Thursday Around 7:30 am I left for the farmers' market which is at the south end of Asheville on the way to the Asheville and the GSP Airports. Perhaps it's too early in the tourist season but only two of the sheds were open and not all  the stores in them were running. I was surprised that some stalls were selling McCutcheon's preserves, since they're made in Maryland. I guess the market doesn't limit itself to local products.  Drove back through downtown and took a walk. I wanted to do the Asheville Urban Trail walking tour but  that was at a time when I wouldn't be free. So I just took my own walk: a few more condominium buildings, a few more restaurants, one more bookstore and a map store that's about to be opened. I browsed in Malaprop's bookstore and for the first time that I recall in 15 years of going there  I saw  a male clerk. Maybe their lesbianism has become less militant. Did some minor shopping for cards and toiletries at the downtown CVS. And then stopped for tea at the new Port City Café on Merrimon Avenue, about a 2 minute walk from Henry's house. It's rather sterile but had pleasant service. When  I got back from the market and downtown, Stephen was already at Henry's house and I gave him his birthday present. He's just gotten a machete because he's leaving for [British] Guyana around the beginning of June to go on an expedition to a mountain about 200 [??] miles inland to collect plant specimens. I think the trip goes: airplane to Georgetown, small airplane to the starting point in the jungle and then making a trail to reach the upper part of a mountain. Jessica arrived a little later from researching mosquitoes in a laboratory which is connected with a summer research project she's doing and we started off to Saluda for a birthday lunch for Stephen.  The ride was the opposite of what I had done the day before, going down to the edge of the drop from the mountains to the Piedmont. Saluda's where the steepest standard railroad grade in North America [or  maybe it's  the world] is located.  While we were waiting in the town for Andrew who was coming in from Atlanta, we took a walk around the [small] town including the train station which seemed to be in an odd location relative to the railroad tracks. There are several small stores and Stephen picked me up some local jellies and preserves; Henry got flim-flammed into buying a whisk broom for charity.  After Andrew arrived a little later than planned [but in a new car that he and Laura had bought the day before, a 2003 Toyota Corolla] we went over to the Green River Barbeque Restaurant for Stephen's birthday lunch. It's a fairly simple and medium-size restaurant with a knotty pine rec-room decor. The basic choices [here's the menu] were sandwich platters based on "big" sandwiches and "small"  sandwiches, and those sandwiches were each then subdivided into pork, beef, and chicken, and then cross subdivided into sliced or chopped. The side dishes that I ordered were barbecue coleslaw which had tomatoes and a vinegary sauce added to it and, I think, string beans. Some of the other side dishes that other people ordered were fried okra,  said to be the best they ever had, regular coleslaw, hush puppies, spiced apples, French fries. [ None of us ordered  the house specialty: "The Hog Trough- A whole loaf of our Italian bread trenched out and packed with chopped pork BBQ. Served with slaw on the side".] The sandwich was the "dry" style of barbeque and good but I thought not the same level as that at Andrew and Laura's wedding reception in Chapel Hill. For dessert we ordered a slice of key lime pie and one brownie and shared that.  The whole meal was delicious and relatively inexpensive -- but still in the price range of a somewhat expensive lunch in Old Town Alexandria ---- and this was in a hick town in the middle of nowhere. The explanation of the prices came to me later in the trip. [Click the picture to the left to see full size --- and by making everyone lean in to fit into the picture they're not shown in the most flattering light] We then split into two cars and drove to Pearson’s Falls,  one of the many, many, many waterfalls in this area. We were using a low road which was mostly dirt and running alongside  the small river that the Falls were going into. It was approximately a 15 minute walk slightly uphill from the parking lot to the base of the waterfall but because we were talking it was hard to keep track of time. We were commenting about the difference between what we were experiencing here and what it would be like if the waterfall were in Germany. There everything would be in perfect condition: the path would be carpeted with pine needles and mulch, the railing would be more solid. On the other hand, if it were in Germany everything would have been paid for by tax money. This waterfall is maintained by a private garden club that was acting on its own initiative.  The fall was in stages and seemed to be about 80 feet high [a good guess, because when I looked it up, it was 90 feet high]. We were the only people there and it wasn't until we were exiting and almost at the gate that we passed other people, a small family that was entering.  We arrived back in Asheville in the late afternoon and  I took my rental car for ride to the edge of downtown and then into downtown to visit a coffeehouse that had been written up in the local newspaper.  I couldn't locate the coffeehouse, went to the local tourist office who had never heard of it and then tried to convince me that it was in a completely different part of the city and, and then that it didn't exist.  Instead I just drove for a half-hour so through the Montford section of the city which is north of downtown and west of the university. The neighborhood looks as if part of it had been upper middle-class and lower middle-class before World War II, then had dropped down dramatically and gotten shabby; now it was going uphill again with a lot of bed and breakfast places and yuppies moving in.  A few random thoughts on Asheville and the Asheville area that don't fit into any specific day: About a week previously I was visiting my sister in Kearny. There, as well as in Jersey City and Hoboken earlier, there is a profusion, in fact eye-stopping amount, of yellow ribbons and American flags displayed on private houses in support of the country and its soldiers. There was very little of this that I noticed in the various parts of Asheville I was in. In smaller places like Highlands and Dillsboro and Boone there was more than in Asheville but still  far less than in New Jersey and in New York. Perhaps its just a difference in aesthetics but it seems to belie the old saw about the South being especially  patriotic and the North being blasé.

