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We're chronicling our travels around the states on this blog. Check it out, if you're bored and sitting on an apple box (you can also check it out from home or the office).

Filtering by Tag: North Carolina

The long and winding road to the Smokies

April 06, 2014Whitney Lea

Holy cow! The past few days have been a jam-packed whirlwind and we have a lot of catching up to do on here.

On April 3, after blogging about Asheville for hours at a little coffee shop on the edge of town, we loaded into the car and set out with the Great Smoky Mountain National Park as our final destination. We hadn't given too much thought to this park or this drive but after consulting the roadtrip binder we decided to head straight for Clingman's Dome and then on to Elkmont camp ground to stay the night.

The road heading to the park was initially populated by various motels, activities and souvenir shops for families who take their summer vacations down there. It was a little odd to see welcoming signs and bright flowers with empty lots until we saw a sign that said "season start: April 5" and realized that we were driving through two days too early. Shucks!

Realizing we were in "local tourist" country, I told Sam to keep an eye out for signs for boiled peanuts. Not thirty seconds after I said that, we saw The Peanut King and the parking lot was full! We were going to get a chance to try boiled peanuts!

...but they were boiling them right there in front of our hungry eyes...

After we parked we hopped out and asked the people at the stand for some boiled peanuts only to discover they too wouldn't be open until Saturday.

We got back on the road and what a road it was. We had entered a Cherokee reservation and I was driving blind switchbacks down a narrow road on a mountain for twenty minutes with two cars tailgating (I'm sure they were just interested in seeing the twitter handle on our wheel cover...) because I was mostly observing the 30mph speed limit signs.

My only solace was a little wooden canoe-shaped sign that appeared every quarter mile or so, listing such lovely things as "homemade pork rinds", "jam", " Indian crafts", and most importantly "boiled peanuts". I knew once we got to Bearmeats Indian Den I would have my boiled peanuts and Sam would have the wheel back in his hands.

Sam drove the rest of the way to Clingman's Dome because I think my brain would have melted if I attempted to drive on the winding hairpin turns for so long. He stopped once to take some gorgeous pictures of a creek that ran along the road as well as the street signs in both English and Cherokee.

Once we entered the actual park we stopped by the visitor's center to get a stamp for our national park passport as well as a park map.

Clingman's Dome was about an hour into the park with increasingly amazing views around every curve. At some point the radio lost all signal and we switched to AM which worked out just fine. We got to the parking lot and hiked the steep but easy sidewalk to the lookout tower. I am so glad it was a clear day. It felt like we could see nearly 100 miles in every direction and it definitely felt very far from anything I knew on the east coast.

We snagged postcards on the way back down, I managed to lose my sunglasses, and we hightailed it to Elkmont so we could make camp and a fire before dark.

After an easy tent pitch, a flaky fire, and a not very tasty dinner thrown together by yours truly we debated going straight to bed. We knew we would need to wake up and take the tent down before morning light in order to get to Nashville in time on Friday. But then we started stargazing and I said, "we're going to have to get some really good long exposures done on this trip." Sam, being the man of action that he is, stood up and dug the tripod out of the trunk and started messing with settings.

After a bunch of shots where the silhouettes of the trees were soft because of the gentle breeze I thought out loud, "wouldn't it be cool to do live-action dodging and burning with a flashlight?" And as I tried to explain I got carried away with excitement and showed Sam what I meant. I completely forgot that the shutter was open!

Luckily, the result was really neat and we started a whole series of photos where we played with our flashlights.

Although it was a long day there were lots of nice creative moments which always help both of us to re-energize. And this time they lead to a good night's sleep with the wind moving through the trees in the Smokies.

categories Drive
tags National Park, North Carolina, Tennesse, Camping, Boiled Peanuts

Asheville

April 03, 2014Whitney Lea

If I had to pick three words to sum up Asheville they would be: beer, mountains, and art in that order. So obviously it was a town that we were made for. A lot of the food and drink spots we went to were found on the Asheville subreddit, one of the most informative city subreddits I came across while planning the trip.

We had a gorgeous drive into Asheville proper and made a beeline for Luella's barbecue. My goodness gracious, it was excellent. Sam got a pulled chicken sandwich with garlic green beans. I had local pulled pork with red beans and rice. Both came with the best hush puppies I've ever had (Sam's not cornbread guy, but couldn't deny their worth in gold). Despite the fact that it was 2 PM we had to have beers because hey, it's Asheville! Did I mention that most full price pints in Asheville are about $4.25? Compare that to the $6 for a beer in Brooklyn and you can understand why we were pleased as punch to pay. After we were done we decided to stick around for one more beer and by 4 we were getting sleepy.

We headed into downtown Asheville and parked right across from our crash pad in the Sweet Peas Hostel. Even though it was a hostel they had a few rooms with a double bed, sink, and a door. The price of two bunks in a dorm was only $5 less so a room was a perfect solution for us. And then we napped because we had full bellies and a few beers.

That night we were on a mission to hear live music and looked over a list of options in the hostel lobby. 5 Walnut wine bar was just 2 blocks away and the John Henry's were playing ragtime so we hopped over and saw a crowd gathered outside of the wine bar's open cafe windows. Inside was packed (it was a Tuesday!) but we jammed in, grabbed two beers, and turned our ears to the music. This one was actually dedicated to some friends of the band who found a way to dance beautifully in the crowded bar.

The crowd in 5 Walnut was split between baby boomers and millennials, which was kind of a relief because we had definitely been the oldest patrons at Luella's and a lot of the people we saw out and about up until then had been in their early 20s.

Soon we were hungry and wandered around downtown until we came to the Thirsty Monk. We noticed that not only was it taco Tuesday (discounts on their awesome tacos) but they also had $1 off every pint they served. So we ate, sipped and sat on a bench out front to people watch.

Our last stop for the night was a rugged tiki bar called Asheville Yacht Club. We had to sign in as "members" which has something to do with old laws on the books about bars not being allowed to sell liquor (private clubs with membership can, hence the sign-in). They had ridiculously cheap and amazing beer specials as well but we only had the energy and budget for one round before walking back to Sweet Peas around midnight.

The next morning we grabbed breakfast at the Early Girl Eatery, which is also recommended. Sam had strawberry sunflower seed pancakes. I had poached eggs on grit cakes with spinach and an amazing tomato salsa. Who said they don't have enough veggies in the south!

We walked around to explore downtown Asheville some more and every few blocks came across some really gorgeous street art.

I was particularly drawn to this poem written on a mural. The colors, the illustration style, the content of the poem, and definitely the type.

The heat was kicking in so we hopped into a coffee shop inside of a double decker bus. Of course we had to go to the top floor for an impromptu "photo shoot". Here we are looking quite relaxed and photogenic.

As we walked with our coffee we came across a large church (the Basilica of St. Lawrence) and decided to go in. I wish we had taken pictures of the inside but it didn't feel appropriate. As we admired the domed ceiling I thought about an architecture book my mom has that features the mason work of a very popular architect's firm in the early 20th century. The mystery architect had also done brickwork in Grand Central and a few NYC subway stations. Of course I couldn't remember the name. We decided to look at two altars in the wings before heading out and as we turned to leave I saw tiles on a side door that said "1908, Gustavino". It was the architect from my mom's book! He actually had created this basilica! I was desperate to get a post card to send my mom, but the gift shop was closed. So a pamphlet would have to do. Sorry Mom!

Our last stop for the afternoon was to a little shop to indulge Sam in his fetish. Everyone knows that Germans are into some really crazy fetishes and Sam is no different. But being the GGG wife I am, I told him we should just go in to the store to check it out.

Don't worry, kids! We keep it PG most of the time on this blog. So the Chocolate Fetish is an amazing chocolate shop. We got to sample a truffle they called "The star of India" that was dusted in curry powder. Wow! It was really special. So we decided to splurge on a box, much to Sam's intense glee.

That night it was more craft beers, tasty food, chats with strangers (good and bad), and this lovely old time music jam at Jack of the Woods pub.

Random Statistics from Asheville (mostly beer related):
Number of new beers we tried: Twenty-two
Cheapest pint: $2.50 Highland Gaelic Ale at Asheville Yacht Club
Favorite pint: Oskar Blues Yella Pils
Weirdest pint: Lexington Ave Brewery Buck Mild Ale

categories Exploring
tags North Carolina, Asheville, Beer, Chocolate

Camping!

April 03, 2014Samuel Herbig

This is what we saw when we woke up.

If I had to give you one particular thing that left the biggest impression on me over our 12 hour stint in Lake James State Park it would be "color". Cue collective sigh of everybody working in film . . . but hear me out:

When you're out of your element or routine, you start to look at things differently, right? Often times that's a social thing. For example, the people I know have a certain image of who I am and somehow I perpetuate that. I'm part of that process.

Being outside overnight camping, I was looking at things in the way that I usually look at things. There's a certain rigidity to organizing your visuals, but it helps you in a routinized situation to notice things that are out of place. If I studied things like that, I might insert a link to a recent study of colleagues of mine, here. I don't, so you'll just have to follow along.

So we camped out and I was out of my routine and there were all the sounds and sights that I haven't seen in a long time. And they're all very interesting, you know? It started with that sunrise: I have seen that light before, and I'll see it again (knock on wood), but that morning it was perfect, just because I had absolutely no need to do anything but look at it. I just sat there, next to Whitney in the tent, in the cold morning looking at that sunlight. At a more reasonable hour, Whitney put our view from our breakfast table down like this:

I should note at this point, that I slept horribly. That's right, I went out camping, had all the tools I needed to sleep comfortably and had just about the most abysmal night of sleep in recent history, because I was too cold, SMH.

There were two other times when color really stood out to me while we were at Lake James. Whitney pointed one of them out to me, and it was the color of the sap of a tree that had recently been cut down.

The other one was while Whitney and I took a short hike just before we left the campground. It was a hike that led us out onto a spit of land.

I have to interrupt the thought here real quick because there can be absolutely no doubt that the German translation for "spit" is superior: Landzunge, or tongue of land. Just makes perfect sense.

Anyway, we're walking along and all the undergrowth has been burnt off recently, as part of their fire prevention and eco system promotion program. Most of the ground along the trail was still blackened because of that. The air was filled with a charcoal smell that accompanied us the entire hike. Looking through the trees in the forest we could see this blue haze, which looked a lot like the blue smoke of a diesel engine to me.

The trail hugged the coastline all the way out to the tip of the Landzunge. From there we had a wonderful view across the lake and the beautiful little inlets to the left and right of us.

Views: McDowell County, NC by Samuel Herbig

On the way back we came to a clearing. The sun was streaming through the tree branches and hit the mossy grass on the floor of the forest. It was about 1pm at that time, but because of all the haze and smoke it looked just like "magic hour". Everything was enveloped in this rose golden color!

Driving in and out of the State Park we had some absolutely stunning views, but my coveted shot of the Blue Ridge Mountains didn't present itself, until we were crossing over I-40 that morning looking for a place to sell us 2 eggs. That's a funny story in of itself which ended with the following exchange:

"You don't sell just 2 eggs, do you sell a half a dozen?"
"We sure don't"

Well then, no eggs breakfast it is, Whitney.

Here's the picture:

Right after our hike, we set out on the road again, onwards to our next destination: Asheville!

As always, there are a lot more pictures on flickr (permanent link is at the top-left "PICS").

categories Camping
tags Color, Hiking, Sate Park, North Carolina, Lake James

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