The contentedly quiet and sticky days of summer terrify my when visiting Suburbia. Recently, on a longer-than-anticipated trip to Asheville, NC when the classically southern neighbors found that they had nothing better to do with their time than investigate our familial circumstances and when circinate thoughts somersaulted in my brain on the cannon duty of a daughter to care for her aging parents, compared with charitably altruistic actions taken by a son when facing the same circumstances – I contemplated momentous escapes from reality and into privacy as often as possible….
Having been privileged enough (#checkyourprivilege) to grow up in a small city which suffered from drug usage, open segregation and a burdened economy. Upon this return trip however I discovered a thriving city, now voted “Beer Town USA” for the past 4 years running and the fifth best place to retire in the USA (paired with rumors that the Obama’s have purchased a presidential house in the area).
I know the streets for the their curves rather than their names. I know locations for their previous shop owners rather than the current retail stores which inhabit the spaces. I know the mall parking lots as my old hiking grounds…. Thanks to an impressive push by the Asheville City Council and Tourism Bureau, downtown is no longer the drug laundering front with boarded up doors and back alleys-you-avoided-if-you-didn’t-belong-there. It’s a hoppy, arts-centric, safe city with markedly obvious economic segregation and an over-blown pride for it’s hippie and leftist culture.
Artists cast their wares successfully at tourists on block after block of artisanal wares. Boutiques (Hip Replacements, The Honey Pot and The Enchanted Forest) are pared with noodle shops, (the noodle shop, where real locals eat and Doc Chey’s, where the tourists eat) Ice cream parlors (Kilwins, Marble Slab, The Hop) and chocolate lounges (Chocolate Lounge, Chocolate Fetish) to draw in vast tourists with prices that cause one to wonder at the locals ability to pay rent at all during off-season as the majority of the city seems to survive on service jobs. *Note: Ashevillans are not the best at Yelping, nor Trip-Advising. If you really don’t know where to go — duck into a store and ask a local. They’ll give you the best answer including which trolley tour to take as there are now four available. (Hint hint– Think LaZoomTours)
Regardless these recent enticing southern chic enticements the true charm of Asheville lies in its slopping wooden roofs tucked into pockets of woods -so each liberal family can trowel their own bit of earth and participate in the local canning and brewing craze which has swept this little belt-loop city in the south. I prefer the old-timer getaways the ones requiring a minimum of a 45 minute drive into the blue ridge mountains to: Looking Glass Falls, Craggy Gardens, Bat Cave and Mount Pisgah if you are up for some good hikes!
Tourist favorites include: Sliding rock (natural water slide coming down the mountain), Grandfather Mountain, Table rock, Chimney Rock ad Lake Lure however… Pick your own adventure based on the locations listed above. The main things you don’t want to miss are The Great Smokey Railroad in Bryson City and the tubing available there as well. (Don’t be fooled – only tourists tube in the French Broad in Asheville and those are the ones who never return).
intrepid trekking 