Road Tips

Lexington Avenue Brewing (LAB) - Asheville, NC

During our last day in Asheville, we had been walking around the downtown area ducking in and out of shops and checking out places that we had missed during our visit.  One brewpub that we hadn't visited was Lexington Avenue Brewing and we decided to stop in there for lunch and to try some of their beers.  

Steve Wilmans was living in the Pacific Northwest and owned a recording studio in Seattle.  After selling the recording studio, Wilmans ended up in Los Angeles and hooked up with a distant cousin, Mike Healy.  It turned out that Healy was looking to move to the Asheville area and Wilmans told him that he'd help him with the move.  While  in Asheville, Wilmans saw a vacant building that used to house the local Salvation Army and he thought that it would be a great place to open a recording studio.  Leaving the sun and sand of Southern California, Wilmans opened Echo Mountain Recording Studio in 2006.  

Wilmans and Healy would sit around most evenings enjoying some of the growing number of craft beers that were being brewed in Asheville.   Healy was trying to figure out what to do and one night the two decided that maybe they should open a bar.  Or better yet, a brewpub that featured beers similar to the West Coast beers the two had fallen in love with when they lived out there.  

The two found a place on N. Lexington Ave. in downtown Asheville that was once a livery stable, then had turned into a department store.  The process of buying the building and renovating the space took nearly two years and the Lexington Avenue Brewery - known simply as the LAB - opened in early 2010.  A year and a half later, Lexington Avenue Brewery became the first Asheville-based brewery to win a medal in the Great American Beer Festival in Denver with a bronze medal award for their Three Threads brown porter.  

The success of the LAB meant a significant expansion was needed.  Just to the south of Lexington Avenue Brewing was a 35,000 square foot building that was originally an A&P grocery store.  The space was being turned into condos and retail space, and LAB expanded their restaurant, brewing facility and a taproom into the north side of that building.  The expansion for Lexington Avenue Brewery opened in early 2013.    

Located just south of Walnut on Lexington (see map), Lexington Avenue Brewing has a front section with open windows out to the street.  Garage-style doors can be easily opened during warm weather. 

We decided to sit in the front area at LAB.   Our server, Lauren, came over with a couple of food menus and dropped them off for us.   We ordered up a couple samples of their beers to try before we figured out what we wanted to drink.  The front area at LAB was definitely the place where people wanted to be that day.  

Inside the main area of Lexington Avenue Brewery, the main dining/drinking area was open and spacious, but it wasn't like a big beer hall.  The same style of heavy tables with mesh metal chairs that were out in the front area were in there, as well.  

There was some pretty artwork along the brick walls of the main room.  There was a small stage tucked into a corner that was probably used for live music, but only if it were solo or duo act.   In the far back of the place was a large room that was used for private events or special occasions.  It was much more formal in that room than the rest of the brewpub.

The main bar was next to a brewing room with huge tanks that you could see from the main room.  The bar was a 92-foot serpentine-style design that curved around the north side of the main room.  It was one of the more interesting bars I've seen in a brewpub.  

The beers that LAB was serving that day during our visit were on chalkboards.  My wife got the Lil' Country India Pale Ale and I got the Waves of Grain Amber ale.  Both beers were very tasty.  The IPA was especially good and I ended up getting one of those for my second beer.  It had a forward hoppy taste that was very smooth on the backside.  

The food menu was definitely unique for a brewpub, but probably not for Asheville.  They had a number of gluten free and vegan offerings, as well as about a dozen interesting appetizers.  My wife remarked that the beer-braised pork belly and Brussels Sprouts was intriguing for her.  My eye caught the pork confit tacos with an avocado salsa.  

My wife wasn't all that hungry after a large breakfast we'd had earlier in the day.  She thought about one of the salads they had on the menu, but I ended up talking her into getting the green chili pork nachos.  And that was selfish on my part as I wanted to try their green chili pork.  Unfortunately, the green chili pork in North Carolina is nowhere close to the great green chili pork in Colorado.  The nachos had ground pork, red beans, a white cheese sauce, and chopped peppers, onions and cilantro.  It wasn't a big portion, but my wife was happy enough with what she ordered.  

I ended up getting the house-made pastrami on rye sandwich.  A side of fries came with the sandwich.  It was piled high with thin-sliced pastrami, topped with Swiss cheese and lettuce.  The rye bread had a moist texture and a good taste.  And the sandwich was.... good.  It was just all right, in my opinion.  The pastrami didn't really knock my socks off in terms of taste.  Overall, we thought the beer was better than the food.  

We thought the ambience and decor of Lexington Avenue Brewery was pretty cool, the beer was very good, and the service was impeccable.  The food, however, was pretty basic for what we ordered.  I guess I was expecting more out of a place that was in a wonderful space, had some great architecture, and had a good beer offering.  Still, there wasn't much to complain about on our visit to Lexington Avenue Brewery.  

French Broad Chocolate Lounge - Asheville, NC

When you're on vacation, you have to pamper yourself a little bit.  You don't want to feel bad about having a guilty pleasure or two along the way.  During our trip to Asheville, NC earlier this year, we had passed a place that seemed to be very popular while we were there.  After a very good dinner one evening, we were walking back to our hotel and we decided to stop into the French Broad Chocolate Lounge and see why people were standing dozens deep outside the front door.  

By happenstance, Jael Skeffington and Dan Rattigan met at her brother's wedding in the Twin Cities in 2003 - she was in the wedding party, while he was the bartender at the reception.  The two got to know each other as the smitten Jael hung around the bar.  It turned out that they were both grad students at the University of Minnesota - she was in business school and he was in law school.  Jael told Dan that she was getting ready to go to Costa Rica for an environmental business conference in a couple of days.  It turned out that Dan was also an environmentalist.  Jael got on the plane to go to Costa Rica and Dan decided not long after that he wanted to follow her down there.  He followed her to Central America, the two soon fell in love and ended up in a small village by the name of Puerto Viejo on the Caribbean coast.  

Dan and Jael returned to Minnesota, but soon decided to drop out of graduate school.  They procured a vegetable oil-powered school bus and drove it over 3600 miles all the way back down to Puerto Viejo.  The couple soon bought a small - 5 acre - cacao farm and started a small cafe and dessert shop by the name of Bread and Chocolate.  The couple soon married and learned the craft of chocolatiering from locals and from books, making chocolates from their cacao trees on their little farm in the kitchen of their little cafe.    

Pictured right - Dan and Jael Rattigan.  Photo courtesy Mountain Xpress.

Within a couple of years they had a young son and were thinking that it was time to go back to the States.  Upon the recommendation of customers who came to their little cafe, the family decided to load up the bus and head up to Asheville to start a new life.  The Rattigans started out making chocolate desserts in their kitchen and began to sell them at local farmers markets.  They quickly garnered a reputation for having some of the best chocolate treats around.  

They moved the newly named French Broad Chocolates out of their house and into a small store front on Asheville's Lexington Ave. in 2008.  There, they sold chocolate desserts, truffles, cakes, cookies and hot chocolate drinks.  And tapping into the burgeoning craft beer movement in the area, the couple also sold locally brewed beers and wine.  But it wasn't long before the couple found that they were quickly outgrowing the Lexington Ave. location.  

In 2014, French Broad Chocolate Lounge opened in their present location on Pack Square in downtown Asheville.  (see map)  There is also a chocolate factory and a tasting room for French Broad Chocolates on Buxton Street just south of downtown Asheville.  (see map)   Today, the Rattigans employ 70 people and even though they still harvest over 500 pounds of cacao beans annually from their Costa Rican property, they also get cacao from Peru and Nicaragua.  The couple also provides a living wage and a cost-sharing insurance plan for their employees, and the French Broad Chocolate Lounge is one of the top "green" restaurants in the nation honored by the Green Restaurant Association for their solar hot water system and the energy efficient appliances they use.  (French Broad Chocolates will also ship anywhere in the U.S.  Click here to go to their ordering page.) 

The first night we were in Asheville, it was the Sunday night of a holiday weekend.  The line to get into French Broad Chocolate Lounge was stretching out the door and down the street.  A couple nights later when we went by, the line was still out the door, but a much less amount of people were standing in line.  Actually, by the time we got to the counter, the line was probably 25 to 30 people standing in line out the door and onto the sidewalk.  We thought our timing was impeccable.  

We only had to wait a few moments to get up to the front counter where you place your order.  The menu was on a chalk board and featured a number of desserts, chocolate confections, cookies, brownies, different types of cakes, truffles and caramels.  By the time we got to the counter to see what they offered, our heads were already spinning with the choices we had. 

It only got worse when we made it up to order our desserts.  They make all of their ice cream in-house at French Broad Chocolates.  The swirling, creamy texture of the ice cream was almost too good to pass up.

The case holding the cheesecakes, brownies, cookies and other delectable items was also calling my name.  I saw a cheesecake that literally jumped out and grabbed me by the collar and said, "You HAVE to get a piece of me, man!"  

We lingered long and hard at the truffle and caramel case.  There were over a dozen varieties of truffles and a like number of coated caramels available.  We made a decision to try a little bit of everything.  My wife wanted ice cream.  I wanted cheesecake.  We both saw truffles that we wanted.  By the time we were finished ordering at the register, it was well over a $20 bill for what we got.

I ended up getting the key lime cheesecake - the one that was screaming at me to order it - that was made with a ginger cracker crust.  Drizzles of chocolates lined the sides of the cheesecake slice.  And it was heavenly and sinful at the same time.  The creaminess of the key lime cheesecake literally melted in my mouth.  It was so rich and full of flavor.  It was simply killer.

My wife went with a scoop of the Costa Rican chocolate ice cream.  She offered me a bite, but I declined - I usually don't eat much chocolate, but she insisted that I take a bite.  It was unlike any chocolate ice cream that I've ever had.  The chocolate flavor burst open in my mouth.  It was creamy and literally melted across my tongue.  Wow!  It was certainly something else.

Of course, we had to get truffles.  The guy at the front counter who we ordered from said that his favorite was the horchata truffle - it featured white chocolate mixed with cinnamon and vanilla, then drizzled with milk chocolate and sprinkled with toasted rice.  We had to have one each of those.  My wife also got hazelnut crunch truffle - it featured milk chocolate with ground hazelnut butter and caramelized hazelnut bits, then covered with dark chocolate.  For my other choice, I got maple and smoked salt truffle.  It featured local farm  maple syrup mixed with organic butter and dipped in a blend of milk and dark chocolate, then sprinkled with smoked salt.  

