Many friends had recommended that I make Asheville, NC, one of my stops, and since driving the Blue Ridge Parkway had long been one of my goals, it fit right into my plans. I also had some new friends in town, which ended up adding immensely to my enjoyment.
I took two days to drive from North Carolina’s Outer Banks to Asheville, arriving on a Friday afternoon. Originally, there had been a plan that my friends from Charlotte, Mike and Denise, would join me there, but last minute complications got in the way and they couldn’t make it. I wasn’t entirely on my own, though. When I had picked up my Sportsmobile in Fresno, back in September, Bob and his wife Janice, from Asheville, were there waiting for a minor repair to be completed on theirs. We had struck up a conversation, exchanged contact information, and traded a few emails over the intervening months. Now was my chance to see them again. Having spent all of maybe five hours together in a waiting room previously, I expected the reunion to be fairly brief and low key, but I had greatly underestimated their hospitality. However, they had just returned from their own road trip and I wanted to give them some time to recover, so on Saturday I set off on my own to explore the town.
My back was still bothering me, so taking a bus tour, at least to start, seemed the right thing to do. (If I seem to be harping on about my back, I'm not looking for sympathy. It's just to explain why I did some things and not others.) I had an easy freeway connection from my campsite in the west end of the town to the north side where the visitors’ center is located, just a couple blocks from downtown. Furthermore, parking at the visitors’ center was plentiful and free. I caught the next tour bus out. There was a chill in the air, so the plastic windows of the bus were rolled down, and consequently you’ll see some occasional glare in the following photos. The tour starts by heading north, away from downtown into the Montford district of historic homes. There are some great old homes, many of which have interesting stories attached to them:
I remember in particular the story of the house directly above. One day, the husband of the household just disappeared, and the wife, to save embarrassment, said he had died, and held a full-on funeral for him, complete with casket. Several months later, he returned to the house, but in very poor health, and subsequently died a few days later. The wife had a very difficult time convincing the undertaker to bury the same man a second time, and the whole affair was handled in secret.
High on a hill to the north of the city is the Grove Park Inn, a very sumptuous hotel with a classic car parked out front:
Though the tour simply drives past, I returned the next day to explore the interior and grounds:
I also had lunch there: I ordered a simple sandwich, but it was superb, and the service was charming and efficient, yet unobtrusive. It’s nice every so often to see how the other half lives. The view out the back of the hotel - and from almost every room - is spectacular:
The back patio is very elaborate, and leads through several levels down to a (man-made) waterfall and spa center:
Returning to town, the next stop on the tour is near the boarding house where the author Thomas Wolfe spent many of his early years. He wrote a novel, initially titled, “O Lost”, but eventually published as “Look Homeward, Angel” about his time in Asheville, drawing heavily on the characters of people he knew. The disguise was so thin that many people in Asheville resented how they had been portrayed, and Wolfe was essentially run out of town. He returned years later when people had learned to enjoy the notoriety the book brought them. Tours are offered of the Wolfe boarding house, but the condition of my back would not permit me to chance it.
Nearby is the Basillica of St. Lawrence, known for its huge, unsupported dome:
Near the center of downtown is a park and a monument to Zebulon Baird Vance, a noted leader during and after the Civil War:
There are numerous interesting buildings in the downtown area:
and public art of many kinds:
The tour heads south from downtown into the River Arts District, which is home to many art galleries and hip little restaurants. Along the way, we passed an old railroad roundhouse whose demolition has stalled for some reason halfway through:
Just east of the River Arts District is Biltmore Village, which lies just outside the gates of the famed Biltmore Estate. Biltmore Village was established by the Vanderbilts as the place where their many servants and tradesmen could live. Today, some of that housing remains, as well as some very fine restaurants and shops. The Episcopal Cathedral of All Souls, also funded by the Vanderbilts, is the centerpiece of that area:
I did tour the Biltmore Estate, but not until Monday. That will be the subject of my next post.
When the bus tour ended back at the visitors’ center, I thought I might strike out on foot to revisit some of the highlights of the tour and get some better photos. But even with plenty of analgesic in my system, I managed to walk only from the rear parking lot of the visitors’ center around to the front before the pain in my back made me nauseous and I had to rest for quite a while before I could even hobble back to my van.
I decided instead to have a late lunch at some place I could drive to. Friends had highly recommended 12 Bones Barbecue, and from driving by it earlier, I knew it had plenty of van-sized parking. When I arrived, though, I learned it is only open Monday to Friday, and this was Saturday. Now with an almost crazy desire for barbecue, I looked up another highly rated place, Moe’s, and drove there, near Biltmore Village. Moe’s was open (I’d checked), but there was a line out the door. Just a couple minutes of standing in that line told me my back would never permit me to get to the front. I got on TripAdvisor and found The Corner Kitchen was just a quick walk away. I used a couple street benches along the way to rest my back and made it over. There was no line if I was willing to sit at the counter. I had their French Onion Soup and a Biltmore Reuben, and was so impressed I made room for cheesecake for dessert. Between courses, a woman on the stool next to me struck up a conversation, and she described all the wonderful restaurants in town that she and her husband had tried. I could tell her husband was thinking, “Oh, swell, my wife is pestering this poor guy.” but I thought it was great.
After lunch, I decided to give my back a rest and retreated to my RV park. Likewise, the next morning, I chose to rest my back rather than follow through on a tentative plan to attend service at All Souls. As I mentioned earlier, though, I did take a drive back to the Grove Park Inn, and had a great lunch there. By moving from bench to bench outside, and chair to chair inside, I was able to explore most of the grounds and interior. I was extremely thankful my back was almost pain free when I was sitting.
