KEEPIN’ ASHEVILLE WEIRD
Christy
and I spent last weekend in Asheville.
Our official reason for the trip was that I needed to use a coupon for a
free night at any Hilton hotel.
Unofficially though, we’ve been talking about moving there for a couple
of years now. I’ve gradually made
progress towards talking Christy into it.
Recently though, she pointed out that we have spent very little time
actually in the city. When we’re up that
way, we’re usually out hiking in the woods.
So, our goal for this trip was to actually experience Asheville.
With
that in mind, Christy declared that this would be a non-hiking weekend. My preference would’ve been to spend Saturday
hiking in the Smokies, and Saturday night and Sunday
in Asheville. After all, we weren’t
taking the dog with us, so it was the perfect opportunity to visit Great Smoky
Mountains National Park. I was overruled
though. This was also Christy’s birthday
weekend, and the birthday girl had veto power.
Despite that, I still found a way to sneak a little bit of hiking into
our weekend.
We
dropped Boone off at a friend’s house on Saturday morning and headed for the
mountains. Our first stop on the way was
at the Tryon Garden Club outside of Saluda.
I wanted to visit Pearson’s Falls while we were
in the area. The Tryon Garden Club
doesn’t allow dogs on their property, which is probably why I’d never visited
this waterfall. Since the walk to the
falls is short, Christy agreed. I was
also hoping to catch some spring wildflowers, although I knew we were probably
too late for most of them.
We
attempted to take the direct route from Saluda, which follows a dirt road. Unfortunately we found the road closed
several miles outside of town. We
backtracked to the main road and took the long way around. We finally made it to the entrance, where we
paid the fee (it’s now up to $5 per person) and parked. We arrived at the same time as a whole
mini-van full of kids. As soon as we saw
that crowd, Christy and I made a beeline for the falls. We wanted to get up there before it was
overrun!
The
walk only took about 10 minutes. We
passed a lot of fantastic spring greenery on the way, but very little in the
way of blooms. As I suspected, most of
the actual flowers were long gone. I
spotted a few Toadshade Trilliums, but there wasn’t
much left of them. The best flowers were
probably Solomon’s Seal, along with a couple of
impressive Flame Azalea.
Pearson’s
Falls is quite nice, and it actually exceeded my
expectations a little bit. Unfortunately
there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and half of the falls was in the shade while
the other half was in bright sunlight.
There wasn’t much I could do with my camera in those conditions. I guess I’ll just have to go back –
preferably in late April.
We
returned to the car and headed on to Asheville.
It was lunch time, and we were starving, so we headed straight for
downtown. Christy’s navigation system
only got us lost once, but we did get lucky enough to find a parking spot a
couple of blocks from Wall Street. We
took a pleasant stroll down Wall Street to the Laughing Seed Café. This restaurant had been recommended to us by
a friend, and Christy was eager to try it.
She is now a semi-vegetarian, and the Laughing Seed is allegedly one of
the best vegetarian restaurants in North Carolina.
I
am not a vegetarian, or even a semi-vegetarian.
In fact, I enjoy a large slab of steaming animal flesh as much as
anyone, but I was quite impressed with the café. I had black bean soup and a sandwich
featuring a number of mystery ingredients that was surprisingly good. However, I should’ve gotten Christy’s
lunch. She had a something or other hemp
burger (really!) with fantastic French fries.
And no, her burger didn’t taste like rope. Or leaves. It was actually quite good (yeah, I stole a
bite).
We
were nearly finished eating when the group at the table next to us began to
leave. Before she left, the mother of a
young girl stopped to apologize to us for her daughter’s behavior. I was baffled. Apparently she had been rather loud, though I
hadn’t noticed it. Her daughter hadn’t
annoyed me at all. Afterwards, I paused
to reflect on that encounter. I suppose
a similar situation back in Charlotte (or Hitler City*, as we like to call it)
would’ve been exactly the same, except for two key differences:
1)
The
annoying child really would have been annoying, and I would have noticed it.
2)
The
mother wouldn’t have apologized.
So
there you go.
After
lunch we spent a couple of hours strolling around downtown. We checked out some shops, Malaprop’s bookstore, and an art gallery, and generally
just took in the vibe of Asheville. That
vibe can best be described as “a wee bit different”. In fact, a popular bumper sticker seen around
town simply states “Keep Asheville Weird”.
I can’t think of a bumper sticker I agree with more. In fact, I’m having trouble thinking of
anything more important than keeping Asheville weird. I mean, if Asheville stops being weird, who
else will pick up the slack?
This
raises an interesting question. By most
people’s standards, Christy and I are weird.
Christy likes spending an entire day swimming, biking, and running. I frequently eschew the house that I spend a
lot of money to inhabit in favor of walking and sleeping in the woods, which is
full of bugs and snakes and dirt. And I
do it on purpose! However, I’m not sure
if we are Asheville weird. I mean,
Asheville really raises the bar in that regard.
For example, every Halloween hundreds of Asheville residents dress up
like zombies and stagger around downtown.
That’s pretty weird. So here is
our dilemma: if we move to Asheville,
Charlotte definitely becomes even less weird.
But does Asheville also become less weird? These are the kinds of thoughts that kept me
from graduating from college early.