The truffles were some of the best that we've ever had.  The taste sensations that went on with each truffle we tried were mind-blowing.  We've had the truffles from Christopher Elbow Chocolates in Kansas City (our late neighbor lady was a great aunt to Christopher Elbow) and we thought those may have been the best we've ever tried.  But the ones we had at French Broad were easily on par - if not better - than the Christopher Elbow truffles.  They were just that good.  

So, we figured out why the lines snaked out the door and down the street in front of French Broad Chocolate Lounge.  The desserts are world class, pure and simple.  The key lime cheesecake with the ginger crust was scrumptious, I had never experienced the taste explosion that I had with the Costa Rican chocolate ice cream, and the truffles were sinfully wonderful.  I don't know how anyone could show any restraint at French Broad Chocolate Lounge with all the tasty and delectable desserts they have to offer.  We were scared to go back in the mornings for coffee and espresso because we knew we'd go overboard on the desserts.  Our visit there was truly one of the highlights of our trip to Asheville.    

Limones - Asheville, NC

On our final night in Asheville, we decided to go try a place that we had seen a couple times on our walks up and down Biltmore Ave.  Tucked back on a side street off of Biltmore, we were intrigued with Limones and we decided to eat there that evening.  

Hugo Ramirez is a native of Mexico City whose mother was a wonderful cook.  Hugo eventually ended up in San Francisco working for - and learning from - a number of top chefs in the area.  Many of the restaurants he worked in featured French-inspired California cuisine made with locally-grown produce, meats and seafood.  Ramirez would experiment combining the flavors he learned from his mother in Mexico City along with the California-style of cooking he learned.  

Hugo and his wife, Amy Cavanaugh, decided to open their own restaurant, and along with their one-year-old child the family set off across the nation ending up in Asheville in 2003.  They found a small place in downtown Asheville and opened Limones sometime in 2004.  From the first day, Hugo Ramirez garnered a reputation of having unique Mexican foods with a California twist.  Menus changed quickly depending upon what fresh foods were available to him.  And he continued to talk with his mother in Mexico City to pick her brain about the different intense flavors he could use in his foods.  

After getting a shuttle from our hotel to downtown Asheville, we walked down Biltmore Ave. and took a turn onto Eagle Ave.  About a half block off Biltmore, we found the front door to Limones.  (see map)  Now, it was a weeknight and we didn't figure that we would need a reservation.  But the long narrow place was packed with diners and the hostess told us that we would probably be waiting 30 to 45 minutes.  We were still intrigued enough to stay and we went down to the small bar at the back of the restaurant.  The restaurant, itself, looked more like a traditional Southern restaurant - much more than one that served Mexican food with a French/California-cuisine twist.  

While we were seated at the bar, we had just ordered margaritas - a regular margarita with Herradura tequila for me, and a coconut-infused margarita for my wife - when the hostess came up to us.  She told us that she just had a cancellation for two and said that she could seat us right away.  She led us to a small table in far back corner of the restaurant not far from the bar and asked if the table was all right for us.  "Perfect," I said.  It was cozy, away from the heart of the restaurant that featured a number of banquette seats that I detest so much.  We were given menus to look thru and our server for the evening, Anthony, came over to greet us.  Anthony seemed to be distracted and indifferent throughout the evening.  

Since the menu changes on a regular basis depending upon what Ramirez can procure from his fresh food vendors, the menu we saw that evening was printed on paper.  (Click here to see the current day's menu from Limones.)  One of the first things we saw on the appetizer part of the menu was the red snapper ceviche.  The lime-marinated red snapper was delicious enough, but it came with some fresh guacamole on top along with some chopped red onions.  Fresh tortilla chips came on the side with the ceviche.  It was a wonderful start to the meal.  

I'll have to say that as intrigued as we were with just seeing the outside of Limones, we were very intrigued looking through the menu.  Some of the features they had that evening were a seafood stew with lobster, mussels, scallops and a white fish with roasted tomatoes, cannellini beans, chipotle peppers and basil; a slow-roasted short ribs dish with grits, asparagus, and a red Spanish sauce; and duck confit sopas with a roasted corn/green chili relish.   To say the menu was interesting was an understatement.

I ended up getting the lamb barbacoa enchiladas they had that evening.  The enchiladas came with goat cheese and pickled cauliflower and was drizzled with a green chile/tomatillo sauce.  The lamb enchiladas were absolutely delicious.  The lamb was tender and tasty, and the chile/tomatillo sauce had a smooth, yet spicy taste.  

Now the most interesting thing about this was that Anthony brought my enchiladas out a full two or three minutes before he brought my wife's entree to the table.  He silently sat my enchiladas down in front of me, turned and walked away.  I sat there with these wonderful looking enchiladas in front of me.  My wife told me to dig in, but I didn't want to be rude by starting out before she got her food.  When Anthony finally showed up with her meal, he once again sat it down wordlessly in front of my wife, turned and walked off.  We just thought his behavior was rather strange for a nice place like Limones.  

My wife's seared sea scallop dinner was very interesting.  It came on a bed of pureéd carrots with chopped asparagus, roasted mushrooms and organic spinach.  The scallops were topped with a chopped cilantro mix.  The scallops were big and meaty, seared lightly in butter.  The scallops were so moist and tender that all that was needed to cut into them was a fork.   

While everything we had for our main meal was very good, it wasn't all that filling leaving us room for dessert.  We ended up getting the bread pudding with a scoop of raspberry ice cream on top.  The bread pudding was warm and drizzled with a caramel sauce and served with fresh blueberries and a sliced strawberry.  The bread pudding was sinfully delicious and very rich.    

I can see why Limones is one of the more popular restaurants in Asheville.  Considering that we didn't have a reservation - we didn't think we needed one since it was in the middle of the week - our timing was impeccable as a reservation was cancelled just moments after we walked in.  The menu was intriguing and interesting, the decor and ambiance was upscale old South, and about the only thing that was sort of out of kilter was the rather indifferent attitude of our server that evening.  My food came out a good two to three minutes before my wife and there was no explanation as to why that happened.  Other than that, we felt our experience at Limones was top notch and it was one of the better places we ate at during our trip to Asheville.  

 

Twisted Laurel - Asheville, NC

During a walkabout in downtown Asheville during our stay there, it was getting later in the day where we needed something for lunch, but we didn't want to have something that was heavy.  My wife remembered seeing a Mediterranean restaurant that caught her fancy - Twisted Laurel.  We decided to head over there for a light lunch before heading back to our hotel to rest and get cleaned up.  

The Twisted Laurel in Asheville is one of three locations of the restaurant that was originally opened in March of 2014 by Angelo Karnezis.  Karnezis is the owner of Bellagio Bistro (formerly one of the Apollo Flame Bistro restaurants around Asheville), a Greek/Mediterranean restaurant about halfway between Asheville and Weaverville to the north of the city.  When the popular Arcade bar shut down in late 2013, Karnezis saw an opportunity to put in a new concept restaurant he had in mind and that was the first Twisted Laurel.  In August of that year, Karnezis took over the former Jack of Hearts tap room in Weaverville for the second Twisted Laurel location.  And not long after we were in Asheville, Karnezis opened a third location - Twisted Laurel at Grassy Creek - in Spruce Pine, a tourist destination in the Blue Ridge Mountains about an hours drive north of Asheville.  

We had walked by Twisted Laurel a number of times on our way back to our hotel from Asheville's downtown. It's located at the corner of College and Spruce on the east side of the downtown.  (see map)  It was well after 2 p.m. when we went there.  It was a warm day and we decided to eat inside instead of on the large patio they have in front of the place.  The main dining room/bar features a decor of exposed bricks, steel beams across the ceiling and a concrete floor.  A small bar area was toward the back of the restaurant.  

We sat ourselves at a table near the bar and we were soon greeted by a server who dropped off a couple menus for us to look over. I noticed on their beer menu board that they had a locally brewed Kolsch on tap and I ordered that.  I like a nice light Kolsch on a warm summer day, but I was soon informed by our server that they were out of the Kolsch.  Slightly bummed, I resorted to a Green Man IPA - that pretty much became my local beer of choice after a few days in Asheville.  

It's a limited menu during the daytime at Twisted Laurel.  During the evening, they feature a number of pasta dishes, Greek specialties and pizza.  It's mostly sandwiches and salads during the day.  And that was fine with  us, we didn't want a big lunch as we had dinner plans for the evening.  

My wife ended up a sandwich/salad combo - the Super Sub with turkey and roast beef with a Greek salad.  The sandwich was topped with fresh onions, chopped lettuce and tomatoes.  The Greek salad featured the sliced onion and tomatoes, Kalamata olives and pepperoncinis.  The bread was spongy and fresh, and my wife thought it was fine for what it was.

I got the gyro with a side of fries.  The sliced gyro meat didn't seem like it had come directly off a spit, and the pita bread was a little dried out.  It wasn't the greatest gyro I've had, but it was all right.  Just all right.  The fries were basically throw away - lukewarm and sort of limp.  We just shrugged our shoulders and finished what we could - or what we wanted to finish.  

While we liked the decor of the Twisted Laurel and the service was very good, we thought the lunch that we both had was pretty average, at best.  I'm guessing their night time fare - which features a more extensive menu for lunch - is a step above the bland gyro and basic sub sandwich we got on our visit.   We noticed that it was a popular place in the evenings when we would walk by going back to our hotel, so I'm guessing that the food is probably better in the evening.  Still, it was pretty basic for lunch and even thought that was sort of all we needed that day, I wish it would have been a little better. 

Early Girl Eatery - Asheville, NC

During our stay in Asheville, we wandered out one morning to find a breakfast place that featured a good ol' Southern-style breakfast.  We had passed a little breakfast/lunch restaurant a couple times in downtown Asheville that had piqued our interest and decided to give it a try - it was a fun and funky little farm-to-table place called Early Girl Eatery.