 

Friday Friday I took my first all day trip, starting around 8 am. It was to be a 200 mile loop heading westwards from Asheville toward the section of North Carolina / Tennessee that Desoto had brought his conquistadors to, running along waterfalls and mountain highways - me, not Desoto. Originally I intended to use the Blue Ridge Parkway to start the trip with a lot of scenic views. But the weather was not good that day - or any day - for that kind of view. It was pleasantly cool but also unfortunately, cloudy and overcast and the distant views were likely to be impeded by the clouds and would not look like they do in this commercial picture to the left.. So instead I began heading westwards on the interstate highway for about 25 miles and then turned onto US 23 which is also called The Cherokee Parkway ???? which began as a high plateau four lane divided highway with pretty but cloudy views of the mountains. Waynesville [population about 10,000, grown 36% in the last 10 years] was the first stop. I had expected the 4 or 5 towns I was visiting to all be about the same size but I was wrong. Waynesville has a fairly large commercial slurb as you enter and also as you leave. But in addition there's a large residential section and a 5 block by 2 block L shaped active commercial downtown that has non stop views of the mountain peaks in the background [click the picture to the right for the full view showing the fog that was encountering the whole trip.] There's a train depot on the "L" side but just freight. It's also a Volksmarsch center which usually indicates retired military officers. The walkable downtown has a magazine store with a selection that is equal or better than anything in Washington [I bought a very pricey but very good road map of the North Carolina mountain area that's far better than the official state map]  and a book store [Waynesville Book Co.] whose stock was more than respectable - but also 7 [I double checked ] framing stores, over a dozen knick knack gift stores, a half dozen jewelry stores, a half dozen handicraft stores. Very little you need for daily life. An Irish bar, several upscale or, at least, expensive restaurants, two or three coffee houses, a fancy bakery Whitman's Bakery which was crowded the two times I went into it. It wasn't that there was so much  business, it was that there were many, many, elderly female, all female,  tourists who had come as a group and were standing around deciding and talking and blocking the entrance. I did finally get to the rack and was going to buy a loaf of "Swedish Rye Bread" until I actually picked it up; it was lighter than Wonder Bread and could have floated away; so I put it back.  Listening to the people around me and observing their demeanor I saw out-of-the-area, wealthy residents and tourists; it doesn't appear, at least in the downtown section, to be a native city. That was confirmed by having breakfast in The Classic Wineseller on Church Street, an egg sandwich on white toast ["Do you want mayonnaise on that?"] where the accents around me were mid-western and eastern. All in all, a very pleasant place to live if you don't mind isolation. But as I learned during the course of the day, it was indicative of almost all the towns I visited in the area. After going through a large commercial section, Hardee's is big here, on the way out of Waynesville I picked up the Cherokee Parkway again and went through Sylva [population = 2,500] which was the only place I saw where there seemed to be industry and real jobs people could earn a living from. The next town was Dillsboro [population = 200] which seemed to be the tourist extension of Sylva. It's very small, 3 blocks by 10 blocks, and there is no downtown for walking, traffic whizzes by on the main street. It is the start of the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad  and has developed into a 2 block square of tourist facilities selling many things you don't need - but it is a town I would definitely go back to. One of the two big and worthwhile sites is The Jarrett House, a 19th century inn and restaurant. It was fairly early for lunch, 11:30 am, but since it was a famous site I decided to have lunch there.  It's a rambling Victorian house, which apparently still rents rooms as a bed and breakfast. There is an extremely attractive parlor to the side and, I suspect, several dining rooms, although I actually saw only one. There's an American plan menu of 6 entrees; I had chicken and dumplings and that automatically came with coleslaw, candied apples, mashed potatoes, green beans, pickled beets and biscuits. The chicken and dumplings were great, the potatoes some of the best I've ever had in a restaurant. And although it sounds like a commercial, everything was piping hot. [I remembered this when I ate at a similar restaurant in Boone a few days later.] The full meal with tax but not tip was just under $10. The waitresses - and there were no waiters  - were young attractive woman in their late teens trained to be perfectly polite. So much so that it seemed to be a little mechanical but I'm sure the hordes of tourists in the upcoming season will round off the edges. The next time I'm there I'd also like to try the Dillsboro Smokehouse Barbeque with its menu. The other big site in Dillsboro is the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad [click the picture to see full size; my rental car is the grey one on the right; by the way, when you look at the full size picture you can see what I meant about the vistas being obscured by the weather] . I had read about it and the various excursions it runs and operates but it didn't sound very appealing to me. But after having driven the next section of the route by car and having missed a lot of scenery because of concentration on the road, I reconsidered.  They run a series of train rides through the same scenic area and you would be able to look at the scenery since you weren't driving and could have conversation with your family. The ticket for a ½ day ride is $28 [add $6 and you get air conditioning and a soda, add $8  and you get a club car with air conditioning, a soda and the right to buy alcohol; add another $8 and you get a steam engine instead of a diesel one]. I'm pretty sure I'll take one of the rides for the scenery the next time I'm in the area. There is a large depot [to the left of the train in the picture above] where a mountain string band was setting up  [it was about 45 minutes before the departure of the next train] and inside the depot was a train memorabilia and book store that was very disappointing. It was a large store but 2/3rds of it was devoted to toys and there were only about a half dozen books for sale. It looked very new so maybe the stock hadn't yet arrived. After buying Dillsboro fudge that Henry had recommended, I started the drive down US 23 which had become two lanes by now and which began having warning signs about curves with 25 mph speed limits, then 20 mph speed limits. There are quite a few gem mines and even some gold mines [remember Desoto and the conquistadors] that are along the road where you can pay to pan for gems and for gold dust. I then  turned eastwards onto US 64 by Franklin at the start of the Cullasaja  Gorge and found out that the curvy part of US 23 was like a Great Plains Interstate compared to US 64 [which I later read is the 2nd most dangerous road in North Carolina]. The map to the left, click to enlarge, shows about a quarter of the day's trip, but the section with the most spectacular scenery through the Cullasaja Gorge.  After passing through Gneiss and going a very short distance but not so short a time, 20 and even 15 mph marked  curves, Cullasaja Falls was on the right with about a 250 feet drop as a cascaded gorge. Unfortunately all I saw was a glimpse of it as I was trying to stay on the road. According to the books the gorge leading to the falls is part of the trail for DeSoto's 1540 expedition in search of gold. There really was a turn off to stop and see Dry Falls but with so much concentration on the road I missed the sign for the turn off.  Bridal Veil Falls was easy to see in advance [the picture is a somewhat hoaked up one from a 1940s postcard]  but I couldn't stop because everybody else had, maybe since they also had all missed the other turnoffs; there were about 4 cars and a half dozen motorcycles already parked there [under the falls, there's a lip of the mountain that extends out over the highway]. Here's a link that shows a 360 degree revolving view of the falls and the road but it is very slow loading. It also gives an idea of the width of Highway 64; the white slash you see at the edge of the falls is actually the underpass that goes under the falls.]  Basically on the section from Franklin to Highlands there's little  practical way of stopping or seeing or photographing, if you're driving by yourself. Going further eastwards and upwards along the same sharp-curved road I got a glimpse of a lake, maybe Mirror Lake, which was probably the head of the water running down to the falls and entered into the town of Highlands.  I was especially interested in visiting it because I had read it was the highest town in North Carolina and one of the highest towns in the east, I thought it might be a place to consider to live for a month a year during the summer to avoid the Washington heat. Well it is high, 4,118 feet.  But the year-round population of the town is only 1,000 [the whole  Highlands area is about 3,000], while in the summer it increases to over 20,000. And it looks like a resort town, an expensive resort town. As I was approaching I began picking up an AM radio station broadcasting from the town playing very gutted standard music and owned by one of the real estate agents. If you're not interested in hunting or fishing or antiquing [and I'm not] it isn't the place to be for a month in the summer, especially if you can't afford it. A sampling of houses listed in the real estate agent's window, and I wasn't purposely  looking for the expensive places, showed the bottom end in the $500,000 range but the majority in the $1 million to $3 million. And I had been told that Cashiers, my next stop, was the expensive place. Entering Highlands you first pass a new shopping square at the west end of the town. Then there's an extremely wide main street with parking on both sides and double parking in the middle for all the tourists. [A motorcycle guide I was reading noted that it's one of the worst places for a motorcycle to un-park without getting hit.] There was a  bookstore with a very good selection, particularly of local history bur I realized I would start going bankrupt, if I bought everything I wanted. Most of the other stores were real estate agencies [apparently doing a land office business], and cutesy knick knack stores. There is a large bed and breakfast,  a beleaguered and out of place looking Elk's Club and a gas station. But it's antiques and knick knacks and gew gaws that predominate. Here, as in Waynesville and Dillsboro earlier and in Cashiers later, there was a disproportionate representation of elderly women travelling in groups. Whenever I did see an elderly woman with a husband, he looked very  healthy. I guess all the other husbands had died off. In Highlands the temperature registering in the car's thermometer  was 71 degrees, about two hours later when I was lower in Brevard it was 79 degrees. So the elevation does help but 8 or 9 degrees isn't worth being so isolated. Verandah View Restaurant at entry http://www.ccradio.com US 64 east of Highlands to Cashiers is a little less wind-y but still a road you have to pay very close attention to. Here the road is called the Waterfall Byway. Cashiers, 3,500 feet and 1,400 inhabitants, appears much smaller than Highlands, apparently people live out either isolated in the country or in a series of new "gated communities. Otherwise it is very similar to Highlands: shopping, real estate, the elderly. If I were going back to see part of the route, I'd go the entire length from Brevard to Murphy and Lake Hiwassee  ---- and also  bring along a chauffeur so I could really see the scenery; or else take the train from Dillsboro to Murphy. It was getting late in the day when I stopped at the Brevard library to check my e-mail. The Bill Tinsley Museum; looked like it was about to close; a new woman at the public library, almost directly across the street, had not heard of it. I knew of the museum and  I recognized his name  as a cowboy singer from the 40s and 50s.  But the museum, in a former store front, shows many more sides to his personality: local history, waterfall research and photography, nature activity with Florida panthers, collector of western-themed bronzes and paintings. The museum also has a genealogical section for the local area. It's also a venue for cowboy and mountain music but, unfortunately, nothing was scheduled for the period I was in the area. Brevard is normally about a 20 or 30 minute drive from Asheville but there was a 20 minute traffic jam entering Asheville on the Interstate that made the trip much longer this time. After I got washed, Henry drove us downtown to go to a city festival that was being held on Pack Square; it was very crowded and the main attraction seemed to be that you got to drink beer out of a plastic cup. [One thing I didn't get to do on this trip was to visit some of the Appalachian and old-timey music venues out in Boone and Maggie Valley like the Allegheny Jubilee or the Mountain Music Jamboree or one or two jazz places like Tressa's  in Asheville. Although I had gotten listings from the internet and the local paper the time was too short.] So we drove back through the Montford section of Asheville and then on to north Asheville to the Stony Knob Café on Merrimon Avenue which looks like a diner trying to go upscale. Henry had a simple meal for about $12  and I had a gyro for about $5 ; both were overpriced by Washington standards. Then we had tea and coffee at the Port City Cafe. Random thoughts on Asheville and the Asheville area that don't fit into any specific day: Another cliché which appears to be false is Southern warmth and hospitality compared to Northern coldness and unfriendliness. A week earlier when I was walking through Kearny on the way to the hospital carrying  a bouquet of flowers, two different [female] crossing guards called out to me asking if I was bringing them the flowers and we had brief conversations. I was also in  short relaxed conversations with other customers in the various stores and eating places I went into in Kearny, a town of 40,000, about 2/3rds the size of Asheville. I don't rush up to speak to people on the streets in Manhattan but as reserved as I am, I still have talks with people there when I'm not just a pedestrian and hear and observe many more spontaneous conversations in New Jersey and New York than I do in Asheville and its surrounding area. All my walking in Asheville was downtown which is maybe why I found and saw little spontaneous social contact. But I was walking a lot in the small towns I visited  and was in many dealings with many people and I found the people far less communicative and outgoing than in New Jersey and New York.

Saturday Laura's graduation was scheduled for 10 am and we arrived among the earliest spectators. The event is held outdoors on the side of a hill/mountain overlooking the Swannanoa valley about 7 or 8 miles outside of Asheville. The weather, as during my entire stay, was comfortable temperatures in the 60s and 70s but very damp and constantly switching from fog to drizzle to rain to sun to clouds. The changeable weather held the ceremony down to 1½ hours.    After a short while Valerie, Laura's sister arrived with Thomas [click the picture to the left to enlarge]. She's two or three years older than Laura, and is studying  what we would probably call "area studies for East Asia" in Paris. She had been scheduled to go to Peking for a Chinese language study program beginning this fall but because of SARS and the PRC government's handling of it, her French school was unsure and things are temporarily on hold.  Before the ceremony started [and at various points throughout it] the school's jazz band played and played well. Laura's parents, who had not been delayed on the trip from Paris by the transportation strikes in France, arrived a little later with Krysztina. Then Stephen, Jessica and Andrew [Andrew's wife Laura had to stay an extra day in Atlanta to work with a youth group in her parish.] The proceedings got off to a very unpleasant start with the school's chaplain giving an invocation which was actually an extremist political screed to a captive audience. But that was the only sour note of the proceedings. The main speaker was Naomi Tutu, a daughter of Desmond Tutu, whose talk was on the role of the oppressor  and the oppressed.  She was discussing the thoughts of those who had been oppressed, degraded, damaged, destroyed by statist systems, such as apartheid and Communism, in which the oppressed thought that the oppressors had everything: material advantages, social advantages, power advantages and that people on the outside did not care what was going on. She pointed out that the leaders of apartheid suffered from fear, that they were relieved from fear only by the fall of the system and that it was only with outside support that this could happen. The outside pressure on Communism, however, was so much less than on apartheid; in fact there have been so many intellectuals claiming Communism was idealistic and misunderstood that the "outside" actually contributed to the longevity of the Communist dictatorships. So, unfortunately,  the speaker was conversely correct in that respect too. Most of my pictures of Laura proceeding in and out were from a long distance with a telephoto lens and are not  too clear; but they are here and here and here. Laura also received  Warren Wilson's Senior Plaque Award. The full program of the ceremony is here and also here; for people who aren't too familiar with American academic customs, there's an explanation at this link.      After the graduation there was about an hour until the graduation lunch that Laura's parents were giving. Henry left me off downtown and I walked around for a tour of  St. Lawrence's Basilica.  The church [click the picture to the right for details] is an utter anomaly. The least unusual thing is its architecture: while the main styles in pre-WW2 Asheville were Art Deco and Art Moderne, faux European aristocratic, and typical American small scale southern plantation,  the church was built, around 1910, in Spanish Baroque.  The church's orangey color, its size and  the later building of a depressed highway behind it, all make the church  stand out even more against the skyline and it dominates most of downtown. The main [pink] Baptist church and the [pink] Municipal Building and the County Building complete the definition of the downtown skyline.  The dome you see from the outside is a self supporting brick dome; on the inside the brick work is very clear.  According to the guide on it, there is no supporting wood framework or steel skeleton but  everything is built to support itself; even the stairway that goes up to the organ is not wood but self supporting brick [click the small image to the left to see the full picture].  If the church were in Jersey City or another Eastern immigrant city, it would strike you as largish but not large and as ornate but not overwhelmingly ornate and decorated. But in the western mountains of a Southern WASP state the size and the interior hagiography really are striking, if not staggering. This link gives a detailed description of the style and the construction of the church and  is well worth reading.   But besides the size and the architectural style, the oddest thing about the church is that it's Catholic. I think that even today  North Carolina still is one of the states with the smallest Catholic minority; when the church was built a hundred years ago the percentage of Catholics was even smaller, and they certainly weren't congregating out in the western mountains. The architect was connected with building the Biltmore House and apparently was both talented and independently wealthy enough to build his own private church on a grand  scale [which was consecrated by James Cardinal Gibbons] . The church appears to be a city-wide non-parish church with many different nationalities attending. Especially after being in the cold and sterile [and practically Unitarian] St. Eugene's Catholic Church which is Henry's and Krysztina's parish, this church is particularly normal