We
saw several examples of Asheville’s weirdness walking around town. We passed a guy that was 7’ tall, not
counting the extra foot from the spike in his hair. We saw a woman with a goatee. Later that afternoon, we were getting ready
to go for a run on the French Broad River Greenway. While I was stretching outside the public
restrooms, I had an interesting conversation with a friendly Vietnamese pimp. (See if you can count how many things are
wrong with the previous sentence). I
didn’t realize that he was a pimp until his, uh, female companion, came out of
the facilities dressed rather differently than she was when she went in. To be honest, he wasn’t much of a pimp. He was wearing sweats, he was driving a
minivan, and I didn’t see any gaudy jewelry.
He was definitely weird though!
Christy
and I both ran on the greenway, and somehow managed to finish without getting
rained on. The weather forecast for the
entire weekend was marginal, but we were lucky.
There were lots of storms around, but somehow they kept missing us.
The
highlight of the run was discovering that the greenway has been extended
farther upstream. The greenway used to
be rather short, but it’s growing. I’m
not sure how far it goes now, because I turned around before reaching the end.
Afterwards
we headed over to the Hilton in Biltmore Park, which turns out to be nowhere
near Biltmore Village. Does everything
in Asheville need to be named Biltmore something or other? We checked in, had showers, and prepared to
go out for a night on the town.
The
hotel is located in a fancy new shopping center surrounded by a fine assortment
of chain restaurants. We could’ve been
happy eating at many of them, but that wasn’t what we’d come to Asheville
for. Instead, we headed back
downtown. I didn’t have specific plans
for our evening. For once, there really
wasn’t much going on. There weren’t any
interesting bands playing at the Orange Peel, and there weren’t any festivals
going on. That’s actually rather
rare. It seems like there’s some sort of
festival in Asheville nearly every weekend:
We
didn’t really have much trouble finding things to do. I eventually snagged a free parking space (I’m
a big fan of free parking), and we walked a few blocks to downtown. First we stopped at a small Japanese café for
sushi. Then we strolled around a bit
before finding ourselves in Barley’s Taproom.
Barley’s is one of several fine establishments for sampling one of
Asheville’s most significant products – microbrewed beer. The Asheville area has something like 7
independent breweries, and many of their products are quite good. I’ve been a big fan of Highland Gaelic Ale
for years now, but at Barley’s I forced myself to try something new. Barley’s has an impressive selection of beer
on draught, and most of their offerings are from North Carolina. I don’t remember exactly what I had there,
but it was good!
Afterwards
we wandered around town some more in search of dinner. We could’ve eaten at Barley’s of course, but
it isn’t really bar hopping if you stay in one place all night. Eventually we found ourselves at Jack O’ The
Wood – a Celtic pub located directly downstairs from the Laughing Seed Café. We had dinner and a bit more beer there. While we were there, we met a nice guy from
Ohio who was in town on a business trip.
He’d come to town a day early in hopes of doing some mountain biking
before the work week started. I liked
this guy – he does his business trips they way I do mine.
Later
there was a live band. We got hit up for
a $5 cover charge, and when I glanced up at the stage, I wasn’t so sure. All I could see was a giant stand up bass and
a guy that looked older than Moses. On
the other hand, we didn’t have a big agenda, and we were in the middle of our
dinner. We paid the cover, and it proved
to be a good choice. The music was quite
good, and we stuck around for most of the show before heading back to the
hotel.
We
slept in the next morning before heading over to the Dripolator
for coffee and a light breakfast. The Dripolator was a nice place, but it was a challenge to
find. It’s located just north of
downtown on Broadway. The challenging
part is that Broadway “jumps” a block to the west when it reaches I-240. In other words, the road that was Broadway
becomes another street, while Broadway resumes heading north a block over. Are you confused? Good, because so was I. Somehow we still made it there though.
After
breakfast we decided to visit the NC Arboretum.
This was a little daring, as the overcast sky seemed to promise
rain. We paid the $8 entrance fee and
parked near the main visitor’s center.
There we picked up a map and took a tour of the gardens.
We
enjoyed many fantastic blooms. My
favorites were probably numerous varieties of Irises. Christy really enjoyed the Bonsai
Garden. Later we extended our visit with
a short walk down to Bent Creek. There
we walked the trails through the Native Azalea Display. There were a few azaleas blooming there, but
it seemed like most had already come and gone.
We
were on our way back to the Visitor’s Center when it began to thunder. We took this as a hint and hurried back to
the car. From there, we drove over to
West Asheville for a late lunch at the Lucky Otter. A visit to Asheville just isn’t complete
without a burrito from the Lucky Otter!
We
really enjoyed our time in Asheville. We’ll
certainly be back, perhaps for a festival, or the next time a good band is
playing at the Orange Peel. Hopefully
one of these days we’ll manage to move there permanently. Of course, to do that, we’ll have to sell the
house…
**
Christy and I now frequently refer to our home town of Charlotte as “Hitler
City”. This all started with an episode
of “The Simpsons” that aired a few years ago.
In the episode “Bart Mangled Banner”, Mayor Quimby
states that “Hitler City wasn’t very popular until they changed their name to
Charlotte”. When I saw that, I blew Duff
beer through my nose. To this day, I
think it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on TV. See:
http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Bart-Mangled_Banner
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