Asheville, North Carolina

The Smokey Mountains had given us a couple of days of relief from the heat. Descending into Asheville, the heat was a bit more evident but still not bad and I think that probably had some to do with the our enjoyment of that city. In what I guess I'd call the foothills of the Smokies, is a town that reminds me in some ways of Bellingham. It is a city of about 70 or 80 thousand, a university town and the arts are a big part of the community. What Asheville has done that I wish Bellingham had more of is a very vibrant downtown. Think downtown Bellingham only with every empty store front occupied and without the riff raff hanging out on the street corners. It's very lively with many great restaurants and art galleries, even an independent bookstore, though our Village Books beats their bookshop by a mile.

One of the stores was an old Woolworths that had been converted into a gallery for local artists including several whose work we really enjoyed. Along one wall a very clever entrepreneur had restored the old Woolworths lunch counter. Absolutely perfect in every detail, I was drawn immediately to it and even though we had just a had a wonderful lunch I had to sit at that counter. So we ordered a milk share to share and just took it all in and then continued wandering around town for a couple of hours.

The lunch I mentioned was at the Early Girl Eatery. Recommended in our Road Food guide, it was a cozy spot in the heart of a very lively downtown. We sat in a sunny spot near some windows looking out on a park and enjoyed our lunch of a meat and three. It was a nice, though not particularly memorable meal.

Leslie decided she'd like to go see something that evening, so she looked through some of the flyers we had picked up telling about upcoming events in town. She found an ad for a production of A Little Night Music at Mars Hill College. Billed as being a professional show, we had never seen a production of it before so we purchased tickets over the phone. That evening we drove over to the very picturesque college campus and found the theater. Unfortunately, the theater, a very old former church converted into the campus theater, wasn't air conditioned and with no windows to open and all the doors closed tight it became a sweat lodge very quickly. At intermission I easily convinced myself to stay outside in the much cooler air. The show was really not very well done anyway and when I discovered lightening bugs flying about the campus lawn, I had found my entertainment for the evening. After a while I walked back to the car, drove over to a store and got gassed up for the next day's drive. I got back to the theater just about in time to watch the doors flung open by the patrons almost as if the building had exploded from the pent up heat.

The next morning we left town on our way to Charleston, North Carolina. No, we didn't stop at the famed Biltmore Estate on the outskirts of town. It kind of came down to the cost. Not that we couldn't afford it. I don't know but we both agreed $55 just seemed totally ridiculous to spend on seeing this place so we passed and moved on to our next destination. Perhaps we will regret not having done it. You could argue that we will probably never be back so why not go. It just didn't seem to be that important.

On our way to Charleston our curiosity finally got the best of us and we decided to stop along the highway at one of the Waffle House restaurants that seem to be at just about every exit. Big mistake! Yeah, the waitstaff was very friendly and very efficient, but that is where the quality ends. The waffles are thin, pasty things. Cold and lifeless. The rest of the food, and it was plentiful, was just uninspired. We left scratching our heads over why such a chain continues to exist. There are hundreds of these little waffle shops along the freeways across the south. I suppose the location is their attraction. Easy off, easy on. But, for us anyway, fool me once. . .
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Next Stop--Charleston, NC--Gullah Food, and lunch at Bertha's