Road Trip - Asheville Impressions

I’m on the road to New Orleans to visit my sister and check out the progress (or lack of progress) on her house rehabbing. You might recall hers is one of the tens of thousands of homes flooded by Hurricane Katrina almost twenty months ago. It’s been nineteen months since I drove more than 300 miles from home and I’m using this time to try to relax and to visit with friends and family that I don’t see nearly enough.

My first night was spent with friends near Raleigh, NC. They used to be neighbors in Maryland and we’ve managed to remain friends through the eight years since they moved, even though we only see them once a year or less. It was great catching up with them and meeting their new puppy.

Now I’m in Asheville, NC. I’ve heard about this place for decades but this is my first visit. My wife and I joke about retiring here one day – joke because we’ll probably never retire. But two sets of older neighbors are considering the move and it’s obvious from who and what I’ve seen that this area is drawing seniors in droves.

My impressions of this city are based on only thirty hours spent here so far (and I’m leaving tomorrow morning) but here’s a sampling.

• Asheville is what you get when you combine Baltimore, MD, Takoma Park, MD, Sedona, AZ and Paris. Examples: quaint neighborhoods, strip malls, sidewalk cafes, yoga places, art shops and galleries, junk yards and rail yards, eclectic restaurants, mystics, boarded up buildings next to new construction, live music in the street and interactive art on the town square.

• This is a relatively small town (70,000 ?) but there are several high-rise buildings (15 floors or more). Some are deco style from the 1920s, some are modern reflecting glass.

• The middle of town is in a valley surrounded by mountains. It looks like it landed here. The scenery is beautiful and the view in every direction has a Blue Ridge background.

• A lot of people work downtown but the only traffic jam I saw during “afternoon drive” was the result of a construction problem. Sure, there was more volume at 5pm that at 1pm, but I haven’t heard one horn honk in thirty hours.

• Asheville is eclectic and a people-watcher’s paradise. Example: I had lunch at a pizza place called the Mellow Mushroom, soaking in a little sun while listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon gently playing in the background. Chicken Cordon Blue pizza was on the menu, but I opted for pepperoni pizza, a salad and a local, totally organic Pale Ale. My fellow lunchers included tourists in shorts, seniors in polo shirts, lawyers in suits and an Indian family in what I believe is traditional clothing in India. The décor included an old gasoline pump and various auto product signs from a bygone era. The waiter told me this was a gas station many decades ago.

• Artsy students, hippies from my age group, construction workers and bankers share sidewalk space with tourists.

• Three different times in thirty hours I found a parking spot on a main street within two blocks of the center of town.

To say I like the vibe here would be an understatement. Although my wife and I have vastly different tastes and expectations when it comes to choosing a place to live, I think we would both find what we want here. Too bad neither of can make the kind of living here that we make where we are.

Tomorrow I leave by way of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which runs right along the edge of the city. How cool is that? Next stop: Birmingham, a place I will probably have nothing to write about (sorry).