John and Julie Stehling met while they were both working at the Hominy Grill, a place that specializes in Lowcountry cuisine located in Charleston, SC where John's brother, Robert, was the chef/owner.  The Stehling brothers both knew their way around a kitchen growing up on a North Carolina acreage where the family grew their own fresh vegetables and cooked fresh, natural foods in the kitchen.  

John and Julie left Hominy Grill and began to travel across America, then their travels took them to Asia for a time.  The two had talked about eventually settling down - probably in Asheville - and opening their own restaurant that would feel like walking into someone's grandmother's home and having a good ol' down-home Southern meal.  The Stehling's found a spot in downtown Asheville and they opened Early Girl Eatery in October of 2001.  

Pictured right - Julie and John Stehling.  Photo courtesy Explore Asheville.com

The Stehling's have branched out with another restaurant that they opened in Asheville in 2014, a chicken-and-waffle place in West Asheville called King Daddy's that features five different types of waffles and nine different styles of fried chicken.  Now, I like waffles and I like fried chicken, but I've never been able to grasp the concept of having waffles and chicken together for the same meal.  

Early Girl Eatery is located along Wall Street, a small side street in downtown Asheville.  (see map)  It was around 8:30 when we got there and they had been open for about an hour.  We entered the place to find a small area up front with a bustling kitchen area behind a counter.  A young lady greeted us, grabbed a couple of menus and escorted us down a long hallway into the dining room.

The dining room reminded me of a small-town farm community cafe.  Wooden tables and chairs lined the floor space in the brightly naturally lit room.  We were greeted by our server, a nice young lady by the name of Lene who got coffee for my wife and fresh-squeezed orange juice for me to start out.  

The menu at Early Girl Eatery features a number of Southern cuisine items with a healthy twist.  Nearly all of the foods served at the restaurant are locally-grown and farm-fresh.  There were some decadent things on the menu - the Porky Bowl featured barbecued pork and home fries with scrambled eggs and cheese topped with a bacon gravy.  But they also had healthy items such as the Veggie Breakfast Bowl, Spinach potato pancakes, and a sweet potato egg scramble.  

My wife wasn't certain what she wanted to get.  She's been on an egg-whites only kick for sometime and she ended up ordering the "omelet of the day" made with egg-whites.  It featured fresh mushrooms - a lot of mushrooms, local Heritage Homestead cheese, scallions and chopped bacon.  A side of home fries came with the omelet and she ordered toasted fresh-baked rye bread to go along with her breakfast.  She declared her omelet to be delicious.  But she did say there were probably too many mushrooms in the omelet - she's been slowly ramping up to liking fresh mushrooms in some of her foods after a lifetime of completely hating mushrooms.  She picked a few of the mushrooms out and put them on my plate to eat.  They were earthy and flavorful liked they had just been picked, sautéed and served up.  

I was in a bit of a quandary as to what to order.  I thought about the multi-grain pancakes - for a moment.  I saw something on their lunch menu - the hormone-free meat loaf - that got me thinking.  But I ended up going with the Southern breakfast - farm-fresh eggs fried over-easy, with grits, bacon and toasted fresh-baked whole wheat bread.  It was a basic breakfast, but the bacon was delicious.  Early Girl Eatery gets their bacon from Benton's, a 70 year-old butcher shop located in the shadow of the Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee.  The bacon was lean and flavorful with a great smoked-meat taste.  

The grits I had were also very good.  My gold-standard for grits are the ones I had while we stayed at the Hilton DeSoto in Savannah, GA a number of years ago.  These rivaled the taste of the grits served there.  While I'm far from a connoisseur of grits, I know that I like them to be a little creamy, not too dry, but not too runny.  The grits at Early Girl Eatery pressed all the right buttons and I was extremely happy to eat them.  

One other thing I have to talk about is the grape jelly that they had in a squeeze bottle on the table.  I don't know what it was about the grape jellies or jams that were served in Asheville, but they were some of the most delicious I've ever had.  I couldn't get enough of the grape jelly that tasted like it was homemade and not commercially produced.  I was kicking myself for not asking Lene if they got the jelly locally and if it were available for purchase. 

We were more than happy with our breakfast at the Early Girl Eatery.  It was a quaint little place that featured a nice comfy atmosphere along with farm-fresh food and very good service.  It's not fancy at Early Girl Eatery and it really is like going to someone's home to have a good down-home cooked breakfast.  It's sort of hidden in downtown Asheville, but it was worth the find. 

A Drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway

A couple years ago when we were visiting friends in far western North Carolina, we came across an entrance for the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We decided to drive along the road for awhile, but conditions quickly deteriorated with dense fog enveloping the roadway.  After a couple miles, we turned around and headed back down out of the fog and continued on to our next destination.  However, during our trip to Asheville, we decided to find information on the Blue Ridge Parkway and go for a drive along the trail.  

Our first stop was to the Asheville Visitor Center at the suggestion of my wife.  The Visitor Center is located just north of downtown just off of Interstate 240 and is the starting point for many of the trolley tours that take tourists around Asheville.  (see map)  In addition to providing local tours, the Visitor Center has a number of brochures about attractions around the area, they have a gift shop and a ticket counter where they sell admissions to the Biltmore Estate.  I was looking through some of the brochures when my wife approached one of the many volunteers at the desk to ask her about where to go on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Well, it turned out that she was talking to the right person, a lady who told us that we needed to go up to Mt. Pisgah - specifically, the Pisgah Inn.  "It's about a 45 minute drive - probably an hour if you stop along the way at some of the scenic turn-outs," she explained to us.  "But you'll get a full Blue Ridge Parkway experience on the way up and back."  She showed us an entrance to the Blue Ridge on a map she provided to us and it wasn't far from our hotel.  My wife and I decided to take off and head over to the parkway from the Visitor Center.  

It was just after 10:30 when we pulled onto the Blue Ridge Parkway around mile marker 395 just east of Asheville and we turned south.  The roadway wasn't all that wide and the speed limit varied from 35 to 45 miles an hour.  There were no shoulders along the road and there were a lot of curves and turn backs along the route.  We had rented a Volkswagen Passat for our trip and it handled the mountain roads very well.  

My wife particularly loved the tunnels that bored through the mountainside.  We went through 9 tunnels on our journey up to and just past the Pisgah Inn.  The lengths ranged from 375 feet at the Ferris Knob #3 tunnel to 1434 feet at the Pine Mountain tunnel - the longest along the 469 mile stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  

The Blue Ridge Parkway is actually a National Park, the longest linear park in the nation.  The roadway and land on either side of the parkway is maintained by the U.S. National Park Service and it has been the most visited park in the nation since 1946 with the exception of three years.  The Blue Ridge Parkway spans from near Waynesboro, VA on the northern terminus to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park near Cherokee, NC on the south end.  

The Blue Ridge Mountains get their name from the blue hue haze that is caused by isoprene emanating from the millions and millions trees along the range.  The Blue Ridge Mountains are technically part of the Appalachian Mountains, but are separated by the Great Appalachian Valley.  The Mountains stretch from northeastern Georgia and end in the hills of southern Pennsylvania.  

The Blue Ridge Parkway was commissioned by President Franklin Roosevelt in the mid-30's as part of his New Deal programs that put people back to work after the Great Depression.  Much of the roadwork was done by local contractors who worked under the Works Progress Administration along with workers with the Federal Emergency Relief Agency and Civilian Conservation Corps who did landscaping, painting, clean-up and roadside recreation areas.  While most of the work was completed just before World War II, but there were parts of the parkway that weren't connected until the mid-60's.  Well, with one exception - a seven mile stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway in northern North Carolina was finally completed in 1987.  It was over 50 years from the start of construction in western North Carolina to when the final part of the road was completed.

As you can see, there were some pretty vistas along the way up to the Pisgah Inn.  There were a number of turnouts with each one offering something completely different in views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  It was a partly cloudy day and somewhat humid giving even more of a hazy view of the mountains.  

Along the way, we found out that the Pisgah Forest that the Blue Ridge Parkway snaked through is known as the Cradle of Forestry in the United States.   George Vanderbilt - the man who built the Biltmore mansion - owned over 150,000 acres south of Asheville, the vast majority of it forest land.  One of the men working for him to help build the Biltmore estate was a young forester by the name of Gifford Pinchot.  As a little boy, Pinchot remembered how his father lamented that the timber harvested off their family land wasn't properly replaced.  As a young man, Pinchot came up with a plan for reforestation of cut land timber.  Vanderbilt hired Pinchot for his ideas of replanting and replenishing the forest after cuts were made for wood used on the estate and for farmland to grow crops.  

Pinchot showed Vanderbilt how he could make a profit on the timber cut on the land and with some of the profits he could have trees replanted for future cuts.  Much of the conversation efforts of the forest owned by Vanderbilt were implemented by Pinchot and continued after he became the first head of the U.S. Forest Service.  After his death in 1914, George Vanderbilt's widow sold much of the family's land to the U.S. National Park Service for less than $5 an acre with the land becoming a large portion of what is now the Pisgah National Forest.  

We continued on the way to the Pisgah Inn and beyond before turning around at a vista turnout and heading back toward Asheville.   With the stops along the way to look at the magnificent views, it took us just over an hour to go approximately 20 miles.  

We decided to stop at the Pisgah Inn to check out the view from there.  The Pisgah Inn dates back nearly 100 years when the first buildings were built in 1918.  With Mt. Pisgah nearby, it became a popular destination for people looking to relax and get out of the heat of the summer with its 5000 foot elevation.  When the Blue Ridge Parkway was completed in both directions from the Pisgah Inn, it became even more of a popular destination after World War II.  The existing Pisgah Inn was constructed in the mid-1960's and the original buildings were demolished in 1990 after it was determined they were no longer safe to inhabit.  It was getting close to lunch time and they did have a restaurant up there, but we were more interested in heading back to Asheville and going to a place that had some craft beers - my main reason why I wanted to go to Asheville in the first place.  
It took us about a half-hour to get back to Asheville as we didn't stop at any of the turn-outs on the way back. Our trip along the Blue Ridge Parkway was absolutely worth the time it took to go up to just past the Pisgah Inn and back.  I complained earlier that the view at The Blowing Rock was worth nowhere near the $7.00 per person they charged for it.  And after driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway and seeing some of the views up there, the people who own Blowing Rock should be ashamed of themselves.  There were some spectacular - and FREE - views along the parkway.  It's definitely worth the time and effort to travel the Blue Ridge Parkway if you make it to Asheville.   

Isa's Bistro - Asheville, NC

One night during our stay in Asheville, we were looking for a good place to dine.  We asked one of the very helpful front desk persons at the Hilton Garden Inn - Downtown Asheville where a good place to dine would be.  We were looking for a low-key, unpretentious place that served good food.  He immediately came back with a place we had seen in our walks around downtown - Isa's Bistro.  "And we can even take you there," he cheerfully said.  Moments later, their electric shuttle car dropped us off in front of Isa's Bistro located at 1 Battery Park in downtown Asheville.  (see map) 

Tony Fraga is a local developer whose FIRC Group oversees commercial and residential properties in Asheville and in South Florida.  One of the properties Fraga's group manages is the Haywood Park Hotel, a boutique hotel in downtown Asheville.  In business now for over 30 years, the Haywood Park is located in a building that was once the Bon Marché department store, a high-end establishment that catered to the well-heeled who would vacation in Asheville.  In the late 30's, the department store was taken over by Ivey's, a North Carolina-based department store that was eventually bought out by Dilliard's in 1990.  Ivey's had moved to a mall location in Asheville in the mid-70's and the building languished before being turned into a hotel in 1985.  

At the corner of Battery Park and Haywood next to the hotel's lobby was a longtime local favorite restaurant by the name of the Flying Frog.  The owners eventually changed it to a bistro by the name of Solace before closing it in 2012.  Tony Fraga came along with plans to do his own restaurant - named after his wife, Isabel, - and he opened Isa's Bistro in June of 2013.  Isa's Bistro executive chef, Duane Fernandes - a double culinary school graduate from both Johnson and Wales, and the Culinary Institute of Charleston - had worked in AAA Four Diamond and Five Diamond restaurants in South Carolina and Virginia before he joined the staff at Thomas Keller's iconic Per Se in New York City, a Michelin 3-star restaurant.  Prior to moving over to Isa's Bistro, Fernandes was in charge of the restaurant at the luxurious Grove Park Inn and Spa in Asheville.  

It was around 7:30 when we walked into Isa's Bistro.  We were greeted by a host who said that we could pretty much have our choice to sit anywhere we liked.  The place was pretty quiet.  "After a long holiday weekend, it's been pretty slow," he explained.  "But that's all right.  It's allowed us to catch our breath."  There were wrought iron tables out front for sidewalk dining and a nice contemporary bar area, but we took a seat near a window that allowed us to do some people watching while we dined.

The dining area was spacious, but had little areas bounded by short walls.  We were soon greeted by our server for the evening, a young friendly guy by the name of Brady who gave us menus to look over.  My wife ordered a glass of pinot grigio and I got a pale ale beer that they had on tap.

On the wall near where we were seated were the original doors to the restaurant with two photos flanking the doors.  The photo on the left was of Julia Child, the photo on the right was of James Beard - personal heroes of chef Duane Fernandes and two influential people in terms of haute cuisine in the United States.

Downstairs where the restrooms were located was a private dining area called The Cellar.  It featured areas for group dining, receptions or gatherings.  There was a nice den area with a fireplace down in The Cellar area along with a large collection of wines served at Isa's Bistro.  

Like his mentor Thomas Keller, chef Duane Fernandes is a firm believer in the "farm-to-fork" concept of serving only locally grown, sustainable foods.  Because of that, we were told, there's an evolving menu that features nightly specials of foods that were procured within the last 24 hours.  But the main menu is usually intact with much of the same items available daily.  

Isa's Bistro features a number of appetizers or small plate varieties to share among diners.   My wife wanted to try something and one of the small plates specials they had that evening were Prince Edward Island mussels served in a butter sauce.  (Actually, I wanted to try the grilled octopus, but she didn't want anything to do with that.)  We were served a small bowl of the mussels that were all plump and meaty in the shell.  But the broth - wow!  The taste was out of this world.  Just two small pieces of toasted bread came with the mussels and those were quickly consumed after dipping the bread into the broth.  We made Brady get us some more bread because there was still a lot of the butter sauce in the bottom of the bowl and it was all I could do from just picking up the bowl and slurping it back.  

During the course of the evening, I spilled my full glass of beer literally dumping it on the table as the frosted glass slipped from my hand.  I was embarrassed and apologetic to Brady and the host as they did their best to clean up the mess.  They finally just moved us to the table next to us, considering there were only two other tables occupied in the restaurant when we were there.  

For dinner that night, my wife got one of the specials on the menu - Julia Child's chicken.  It was two pieces of fresh farm raised chicken, roasted in herbs and served on a bed of multi-vegetable succotash.  The chicken was tender and my wife said it had a load of flavor from the herbs it was cooked with.  The succotash, she thought, was perfectly cooked with a variety of beans, corn, peppers and radishes.  She thought it was the perfect meal - light and healthy. 

Me? Well, there didn't seem to be anything on the menu that jumped out at me.  Oh, there was a lot to choose from including a North Carolina pork chop, a "fresh-catch-of-the-day" caught along with Carolina coast with shrimp, and a pan-seared North Carolina mountain trout.  But I ended up getting the Carolina bison brisket with pasta.  The bison was braised for 10 hours making the bison moist and tender without losing the great beef flavor, and it was served with some pasta in a wonderful brown sauce.  It was the perfect portion size in regard to the braised bison and pasta - not a lot of both, but enough to satiate my appetite.  It wasn't heavy, nor was it too light.  And it was simply delicious.  

We thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of our visit to Isa's Bistro.  We were told it was a great place to eat and we certainly weren't disappointed.  While it wasn't good for them that evening, we liked that we were one of just a very few patrons in the place on a quiet weeknight.  And because of that, we got excellent service from Brady who got a nice tip at the end of the night - not only for the spilled beer incident - but for his attentive nature and friendly demeanor.  We ate at a lot of nice places during our time in Asheville and Isa's Bistro was definitely a meal that we'll remember.   

Biltmore - Asheville, NC

When we went to North Carolina earlier this year for a family wedding, we spent some time in Asheville.  One of the major tourist attractions in North Carolina is located outside of Asheville - the Biltmore Estate built by George W. Vanderbilt III, the grandson of one of the richest men of his day, Cornelius Vanderbilt.  My wife had read up on the Biltmore Estate before we went and she saw that they had a great rose garden and conservatory on the grounds and she was adamant that we go there while we were in Asheville.  

When George Vanderbilt came to Asheville in 1888 to visit his mother who was spending the summer in the Blue Ridge Mountains, he envisioned a place of his own so grand and splendid that it would be called the finest home in America.  Vanderbilt bought 125,000 acres of land south of Asheville and construction on the home began in 1889.  The construction crews had their own brick factory on-site, as well as a massive woodworking shop that employed artisans from all over the country.  A three mile long railroad spur to the construction site fed materials for the building of the home.

When it was finished in 1895, it was easily the largest home in America - 250 rooms - 34 of which were bedrooms for family, guests and servants - 43 bathrooms and 65 fireplaces.  The house had an indoor swimming pool, a bowling alley, a gymnasium and a game room that featured card tables and a pool table.  It also featured a long patio deck off the back of the house that afforded some stunning vistas of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Vanderbilt entertained family members for the first time on Christmas Eve in 1895.  

The grounds of the estate - as well as much of the wooded area surrounding the estate - were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York's Central Park and referred to as the father of American landscaping.  Olmsted designed the long lawns, gardens, fountains and green space that surrounded the property.  During construction of the estate, nearly 1000 acres were cleared for building plots - with much of the cleared timber used for wood inside the mansion and other estate buildings - and for farmland to feed the workers, and later, the Vanderbilt family.  Under Vanderbilt's guidance, Olmsted replanted 300 acres of white pine trees in 1891, and in 1892 he hired Gifford Pinchot, a young forester who eventually would go on to become the first head of the U.S. Forest Service, to come in and work on a concept of managing forest growth while making a profit on the sale of timber for the Vanderbilt's.   When George Vanderbilt passed away in 1914 at the age of 51, his wife Edith sold nearly 90,000 acres for less than $5 bucks an acre to the U.S. Government for the establishment of the Pisgah National Forest.  

A couple weeks before we went to North Carolina, my wife had me look up the particulars for going to the Biltmore Estate.  While we weren't too whippy on actually seeing the interior of the mansion itself, we were very interesting in the gardens and the conservatory.  However, they didn't have an admission just for the outdoor area, you had to go to through the mansion first.  And it wasn't cheap - normal admission price was $75 per person.  However, we were able to get $20 off each ticket for ordering online over a week in advance.  That helped take some of the sting out of the overall price of going there.  (We found that admission prices vary depending upon the day of the week or the time you want to visit.)  

We made reservations to go to Biltmore on a Tuesday morning around 10 a.m.  It turns out that we really didn't need to make the reservations.  We went in to the Cedarcliff Ave. entrance off Biltmore Ave. south of Asheville (see map) and took the long, meandering road through a tree-lined road to the check point building of the estate.  After they scanned our tickets that we had printed out, we carried on to the parking area.  They have shuttle buses that can take you from the parking lots to the front entrance of the mansion, or it's a short walk up a sidewalk that comes out on the front lawn of the estate.  

After a quick walk-thru of the horse barn/turned tourist trap next to the mansion, we entered the building and started out on a self-guided tour through the Vanderbilt home.  (The audio tour was $10.95 for the earphones and device.)  The Biltmore mansion has been open to the public since 1930 when George Vanderbilt's daughter Cornelia Cecil thought it would be a boost to the local economy during the Great Depression.  The Cecil family oversees the operations at Biltmore which now include a winery, hotels and shopping areas within the estate.  

I'm not going to bore you with a bunch of photos of the interior, but there were some interesting things to see in the place, especially how people lived in luxury at the start of the 20th century.  The main entrance featured a beautiful arboretum - not the one we were interested in seeing - but a much smaller one that featured a number of ferns and vines that grew with the help of the natural light coming in the large windows.  I was impressed with the stonework inside and out of the building wondering how in the heck workers were able to lift some of the stone pieces to such heights to set them in place.  

Right off the bat, the mansion reminded me of the one time I visited the Hearst Castle, also known as San Simeon, located along the California coast.  There were dozens of large tapestries that hung from the walls in the vast rooms located in the mansion, similar to the ones William Randolph Hearst had in his home that overlooks the Pacific Ocean.  The lighting throughout the house was subdued using the same lighting methods they had in the 1920's.  

I was particularly interested in the kitchen areas that were in the mansion.  There were various kitchens of various sizes throughout the house that ranged from a smaller one for when it was just the immediate family in the house, to a kitchen that was large enough to accommodate large numbers of people, to a kitchen that was used just for the servants and help.  I was interested in the lay-out of the kitchens, what types of ovens or stoves that were used, and what type of utensils that they used to make the food.  

There was a sizable crowd there that day and we were forced to stop or slow down on our route through the mansion.  I finally said that I'd had enough of seeing expansive "his and hers" bedrooms, servants quarters, dining rooms, billiard rooms and libraries in the house, so we sort of cut out of the walking tour as quick as we could.  

Off to the side of the house was the garden area that featured a walkway covered in vines and greenery along the South Terrace.  It was a very warm day in Western North Carolina and the shade was a welcome relief.  

Down the steps from the wall that featured the overhanging vines was the rose garden.  The beautiful sculpted garden featured walkways that meandered around dozens of different varieties of rose bushes.  We grow roses at our house - we have over two dozen rose bushes - and this was the place that we were particularly interested in checking out during our visit to the Biltmore Estate.  

The conservatory was located just beyond the spacious rose garden.  It was basically a brick building with long greenhouse buildings in the back of the place.  It was warm and humid inside the building, but it was comfortable enough to walk around.  Protecting the environment is a big thing at the Biltmore Estate and they have six acres of solar panels that heat water and provide electricity for different areas of the estate.  

There were dozens - no, probably more like hundreds - of tropical plants, palm trees and delicate flowering plants in the arboretum.  The floral scents emanating from the building were pleasant.  There were a bunch of beautiful plants that we weren't familiar with and we had a fun time identifying some of the ones we didn't know much about.  

Back out to the rose garden, we spent a long time walking around looking for rose bushes that we had at home, as well as rose bushes that were pretty and we made note of to look up when we got home.  There was a deep orange rose bushes - Orange Sensation - that we fell in love with and made a note to see if we could find one to plant in our backyard to go along with the other colors we already have.  

Unfortunately, many of the rose bushes were just past their first prime growth of the season.  (Many of ours back home in Iowa hadn't even bloomed yet by the time we left for North Carolina.)  Still, we were able to stop and literally "smell the roses" on many of the plants that they had in what had to be the largest rose garden we've ever seen.  

We went through some of the other outdoor gardens they had at the Biltmore Estates - the Italian Garden, the shrub garden, and the azalea garden (which didn't have many - if any - blooms left.  We walked along the front yard to the main fountain and then up to the wall that faced the front of the mansion to get this picture.  We'd had enough and we walked back to our car, but we were sort of forced to drive through the rest of the estate to see the equestrian area, the hotel and inn on the grounds, the shopping area and the winery.  We were more than ready to get out of there by the time we drove back into Asheville.  

A number of movies have been filmed at the Biltmore mansion including scenes from Forrest Gump, Ri¢hie Ri¢h, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, and one of my all-time favorite films - the very underrated, but critically acclaimed Being There that starred Peter Sellers in his last role in a full-featured movie.  I suppose Biltmore was fine enough to visit, but we were much more interested in the grounds, gardens and conservatory than we were with the mansion. We felt it was a little expensive for what it was - even with the $20 per person reduction in price for buying tickets online more than seven days of the visit.  If we could have skipped the tour through the mansion and gone directly to the gardens, we probably would have liked it much more.  It took us about 3 hours to see what we saw at the Biltmore Estate.  But, we also found that the crowds diminished tremendously after 1 p.m.  If you want to go, you may want to go in the afternoon.  (There are also guided tours through the estate that you can buy in addition to the regular admission tickets - and we understand there is a very nice Christmas lights tour of the mansion.)  There's a lot to do in and around Asheville, but the Biltmore Estate is probably the best thing to see in the area.  That is, if you're into that type of thing.  

The Beers of Asheville

One of the reasons I wanted to go to Asheville for a few days was to check out a handful of the numerous microbreweries and brewpubs that are located in the area.  There are about two dozen breweries located in the Asheville city limits with another dozen or so within a 15 minute drive of the city.  Since we were only going to be there for a few days, we knew we couldn't hit all of the breweries, but we were going to hit as many as we could.  

How Asheville became "Beer City, U.S.A." is something that seemingly happened overnight to many, but the story dates back to the early 90's when a nuclear waste engineer by the name of Oscar Wong met a young brewmaster by the name of John McDermott who was heading up the beer making at the Dilworth Brewing Company in Charlotte.  Wong had been somewhat of a home brewer during his time in college and always fancied himself as a beer connoisseur.  Wong and McDermott decided to look for an area to develop a brewery and they moved up to Asheville in 1992.  It took a couple years for Wong - who was the money man after he sold his engineering company - and McDermott - the brewmaster - to finally open Highland Brewing Company.  It was in the basement of a restaurant that had opened earlier in the year - and which is still there today - Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria.  Using mostly reclaimed dairy equipment, Wong and McDermott produced their first beer in December of 1994.  McDermott had aspirations of large expansion throughout the Southeast, but Wong liked the smaller microbrewery concept.  McDermott eventually left in 1997 and Wong stayed on with a new brewmaster.   By 2006 the brewery had moved to a larger location on the east side of Asheville, and in 2014 Oscar Wong turned the reins of Highland Brewing Company over to his daughter, Leah Wong Ashburn.  

The biggest problem with the initial growth of microbreweries in Asheville, however, was that North Carolina's liquor laws dated back to just after Prohibition was repealed in the early 1930's.  Certain stipulations - such as how strong the beer could be, where it could be served, etc. - were archaic compared to laws in other states.  It took until around 2002 before lobbying efforts commenced for the growing number of microbreweries in North Carolina and another three years before legislators passed new laws allowing for stronger than 6% ABV beers to be brewed and served in the state.  But it wasn't for another three or four years that the boom in Asheville breweries and brew pubs began.  Asheville won their first Beer City, U.S.A. designation in 2010 and has won or shared the title for four different years.  (Portland, OR and Grand Rapids, MI also have won or shared the title over the years, as well.)   

Other established craft breweries from around the nation have also jumped into the Asheville/Western Carolina beer craze, most notably the Oskar Blues brewery and the New Belgium brewery based out of Colorado.  New Belgium opened a tasting room in May of 2016 and then opened a full brewing operation on Asheville's west side just about a year ago.  Oskar Blues owner Dale Katechis had vacationed in the Pisgah National Forest for a number of years.  An avid biker, Katechis kept a bike in Brevard, NC - about 35 miles from Asheville - so he could use it when he came there to get away from Colorado.  He liked the area so much ended up putting in a brewery/gastropub in Brevard opening on New Years Eve in 2012.  

When we got into Asheville, we were asked by the personable young man at the Hilton Garden Inn - Downtown Asheville what brought us to the area.  "Brewpubs," I quickly replied.  "Well, we do have a lot of them here," he said laughingly.  Their electric car shuttle service took us up to Pack Square which sits at the top of what is known as The South Slope, an area that has a number of brewpubs just south of Asheville's downtown.  We walked down the hill and found ourselves in front of the Wicked Weed Brewing Pub.  (see map)  This combination brewery and brewpub was founded in 2011 by brothers Walt and Luke Dickinson, who were joined in the venture by lifelong friend Ryan Guthy, and his parents, Rick and Denise, after the Guthy's tried some of the beers the Dickinson's had brewed at their home.  (Rick Guthy was the co-founder/owner of the Guthy-Renker direct marketing company that made dozens of infomercials over the years.  He retired in 2012 just before he invested in Wicked Weed.)

The brewpub was packed inside and out with people enjoying the Sunday night of the Memorial Day weekend.  We were lucky to score a couple seats at the bar from a couple who was departing when we went up to the bar to order a beer.  The name Wicked Weed came from a quote attributed to England's King Henry VIII who declared hops to be a "wicked and pernicious weed" during his reign in the 16th century.   We ended up having a couple Freak of Nature double IPA's that they had on tap.  They were hoppy, yet very smooth on the back end.  

While we were in Asheville, the huge buzz going on was the announcement just a couple three weeks before of the sale of Wicked Weed to Anheuser-Busch/InBev.  While this rankled many beer aficionados in Asheville and elsewhere, you couldn't tell it with the dozens of people who were enjoying their beer.  Plus, as we spent the next few days in Asheville, many people we talked to - including bartenders at other brewpubs - were happy for the people at Wicked Weed.  One female bartender at a beer pub we went to a couple days later told us, "Good for them.  They're good people.  They make great beer."  

Outside on the street in front of Wicked Weed, there were two young brothers Andrew and Kyle Hernandez playing guitars.  They called themselves The Buskits (a take off on the term "busking" for European street performers) and their father was standing next to the fence to supervise them as they were playing.  We got to talking to the father Chris Hernandez and he told us his boys - Andrew is 11 and Kyle is 8 - started playing guitar when they were both just 4 years old.  "Completely self taught," Chris told us as the boys played their interpretation of classic rock standards on their acoustic guitars, the whole while never changing the neutral expressions on their faces.  They were very good musicians and attracted a huge crowd.  We put five bucks into the guitar case after listening to them for about 15 minutes.  (If you want to see a video of them perform, click on their Facebook page and scroll down to one of the videos posted on their page.  It's worth the time to do it.)  

From there we went up the slope to Patton Ave., one of the main drags in downtown Asheville.  We stopped momentarily on the street and saw a sign that said One World Brewing Company.  (see map)  It had an arrow that pointed back down this small alleyway that was between a Mexican restaurant and a burger joint.  We decided to walk down the alley and see what was down there.  We were greeted by a young guy standing in the doorway.  He said, "Welcome to One World.  We're located down the stairs.  Come on in!"

We went down a small flight of stairs, took a left down some more steps and then went left again.  After a few more steps we found ourselves in a basement bar with a nano-brewery.  Jason "Jay" Schutz had been home-brewing beer for about 10 years and with the encouragement of his wife, Lisa, the couple opened the small brewery in 2014.  Initially, the brewery was able to do about 40 gallon batches of beer, but it looks like they've expanded their brewing facilities since they opened three years ago.  We hung out and enjoyed a pint of the Ashevegas pale ale that they had on tap.  (It was also at One World that my wife found out there such as thing as half pint glasses available.)

In the following days, we wandered into a number of places including a place called the Thirsty Monk (see map) that featured a Belgian bar in their basement with American beers on their main level.  Opened in 2008, the Thirsty Monk brews about 20 full-time and seasonal beers - mainly Belgian-styles of beer - in addition to a number of rotating Belgian and American craft brews available at their two bars.  We went to the basement first and I made the rookie mistake of asking for a pale ale on tap.  "Only Belgian beers down here," the totally urban hipster snapped back at me.  "You need to go upstairs and get a pale ale."  OH!  Sorry!  Well, believe it or not, I'm not a big fan of Belgian ales, so we went upstairs to have a beer.  I ended up getting a Thirsty Monk Farmhouse IPA - a saison-style beer with its roots hearkening back to a Belgian-style beer with a lot of hoppiness to the beer.  The beer was just all right in my book, but the Thirsty Monk was a neat place to have a beer.

Literally across the street from the Thirsty Monk on Patton Ave. was a place called Jack of the Wood. (see map)  It was a traditional neighborhood pub with a great beer selection, a food menu, and live music at nights.  

We ended up going inside to have a beer and we sat at the bar talking with a bartender and a lady who worked there who had just gotten off work and was having a beer before she left.  Jack of the Wood has been open since 1997 and was once a brewpub with beer being brewed in the back until the owner moved the brewing operation to a larger and more efficient location in Asheville.  I enjoyed a Green Man Rambler pale ale and it was very good.  I told my wife that I'd like to go visit the Green Man brewery at some point.

Well, it just so turned out that the brewery that was once in the back of Jack of the Wood was the original Green Man Brewery.   A couple days later, we ended up going to the Green Man Brewery south of Asheville's downtown on Buxton Ave. (see map)  The three story brewery/tap room is the culmination of years of expansion by Green Man in Asheville which was started by Philadelphia native Joe Eckert in the back of Jack of the Wood.  When current owner Dennis Thies bought the brewery in 2010, he started a campaign of expanding distribution which meant they needed more space for their brewing equipment.  Green Man Brewery opened their "Green Mansion" brewery/tap room in 2016.  

The entrance to the tap room featured a high-ceilinged room with the Green Man logo on the wall over looking the small bar.  The Green Man legend dates back to medieval England involving a mystical man, also known as Father Nature, that lived in the woods overseeing nature.  (He was also known as "Jack of the Wood", hence the tie-in to the two names.)  There was a small gift shop area off to the side of the bar.  

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Not much was happening at the small bar area downstairs, but we heard some commotion going on upstairs.  I asked the young girl what was upstairs and she said, "Oh, that's our main tap room.  We have a deck up there, too."  Heading up the stairs, we found a large tap room with a long bar, some interesting fixtures and an outside covered patio.  We ended up sitting at the bar and had a couple beers each - I got the Wayfarer India pale ale on this visit.  Green Man had some very good beer.  

Another interesting place that we ended up at during our visit was the Bhramari Brewhouse, one of the newer South Slope breweries in Asheville.  (see map)  Opened in 2016, this brewpub took over the space that was once the Asheville Music School, a non-profit entity that educates budding musicians of all ages.  The brewery is named after Bhramari, the Hindu Goddess of bees.   

We had hoped they had lunch in the place, but their restaurant didn't open until 5 p.m.  Still we thought it was a cool enough place to have a quick beer.  We tried the Lorelai IPA, a forward tasting beer made with American hops.  It was a good beer and I was glad we stopped in.  

One of the local brewpubs that we did go to for lunch on our last day in Asheville was the Lexington Avenue Brewery, or the "LAB" as its known to the locals.  Located on Lexington Avenue in downtown Asheville (see map), LAB bills itself as a microbrewery and gastropub.  Originally opened in 2010 by two cousins who had a deep love for craft beer, LAB underwent a massive expansion about five years ago and added a tap room/restaurant that features a patio that faces Lexington Avenue.  (Look for an upcoming Road Tips entry on the Lexington Avenue Brewery.)

We went to a handful of other brewpubs/tap rooms around Asheville while we were there.  But quite honestly, there was no way we could have visited them all during our visit.  We would have been trashed all the time and we didn't to have our first visit to Asheville be spent in a drunken haze caused by 7.2% ABV beers.  Since we came back, I've done some reading up on some of the breweries we either missed or where we didn't spend enough time.  I hate to call myself a beer connoisseur, but I do like beer and I know what I like.  I found some very good beers in Asheville.  But it can almost be like a kid in a candy store - there's just so many to choose from.  However, I think we found a good cross-section of good and interesting beers during our trip to Asheville.  

The Lobster Trap - Asheville, NC

On our first day in Asheville, we walked around the downtown area trying a handful of the city's numerous brewpubs, taking in some sights and getting a lay of the land.  A place that we passed by a couple times caught our interest for food that evening, a nice looking restaurant by the name of The Lobster Trap.  We had a lot of options for dining that first night, but we ended up going over to The Lobster Trap located on Patton Ave.  (see map)

Amy Beard grew up in New England and ended up in Asheville around the turn of the 21st century.  One of the things that she missed about her home was the fresh seafood that she could have on a daily basis.  The only problem was that there wasn't any place in Asheville that had fresh seafood.  She had gone back home to visit family and friends in the Portland, ME area and one day she found herself sitting on The Lucky Catch, a shrimp and lobster boat owned by her lifelong friend Tom Martin.  She told "Captain Tom" that she really missed having fresh seafood - especially lobsters and oysters - while living in Asheville.  Brain storming on the deck of the boat over a few beers, Amy Beard came up with a restaurant concept in Asheville with Captain Tom providing the fresh lobsters, shrimp and oyster and making arrangements to have the fresh seafood flown in on a daily basis to Asheville.  

Beard went back to Asheville to find a spot for her restaurant.  Nine months after she had her restaurant idea on the back of a boat, The Lobster Trap opened in March of 2005.  Chef Mike McCarty came on board in 2008 and is  the head chef and managing partner today.  Captain Tom Martin still is catching lobsters for The Lobster Trap in Casco Bay off the Maine coast.  And still an owner of The Lobster Trap, Amy Beard eventually got married to a childhood sweetheart from Maine, moved back there to open a bookstore, as well as to coordinate the procurement and shipping of lobsters, shrimp, oysters and seafood that is flown to Asheville six days a week.  

(Pictured right - Mike McCarty, Captain Tom Martin and Amy Beard on the stern of the Lucky Catch.  Martin now owns three boats and also has a charter service that allows passengers to go catch their own lobsters.)

It was a holiday weekend when we were in Asheville and the city was packed with people.  We walked into The Lobster Trap around 8:15 with no reservation and we were told it would be a 30 to 45 minute wait.  The bar area was packed with people waiting for a table to open or having oysters and beer.  We ended up waiting outside for a few moments until some spots opened at the bar.  We sort of hung at one end of the bar, sitting on the edge of a small stage that is used for live music from time to time.  

On the wall opposite the bar area was a list of fresh oysters and some of the beers they had on tap.  It turns out that one of the local brewpubs supplying beer to The Lobster Trap - Oyster House Brewing Company - is owned by a former employee at the restaurant.  I ordered up an Oyster House Step Papa pale ale to enjoy while we waited for a table to open up.  (I wanted to go to Oyster House Brewing Company for lunch one day, but it turned out that the place doesn't open up until 3 p.m. through the week.  So, sadly, we never made it over.  Next time we go to Asheville, however...)

Near the bar area was the vibrant and very busy open kitchen.  A large salt-water tank with live lobsters was positioned along the front of the kitchen going back toward the restrooms.  One of the hallmarks of The Lobster Trap is that they adhere to the strict requirements set in place by the Monterrey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch in terms of how the seafood is fished from the sea.  Both restaurants and fishermen must follow guidelines in regard to sustainable and eco-friendly measures to keep the ocean intact and ensure a lasting environment for continued growth without overfishing certain areas.  The Lobster Trap is one of just seven restaurants in the state of North Carolina who are members of the Seafood Watch program.  

The restaurant, itself, was long and narrow with sort of an old-time, antique feeling to the place.  It featured antique-style lighting hanging from a tin ceiling with a number of wooden booths along a narrow aisle.  It was sort of loud in there, but it wasn't oppressive.  

The 30 to 45 minute wait actually turned out to be over an hour wait.  It was well past 9 p.m. when we were finally seated at a table toward the front of the restaurant.  It was entirely too late for us to be eating, but we were having a good time passing the time with some good beers and a couple glasses of Pinot Grigio for my wife while we waited.  

We were greeted by our server for the evening, Rob, and we immediately ordered up a dozen of the oysters on the half-shell sampler that they had flown in fresh from Massachusetts.  They weren't cheap - $32 bucks compared to the $15 oysters Gulf-raised oysters that we could have had.  But, hey!  We were on vacation!  The platter consisted of Sweet Petite Bay oysters, Island Creek farm-raised oysters, and the ever-popular Wellfleet oysters that are a staple at nearly any oyster bar found in New England.  The oysters were all meaty and yummy.   My wife thought that she needed some greens, so she got a Caesar's salad to go along with the oysters.  It was a great start to the meal.

The menu at The Lobster Trap is very extensive with fresh seafood, pasta dishes, and a number of great sounding appetizers including lobster-stuffed mushrooms, scallops wrapped in maple bacon, and steamed clams, shrimp or mussels.   Since it was so late, we really didn't want to eat a lot of rich seafood and we both saw that they had a seafood fettuccine alfredo on the menu - $22 bucks for fettuccine with a combination of shrimp and lobster meat.

My wife suggested we split the fettuccine which was fine with me given how late it was.  But I saw something on the menu that I had to try - the lobster mac 'n cheese that was under the "sharable sides" header on the menu.  When I asked Rob about the lobster mac 'n cheese, he said, "We have people come in and just order double sides of that for dinner."  I've been underwhelmed with lobster mac 'n cheese at many places over the years that I've just quit ordering it.  But something told me this would be a little different. 

And it was.  The lobster mac 'n cheese was to die for.  It was creamy and cheesy with large chunks of lobster meat mixed - good lobster meat, not the rubbery stuff that I've had in other lobster mac 'n cheese from the past.  It was very rich and "eyes-rolling-back-in-your-head" tasty.  

It would have been tough for the seafood fettuccine alfredo to measure up to the lobster mac 'n cheese, but somehow it did.  The creamy alfredo sauce was rich and flavorful, the fettuccine noodles tasted like they were made in house, and the chunks of lobster meat and the plump shrimp were all cooked perfectly.  Some garlic bread came with the fettuccine and we were using it to sop up the creamy sauce after we finished the pasta and seafood in the bowl.    

My wife and I have already said that we'd like to go back to Asheville and spend some more time there.  One of the places that will be on our list to revisit will be The Lobster Trap.  Other than the over an hour wait for a table, the wait was worth it.  The Massachusetts oysters-on-the-half shell were meaty and tasty, the seafood fettuccine alfredo was excellent, and I cannot even tell you how great the lobster mac 'n cheese was.  I can see why some people will order two sides of the lobster mac 'n cheese for a meal at The Lobster Trap - it was that good.  The service was top-notch, the atmosphere was comfortable, and the food was, well, heavenly.  It was a great first meal during our few days we spent in Asheville - and it may have been the best meal we had the whole time we were there.

Hilton Garden Inn - Asheville, NC

Over the last 10 to 12 years when I travel for work, I've been staying almost exclusively in Hilton properties.  What that has gotten me is a Hilton Honors Lifetime Diamond Member status with the chain of hotels and a nice cache of points that my boss allows me to use for vacations.  While we were in North Carolina, we decided to stay in Asheville for a few days.  For an on-line search, I found the Hilton Garden Inn - Asheville Downtown at the City Centre that appeared to be walking distance to the downtown area and I booked that hotel for our stay.  

The City Centre complex in Asheville is located on the east side of the downtown area and houses the BB&T Bank offices in Asheville, as well as the Roberts and Stevens law offices, along with other professional offices and the Hilton Garden Inn.  The 2.4 acre plot of land also has a car deck/garage for the facility and it appeared that there was some retail space openings at the street level across from the hotel.  There are also some condo's that can be rented monthly, weekly or daily in the complex.  The City Centre complex has been open for almost one year now.

Getting to the Hilton Garden Inn - Asheville Downtown located at College and Charleston streets in Asheville (see map) was sort of an adventure.  Getting off Interstate 240 at Charleston and heading south, we could easily see the hotel sitting on the corner.  However, College Street westbound doesn't allow for left hand turns into the hotel's lot.  We went south on Charleston past the hotel and ended up taking some side streets - one of which emptied into the Buncombe County Jail and a lane that is used for prisoner pick-up and drop-off.  Once I finally got through that, I was able to take a left, then a right to come to the entrance off College for the hotel.  (I found out later on that there is a roundabout one block west on College Street that would have allowed us to do a quick turnaround to the eastbound lane and get us easily to the hotel.)  

The Hilton Garden Inn - Asheville Downtown consists of a main floor, four floors of rooms and a rooftop bar/restaurant on the sixth floor.   The lobby was very nice, comfy and decorated with a number of paintings from artists who had galleries in Asheville's River Arts District.  There was an outdoor pool off to the side of the lobby area in front of the building.  

As a Hilton Honors Lifetime Diamond member for Hilton, I have the option of being able to select my room on-line if reservations are made more than 24 hours in advance.  The day before we went to Asheville, a reminder came up for me to pick my room.  I took a high floor room and sort of guessed if it would have any type of a view.  When we came up to the counter to check in, we were greeted by a friendly young guy by the name of Michiah - he turned out to be stellar for us for our whole visit giving us directions, helping us with the hotel shuttle, and giving us restaurant and brewpub suggestions.  Michiah saw that I was a Lifetime Diamond member and he said, "We don't get many of you guys here!  But, then again, we've only been open for about 9 months."  

Michiah had told us that the hotel was owned by Quality Hospitality, a subsidiary of Quality Oil Company based out of Winston-Salem.  Quality Oil Company began in 1929 and has provided gasoline, diesel, propane and home heating oil to people from Virginia down to Florida.  Quality Oil operates a number of Shell full-service stations as well as a number of GOGAS, Quality Mart and Quality Plus gas station/convenience stores across North Carolina.  Michiah told me that Quality Hospitality - which owns seven other hotel properties in five states in the Southeast - sunk a lot of money into the Hilton Garden Inn - Asheville Downtown.  "They put in something like $33 million dollars into this property," he said.  "It's a very nice place."  (It also turned out that the Hilton Garden Inn - Asheville Downtown was the 700th Hilton Garden Inn property to open in the chain.)  

I told him that I had done an e-check in and he said, "Oh, we put you in one of our deluxe rooms since we had it open and you're a Lifetime Diamond member.  It's a southwest corner room on the 5th floor with a great view of both the mountains and the city."  When we went up to the room and opened the drapes, the south window had this somewhat nice view of the Blue Ridge Mountains with the highest peak - Mount Pisgah - easily discernible in the distance.  However, the west view windows toward downtown Asheville offered really nothing more than a great view of the City Centre building as well as a great view of the Buncombe County lock-up facility.  Still, the room was spacious with a king bed, some furniture and a lot of space to fan out during our stay. 

The first thing we had to do was to go up to the sixth floor and check out Pillar, the indoor/outdoor bar/restaurant.   The bar had just opened at 4 p.m. and there were already a few people in the bar when we got up there.  Even if it were on ground level, it would have been a great bar/restaurant.

The Pillar bar and outdoor patio is located on the north end of the hotel so the views of the Blue Ridge Mountains aren't quite as good as they were from our room a floor below and on the south side of the hotel.  And there was still the Buncombe County Jail prominently in front of us as we looked toward downtown Asheville to the west.  Still, it was a nice outdoor space with a number of metal tables and chairs on top of a rubberized indoor/outdoor flooring that my wife would love to have in our four-season porch back home.  While we wanted to go explore the downtown area and didn't get a drink on our first visit to Pillar, we did go up and have drinks on the deck later in our stay, both during the late afternoon and for a nightcap in the evening after we returned from a restaurant.  It was a great place to unwind and hang out.  

One of the things the Hilton Garden Inn - Asheville Downtown's web site said was that it was a short walk to downtown stores, restaurants and bars.  Well, a short walk is about 10 minutes - and it's nearly all uphill as Asheville is a very hilly city.  However, the Hilton Garden Inn provides a free shuttle service to and from the downtown area for guests - and will even go pick up people who would like to come from the downtown area and go up to the Pillar bar for drinks or dinner.  We used the shuttle a handful of times to take us downtown, but the walk back to the hotel was rather easy as most of it was all downhill.  

When we were there, the Hilton Garden Inn - Asheville Downtown partnered with a Greensboro restaurant - the Iron Hen Cafe - to provide breakfast and lunch on the premises to guests and others who were looking for a place to eat on the east end of downtown.  The Iron Hen Cafe is part of the Fresh.Local.Good restaurant group based in Greensboro that oversaw the ownership of nine restaurants mainly in the Greensboro area.  All of the restaurants had menus that focused on locally and sustainably-raised products for their foods.

The restaurant was very nice with high quality wood floors, a nice bar area with Edison lamps hanging from the ceiling, intricate stone pillars, and a full service menu.  It was a nice place to get something to eat.    

We ate there a couple three days while we stayed at the hotel and each day I had the same thing - the housemade corned beef hash covered with two sunny-side up eggs with whole wheat toast.  It also came with some grape jelly that was obviously homemade - it was actually closer to jam than jelly because it was sort of chunky, but had a very sweet taste to it - and it was absolutely outstanding.  It was some of the best I'd ever had.  But the corned beef hash was equally outstanding.  It featured big chunks of housemade corned beef with fried potatoes mixed in.  I tried to eat the corned beef separate from the eggs, but the mixture of the egg yolk with the corned beef was a great taste sensation, as well.  

However, we noticed some changes going on in the restaurant while we were staying there.  One morning, they were putting signs up that the restaurant would be closed after breakfast for the next couple of days.  I asked Michiah at the front desk what was up with that and he said, "Oh, we're breaking our affiliation with the Iron Hen Cafe after today." He said that things weren't working out with the parent companies and Quality Hospitality was going to run both the Pillar rooftop bar and restaurant and the new Pillar Cafe that took the place of the Iron Hen Cafe.  "The menu is going to be similar, if not the same," he told us.  "But there will be a few additions going on, as well."   

I don't write about hotels all that much, but I felt it was necessary to write about the Hilton Garden Inn - Asheville Downtown.  It may have been the finest Hilton Garden Inn I've stayed at in terms of accommodations, amenities and service.  And I stay in a lot of Hilton Garden Inns in my travels.  But the one near Asheville's downtown may have topped them all - and may have topped many other upscale places I've stayed at over the years.  We can't even begin to express how well we were treated in all aspects during our stay at the Hilton Garden Inn - Asheville Downtown.  

North Carolina

I am an ordained minister through the Universal Life Church and am able to officiate at wedding ceremonies most everywhere.  I think I've done six or seven weddings now over the past four or five years.  Now, for my friends who know me, this is a pretty radical departure from my normal views on organized religion.  Add the fact that just about anytime I walk into a church I first look for the nearest fire extinguisher in case I suddenly catch on fire.  Late last year, my cousin - who is like a sister to me (we're 11 days apart in age) - called me up and told me that her daughter was getting married on a horse farm-turned-wedding venue in North Carolina and she asked if I would officiate the wedding.  "She doesn't want just anyone to do the ceremony," she told me of her daughter's wishes.  "She think you'd be perfect to do it."  How could I say no to that?  So at the end of last month, my wife and I flew into Charlotte and drove up to Winston-Salem for the wedding.  After the wedding was over, we drove out to the western mountains of North Carolina up to Asheville for a few days.  You'll be reading about some of the places we ate at, drank at, hung out at, and stopped at off and on over the next few weeks.  But here's a quick overview of where we went and what we did.  

First of all - a quick observation regarding traffic lights in major North Carolina cities.  If you roll up to a major intersection in one of the larger cities in the state and the light is turning from yellow to red, well, you're gonna be sitting there for a long time.  More than once, we sat at a stop light for a minimum of two minutes.  The first instance happened moments after we left Charlotte Douglas International Airport where we sat at a light for what seemed to be an eternity.  And if you're in a left turn lane at a stop light, you may see a dozen cars make it through the intersection once the left turn signal turned green.  Or you could be on the unlucky cycle and the timer only allows four cars through.  We had that happen to us a couple of times.  At first it was maddening, but since we were there for over a week we sort of were resigned to the fact that we'd be sitting at a light for a longer time than we're used to back home.

We stayed in downtown Winston-Salem where the wedding party was set up for the weekend.  Winston-Salem was basically built on tobacco as R.J. Reynolds was the major tobacco manufacturer in America for well over a century.  Wake Forest University is also located in Winston-Salem and we took some time to drive through the campus and I'll have to say it was one of the more pretty college campuses that I've been to.  And not far from Wake Forest was the former estate of R.J. Reynolds - Reynolda - that now houses a conservatory, a rose garden, a number of small shops and restaurants, and the main house that features some of the finest American art shown in the Southeast, Reynolda House Museum of American Art.   

We spent some time at Reynolda one day just to walk the gardens and take a look at the flowers.  My wife and I do a lot of gardening and we have around two dozen rose bushes in our yard.  It's always nice to see large rose gardens to get ideas of what we may want to have for more roses in our yard.  Unfortunately, we were probably 10 days too late as many of the rose bushes in the garden had lost their color from the first bloom.  Nonetheless, it was a pretty and relaxing walk through the gardens at Reynolda. 

We took a drive north of Winston-Salem to go up to Pilot Mountain State Park.  The views of the valley back down to Winston-Salem were spectacular from the observation areas near the big pinnacle of Pilot Mountain that was used as a navigation guide for Native Americans living in the area centuries ago.  

Just north of Pilot Mountain was the town of Mt. Airy - which is the home to actor Andy Griffith.  Since I am a huge fan of the Andy Griffith Show, we drove up to Mt. Airy to visit the Andy Griffith Museum.  However, we got there about 45 minutes after the museum opened that Saturday morning and the line was, well, I categorized it to my cousin later in the day as being "from here to Denver" in length.  We still had places to go and we were on sort of a time constraint so we didn't stop.  

Mt. Airy was the place where the fictional town of Mayberry was based after.  (Mount Pilot, the city near Mayberry on the show?  Pilot Mountain?  Get it?  There is a Pilot Mountain town near Mt. Airy.)  One of the things that stood out to us as we drove through Mt. Airy were the number of houses that had expansive front porches on the front.  As in, nearly every house that we saw.  We even saw trailer homes that had front porches built onto the front of them.  One of the focal points of the Andy Griffith Show were the scenes shot on the front porch of the Taylor home.  It makes a lot of sense now that we saw all the homes with large front porches in the town.  We did miss some other things there in Mt. Airy that pertained to the Andy Griffith show, but we needed to move on as my wife wanted to go to one more place before heading back to Winston-Salem.

From there, we drove to Hanging Rock State Park (we drove through the town of Pilot Mountain, NC to get there).  Here's a tip from Road Tips - unless you're interested in doing some hiking or camping, there's not much to see at Hanging Rock.  We got out of the car, went to an observation area, and off in the distance - about a half mile away - was a rocky ledge that was supposedly the Hanging Rock.  I said, "That's it?"  I didn't even take a picture of it, it was so underwhelming.  However, I was told that the hiking trails at Hanging Rock State Park are some of the better ones in North Carolina.    

The wedding was held at Adaumont Farm, an event and entertainment venue outside of Trinity, NC.  (see map)  The farm was owned by over 40 years by the Petty family - yes, that Petty family which includes the King of Nascar racing Richard Petty and his son, Kyle Petty.  Kyle Petty and his first wife, Pattie, lived on the property and raised their three boys - Adam, Austin and Montgomery - on the farm.  The farm name is a combination of the first few letters in the three boys names.   (Adam Petty was tragically killed during practice at a race track in New Hampshire in 2000.)

The Kyle and Pattie Petty split in 2012 with Patty getting the farm.  She ended up selling the farm to a company who specializes in events such as weddings, receptions, corporate events and private functions in 2016.  We were told the house that the Petty's used to live in is basically empty, but for some reason a number of video games were left behind when the sale was made.  

The nearly 400 acre farm features a 50 acre pond with a ceremonial platform next to it for wedding ceremonies.  There is a small lodge that has a covered picnic area with a large barbecue pit next to it.  The horse barn is over 25,000 square feet in size and the original riding ring is now a large room where receptions and shows are held.  I had to go out there on the day before the wedding for the rehearsal and I took a closer look around the horse barn.  It was definitely set up for large receptions and parties with indoor and outdoor bar areas, huge refrigerators that could hold cases of bottled beer, a large kitchen prep area, and a backstage area for performers to use before and after their gig.    After the wedding, my wife and I were given a private tour by an employee of Adaumont Farm who talked about the history of the place, some of the interesting tidbits of the Petty family owning the place (there was evidently a Petty family private car museum on the property at one point), and what has to go in to the day-to-day operations, part of which are still a working farm.  

After leaving Winston-Salem, we drove west toward the Blue Ridge Mountains.  My wife had been hoping that we would be able to go to the coast and hang at the ocean for a few days.  But when I showed her how far we were from the ocean (about 4.5 hours to the Outer Banks) and how close we were to the mountains (less than two hours), she decided going to the mountains would be better on this trip.  

Our first stop was in Blowing Rock, a small arts community just outside of Boone, NC.  We had lunch there and walked around the crowded streets of the small community full of shops and galleries.  If you've ever been to Galena, IL - well, it's North Carolina's answer to Galena.  After about an hour of walking around we had had enough.  

Outside of the town of Blowing Rock is an attraction called The Blowing Rock.  Supposedly, during windy conditions you can throw light objects off the rock and the wind will pick them up and blow them back up to the person.  It's a small ledge and offers a nice view of the valley below.  There's also a couple three vista porches where people - like me, who are too scared to climb the rock - can look out to see the view. 

Now, here's another tip from Road Tips - Blowing Rock blows.  It cost us $7 each to go out to see not only the views, but the Blowing Rock.  There was a pathway that took you under the Blowing Rock - big deal!  And they were touting this garden at the end of the pathway outside of the gift shop that was supposed to be beautiful.  We were incredulous because of how small it was.  "Our backyard at home is more colorful and interesting than this," I exclaimed to my wife.  I felt Blowing Rock was a rip-off, but my wife tried to rationalize the visit saying that I've spent $14 bucks on bad beer before.  We were there just about 20 minutes, tops.  

From there, we went on to Asheville, NC, our base for the next four days.  On our trip to the Great Smoky Mountains a couple of years ago, we spent a night in far western North Carolina after visiting a friend.  It turned out that we were probably less than an hour from Asheville and we should have gone there at that time.  This time, we decided to hang in Asheville and get to know the town.  We spent our time there at a newish-Hilton Garden Inn near downtown Asheville that was one of the best of its kind that I've stayed in.  (I'll have a write-up about the Hilton Garden Inn in Asheville at a later date - it was that good of a place.)  We found a number of great places to eat, did some shopping and just sort of relaxed in the mountain air.  

Asheville is also known for its large community of microbreweries and brewpubs.  There are over 40 microbreweries located within an area that encompasses the city of Asheville and down to Hendersonville, NC about 25 miles away.   We went to a handful of them and I'll have some reports on the ones we visited at a later date.  

One of the things my wife wanted to do was to visit Biltmore, the "vacation" estate of the Vanderbilt family that was built at toward the end of the 19th century.  When the young scion of Cornelius Vanderbilt - grandson George Washington Vanderbilt II - visited his mother who was spending the summer in the Blue Ridge Mountains in 1888, he decided that he would build a grand vacation home in the mountains.  Work on the mansion began in 1889 and finished in 1895 in time for George Vanderbilt to host Christmas for friends and family.  The Vanderbilt family opened the mansion for tours in 1930 and today tens of thousands of people visit Biltmore annually.

It costs $75 per person to visit Biltmore - a little steep in my book to visit the house.  But the vast garden and conservatory were part of the tour, as well.  We were able to find specially priced tickets of $55 each on-line if we bought them more than 7 days in advance.  While the gardens were very cool, I still wasn't certain that the Biltmore tour was worth the $55 each we paid.  I'll have more about our visit to the Biltmore estate at a later date.  

Asheville also has a thriving arts community.  The River Arts District encompasses roughly a six block area south of downtown Asheville with over 20 former industrial buildings along the French Broad River housing galleries and working art studios.  

We stopped into a number of places in the River Arts District including a glass factory where they were blowing glass, a working pottery studio, a studio where the artist made some very cool artwork out of old highway signs, and a place that re-caned chairs.  In the place that caned chairs, they also had what they called the only caned chair museum in the United States.  Not only was it somewhat amusing, but it was also kind of neat.  

My wife - always the smart one - had me drive to the Asheville Visitors Center to see if there was anything that we needed to go see.  The one lady volunteer we talked with said, "Have you guys driven up to Mt. Pisgah on the Blue Ridge Parkway?"  She showed us how to get out to the Parkway - one of the entrances was not far from our hotel - and she told us to drive south on the Parkway up to a lodge near Mt. Pisgah, one of the more recognizable landmarks around Asheville.  The drive was easy and the multiple drive-out views we encountered were spectacular.  And the views were FREE (bite me, Blowing Rock!).  I'll have a more in-depth report on our drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the coming days.

North Carolina is a beautiful state and I'm glad we got some time to spend in the mountains.   I'll have some write-ups of some of the restaurants and brewpubs we went to, as well as a closer look at our trips along the Blue Ridge Parkway and to the Biltmore mansion in the coming days.  There really wasn't any part of the state that we went to that I could say wasn't pleasant to look at.