Asheville for Vacation

Long before I had ever moved to the area, I used to come vacation in Asheville almost every summer. Growing up, my parents really enjoyed the area and over the years I have come to like this special place so much that I eventually came to live here.

We lived in upstate New York and each year, sometime during the summer, and every so often in the fall, we’d pack the family into the car and drive down south. I’m not sure exactly what it was but I always got excited as we entered the mountains. Even as a younger person, I saw the beauty in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. My folks would take their time and drive down the blue ridge parkway at 45mph for hours, down the windy scenic filled roads. In the valleys down below us and in the some of the mountain tops there where houses and cabins tucked into the woods.

Some of my favorite trips to Asheville, NC we never even made it to town. On our way into to town, somewhere along the parkway we would stop and turn into one of the pull offs, where a few other cars had done the same. We would grab our gear and pack ourselves a few hundred yards into the woods. There we would set up camp for the evening. The next day we would go for a long hike, or go fishing or find ourselves doing some other wonderful outdoor adventure. Out here we didn’t have to have any thing to do, we were already doing it. There where so many great places to go see. We would hike to what seemed to be the highest mountain in the range. And, was a top the mountain the views we would behold were breath taking.

Other times, we would stay in a cottage at a bed and breakfast or we’d get a couple of rooms at a local hotel. When we stayed in town we were usually pretty close to everything. I didn’t always care for these places because my siblings and I had to be good. And, as a kid on vacation who can be good. There are some many new things see and to do and of course I wanted to do the all.

On occasion, in the mornings we would walk down the streets of downtown Asheville to go sightseeing. I wasn’t used to shops having their storefront windows decorated with vibrant colors and displays. Each store seemed to be just as creative as the next. As a young child, and even as a teenager, the downtown area of the city seemed like a giant carnival. We kids wanted to go into all the cool shoppes. We didn’t care they had things to sell we just wanted to see this strange and new to us treasure of this festive city. I think one of my favorite parts about coming downtown, and this I feel still holds true to this day, were all the street buskers. As we walked the streets of Asheville there would be people playing music and singing, others would be preforming magic tricks while yet others painted local scenery and cosmos.

Both of the sides I was able to experience on my vacations in Asheville were always fun and exciting. whether I was camping in the middle of the Pisgah National Forest or staying a bed and breakfast downtown, there was always something fresh and new even when the scenery was 100,000 years old.