In the late afternoon, I had an invitation to Bob and Janice’s house. It is in the Montford District that I’d seen the day before, but off the beaten path. Bob was out front when I arrived and invited me right in. Janice had prepared a plate of meat, cheese, and fruit hors d’oeuvres, and soon glasses of wine were poured. We all sat around the table discussing my travels and deciding what I might do next. I was made to feel like we’d been friends for years. As evening approached, Bob suggested we go out to dinner. Janice demurred, mentioning an unsettled stomach, but Bob and I went to a neighborhood restaurant called Nine Mile, specializing in Jamaican style food. I had a dish called the Concrete Jungle featuring mussels and scallops, which was fantastic.
My plan for the next day was to tour the Biltmore Estate, and Bob suggested I come to their place afterward to accompany him to the downtown bar, Jack of the Wood, where he, his sons, and some of their friends take part in a weekly trivia contest. That’s in fact what I did, and I had a fantastic time. The beer and the food were excellent, all of the players on our team were incredibly knowledgeable and fun to be around, and the contest was both challenging and amusing. I managed to contribute a couple correct answers, and the name I suggested for our team that night was adopted. Team names are awarded special prizes for being topical and in extremely poor taste, so I’ll not repeat it here. Our team won the trivia contest by a comfortable margin, which I was told on our way back to the car is a very common outcome.
Oh, and I don’t want to overlook another highlight of the day. We had some time between my return from the Biltmore Estate and the beginning of the contest downtown, so hearing that the Biltmore tour had inflicted unprecedented agony on my back, Bob suggested I take a soak in their backyard hot tub. I was at first reluctant to accept such a generous offer, but relented. Traveling in my motorhome, I had my swimsuit right at hand. The heat, the bubbles, and the jets were marvelous, and made an enormous contribution to my being able to enjoy the evening.
Saving the Monday Biltmore tour for my next post, I’ll recount what Bob and I did the following day, Tuesday. At his suggestion we drove south of Asheville toward the Carl Sandburg home. We arrived in the area at lunchtime, and Bob pulled us in at a place he knew, Dixie Bones Barbecue. I was finally going to satisfy my craving for barbecue. I went rather overboard, ordering the sampler, which was ribs, pulled pork, and beef. When it came, it was enormous, but it was also delicious, and I managed to finish it all except for some scraps of the beans and cole slaw side dishes.
Bob then completed the short drive to the Sandburg Farm, an area gem I could have easily overlooked without his guidance. Immediately, it is easy to see how the beauty and peace of the place could be inspirational:
It’s necessary to walk up the hill to the house you see above, but Bob was very considerate about letting me take frequent rests for my back. While I waited for the tour to begin, I watched a couple short videos about Sandburg’s life which were very enlightening. The tour is fascinating, because when Sandburg died, his wife turned over the entire farm to the National Park Service almost immediately, so everything is just the way it was, as if the couple had stepped out for a moment. Well, sort of. The experience I had was diluted by the fact that the Park Service is getting ready for a major structural refurbishment of the home, so several of the rooms had belongings already packed away in boxes. But, as you’ll see in the photos below, many rooms gave a great insight into their day-to-day life. Here’s the view from the front porch, again very beautiful and peaceful:
Here is the living room:
Something you’ll see throughout the house are ubiquitous well-stocked bookshelves. Here is a downstairs office:
Some poetry writing may have occurred here, but most took place upstairs. Sandburg’s wife, Lilian, was famous in her own right for breeding goats with championship milk production, and this is a separate office from which she ran that business:
Here are a couple shots of the dining room:
Notice in the second one, there is a TV. Sandburg was voracious in his consumption of news and stayed up with current events. Here are some upstairs rooms:
Though Sandburg’s primary office was packed away by now, here’s a photo of what it looked like:
Returning downstairs, here’s shot from their kitchen:
The wooden bins you see on the left are feeding troughs for goat kids, which were often brought into the house. The appliance, though it looks like a stove, is some sort of goat milk processor.
The house is only part of the complete tour. The estate was a working farm, with outbuildings not far from the home:
This plaque gives the name of the farm:
Bob and I had some ground to cover to get back to Asheville and rather than retracing our steps, he drove up onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, which we followed all the way back to town. We came to a lovely waterfall:
(Note the people near the base for a sense of its size.) We also stopped to appreciate the views:
This was a foretaste of what I would see on my drive north from Asheville. In the middle picture above, you can just make out a lighter colored line between the near mountains and the far mountains. That is the Biltmore Mansion and some of Asheville. The Biltmore Estate was so extensive that near where this picture was taken, we found this sign:
This is a hunting lodge George Vanderbuilt constructed on the estate for his guests to use. Only the barest traces of the lodge’s foundation remain today.
As Bob and I left the parkway near Asheville’s southern limit, he suggested we go to The Wedge brew pub in the River Arts District. I immediately agreed, and he called Janice to come join us, who in turn recruited one of their sons. Though Bob and I were only ten minutes from the pub, Janice made it from their place on the north side of town to the pub on the south side before we did, bringing home to me just how easy it is to get around in Asheville.
In spite of the limitations my sore back imposed, I had a wonderful time during my visit to Asheville, thanks in large part to Bob and Janice. The city has great scenery, entertainment, food, and yet retains a small town appeal. In fact, I’d have to say that if I were ever to settle any place other than San Diego, Asheville would be my top choice.
In the upcoming post, I’ll step back to my next-to-last day in Asheville when I toured the Biltmore Estate.
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