining this one was full of fun women who we chatted with the rest of the evening. I had a great vegan hemp nut burger – don’t ask me what was in it, I have no idea, but it was delicious. We hung out with the ladies for while and then parted ways as then went off to enjoy the wild night life of Asheville we settled for a pub we had passed on the way in called the Thirsty Monk. This place was awesome. Two floor, the first floor was all Belgium beers the second floor was all American micro-brews. We opted for the second floor and enjoyed some new selections. Well satisfied with our day we headed back to the Days Inn (sigh) and called it a night.
In the morning we went to the aforementioned Green Sage coffee shop, and headed back to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Due to inclement weather the road was closed. We headed south and found a short trail and then decided to get on the road and find a few fun stops on the way home. We wound our way home and ordered take out from our nearby Japanese restaurant and happily slept in our own beds while basking in the glow of a satisfying trip away.
As an aside here of some funny things we say along the way:
An ad for baby friend happy hour called Babies and Beer – gotta love the idea of early training!
The cold weather prevented the making of ice??
Cowboy boots are WAY comfortable; I tried some on at a discount shoe place – they were still more than I could pay, but I fell in love as much as I always imagined I would.
I learned about something called tap therapy. More about that can be found at emofree.com
We met lots of fun people and have already added a couple of them to our facebook family.
Some Favorite Shots:
