Asheville, NC
Back in October we hit the road for Asheville, North Carolina! Fall takes its time arriving in Montgomery and I don’t like letting an opportunity pass to usher in a little bit of “pre-fall” weather. With Ara off from school for a week during Fall Break it was the perfect time to escape and get a little mountain time in for a refresh during this global pandemic.
Asheville is about a 5 hr 45 min drive from Montgomery — but with a toddler we made a couple stops along the way, adding about an hour to our drive. We arrived at our AirBnB, said hello to the goats on the property, unpacked a few things and headed to the Omni Grove Park Inn. I read that the Omni has one of the best sunset views in Asheville and definitely wanted to take that in while in town. We enjoyed a light dinner that included people watching and enjoying the sunset view.
The next morning we got ready for our first adventure day! We ordered food-to-go, online from Green Sage Cafe and picked it up as we headed out of town. This was a perfect way for us to get delicious smoothies and a breakfast sandwich to enjoy in the car, but also sandwiches to pack away in our cooler for our lunch. We drove into the Pisgah National Forest to catch the trailhead for the Frying Pan Lookout Tower. Nora was excited to do some hiking and happily got into her hiking pack (Ara & I took turns carrying her — whew!). After making it to the tower we had a great view of the entire Balsam Mountains range. We stopped off at a picnic area after the hike to enjoy our sandwiches — I think Nora enjoyed her picnic on top of the table.
That afternoon we re-united with some friends of Ara’s from his NC State days. Amber & Ben + their two kids met up with us (we hadn’t seen them in 8 years!). Since then we’ve all added kids to our family and it was great to see them all play together at the park. We made our way to 12 Bones for dinner and enjoyed some delicious North Carolina barbecue on the patio tables outside. After dinner we headed to French Broad Chocolate Lounge in downtown Asheville. Many of you know that I spent most of my days during our time in Hawaii working at a bean-to-bar chocolate Factory—Manoa Chocolate. During that time I became familiar and met many chocolate makers in the bean-to-bar industry, and French Broad was one of them. It’s been a big favorite in our house and we love eating their chocolate and supporting their company. I was excited to be able to visit their chocolate lounge in person, finally!
The next morning we set out for our next adventure day, this time heading east of Asheville to the Catawba Falls trailhead. We hiked just over two miles taking in the views of the rolling forest and waterfall after waterfall, culminating to the biggest waterfall I’d seen up close. It was such a beautiful sight to see! On the way back down we let Nora out of the hiking pack for the last bit and she had fun exploring the path — checking out the leaves and the water rushing past.
That afternoon, Ara’s Uncle Andy and Aunt Cherrie arrived from Durham to meet up with us! We were so excited to introduce them to Nora and spend a little quality time together. We enjoyed a beer flight at Wicked Weed Funkatorium before heading to get dinner at All Soul’s Pizza. We enjoyed live music and eating delicious salad, wood-fired pizza and sipping on local beers al fresco outside on the patio tables.
Aunt Cherrie had mentioned Hole Doughnuts to us for breakfast and we were all in! We chowed down on the delicious made-to-order donuts with a little bit of coffee to get our day started. Asheville has many urban trails and green spaces so we decided to do a little urban hiking before we both headed back on our respective directions — Durham for them and back home for us. We made sure to fill our bellies as full of NC barbecue as we could and made a pit stop for a late lunch at 12 Bones again. I love a good mustard barbecue sauce (ssssshhh, don’t tell my KC barbecue loving Dad!).
Our goal for our trip to Asheville was to get in some great hiking, drink some delicious local beer, snag some French Broad chocolate and get some quality time with a few friends/family we hadn’t seen in awhile. We definitely achieved all of the goals and had a great time!
