Asheville on Tuesday

Trip Start Jul 22, 2005
1
8
28
Trip End Aug 20, 2005


Loading Map
Map your own trip!
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
shadow

Flag of United States  , North Carolina,
Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Turns out Tuesday night is the worst night to visit Asheville. I'd been pretty excited about seeing Asheville because of the great things I had heard about the place from friends who had lived there. It was supposed to be a place with great live music, art and hippies in the midst of the mountains of North Carolina. But we picked the one night of the week when there wasn't live music at Jack of the Woods, the local Bluegrass Bar. Plus, the vegetarian Laughing Seed restaurant that had also been highly recommended by a friend was closed on Tuesday. To make matters worse, we arrived in Asheville on one of the hottest days of the entire summer.

We spent most of the day in the car driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway, following the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains across western Virginia and North Carolina. Because there's not much traffic on the Blue Ridge Parkway it gave Dan a chance to practice driving, so that by the end of the day he was quite confident at driving with the stick shift Dan on Blowing Rock
Dan on Blowing Rock
 .

One of the few stops today was at Blowing Rock - a rock in North Carolina that looks out on the mountains and valleys below. It got its name because it you toss a piece of paper or a feather from the rock it will blow back to you rather than falling downwards. Turned out you had to pay $6 per person just to see the rock. Plus it was hazy so the view wasn't that great. Dan and I both agreed that this rock did indeed "blow," but not in the way that the guidebook had said.

Anyway, so we finally got to Asheville around 5pm after a beautiful - but long - drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We checked into the youth hostel and were a bit dismayed to see that there was no air conditioning given that the temperature was still in the 90s at 6pm. For dinner we had great food at Salsa's, a mexican-carribean fusion restaurant, although the service was terribly slow and there was no A/C so we sweated buckets while waiting for the food. After dinner we went back to the youth hostel dripping with sweat and found that the temperature had not cooled down even though it was 9pm. So we put our bags in the car and drove to a motel. But it wasn't any motel. It was the Mountaineer Inn. It had a giant 25ft neon mountain man sign out front. And a swimming pool which we jumped into at 9:30pm for an incredibly refreshing swim.
Slideshow Print this entry