and  appealing. Laura's parents had arranged for Laura's graduation lunch at a Japanese restaurant, Heiwa Shokudo, on Lexington Avenue downtown Asheville [and had begun making the reservations by telephone from Paris which must have given the restaurant owner a big psychological boost]. We were first going to be in a traditional [?] Japanese side room but there were too many people for that, so we moved into the main section. [Click image to the left to see full size] It was a delicious meal that started with a very small and tasty individual salad of green seaweed served on a 3" wide saucer-like plate. The main course, I think there were some variations for the vegetarians, was served in a black compartmentalized container which, I think, is called a bento box. Each box held chicken and vegetables grilled on a skewer; sticky white rice; warm tempura shrimp, tempura cauliflower and tempura green vegetable; chilled rare roast beef in a  marinade sauce; raw tuna fish and raw another fish [I heard some one say yellow tail]; there was a dipping sauce [soy ??] that you used as a condiment after mixing a white vegetable [??] into it. I enjoyed everything except the raw fish which I ate very quickly. [Click image to the right to see full size] Meanwhile beautiful large salad platters were served communally for everyone. Although the salad tasted very good, it's presentation was what impressed me the most. There were both white and red wine and I think, but am not sure, that Laura's father said that in France the Japanese restaurants serve the red and white wines in alternation. There was also Japanese barley tea.  I enjoyed the whole meal very much and I think everyone else did too. With the meal and with presents, and with talking, I think we were in the restaurant until 4 or so.  The guests were Laura's parents and sister Valerie, the host parents from Laura's stay in Asheville as a high school student, Stephen, Jessica, Henry, Andrew, Thomas, Krysztina, and  Kate, Jeremy and _______ , three friends of Thomas and Laura. After the luncheon, it was around 4pm, I got my rental car at Henry's and began a driving tour around  near-west Asheville between the French Broad River and the university. First the Montford area and its extension, Then there was a new-ish housing project made of wood with greenery, laid out with many cul de sacs and looping streets and dead ends.  looking as if  it came from Sweden, but with several units boarded up as if they were condemned.. Then through the arboretum and then through the university to get back to north Asheville.

 

Sunday Sunday I took the second all day trip; this time to the mountains to the north and east, in the direction of Boone, again about 200 miles round trip. The weather was the same, cool, periods of drizzle and periods of fog. Not the kind of weather for mountain vistas. So I again intended to concentrate on visiting small towns. The normal route would be using the Blue Ridge Parkway but because of the fog I  took instead US 19E through Burnsville, Elk Park and Newland; for almost an hour it was an easy road, mostly  like Virginia just before the mountains or in the Shenandoah; mountain views in the distance but relaxed unconcentrating driving until around Cranberry. Starting there the road required more attention, although nothing like the roads on Friday. Showers came and went.  On the radio was Sunday morning music and services from the fundamentalist Protestant churches. Much of the music was secular, road house, rockabilly, even standard-like, but with religious lyrics. Because of the mountains' interference I kept losing stations and often there was no AM station that could be picked up. [One very good FM station that I could receive on and off during the day was from South Carolina 88.9 Carolina's Jazz which was playing jazz and then standards in the late afternoon. I'll have to remember to turn my radio to that frequency the next time I visit.] As I was passing the many [but small] country churches I noted that the people weren't dressed fashionably or even in suits and ties but did appear to be carefully dressed; much better than I had been noticing people during the week, especially in downtown Asheville. The signs announcing bingo also surprised me in this fundamentalist Protestant area. I crossed back and forth over the Eastern Continental divide several times;  here it's  around 4,000 feet. At Cranberry the weather was somewhat clear and I intended to go on one of the scenic byways, Mission Crossing Byway,  straight eastwards across several mountain ridges [only 17 miles but 45 minutes driving time] but wound up going in the wrong direction and headed south eastwards down a valley to Linville.  Got directions and headed straight to Boone. Besides Asheville, the other state college in western North Carolina is Appalachian State in Boone. It looks far more imposing, much larger and much more like a college than UNC-Asheville does. This picture doesn't do it justice. I'm guessing the campus is almost a mile long and at least a half mile wide. I was going around it to find the library to check my e-mail but the campus was so large I never found the library. Entering Boone is through an immense commercial slurb of wide highways and driveways and fast food places and big-box shopping centers.  There is a downtown that abuts the university but it's very small, 8 blocks [???], and very uninviting. When I drove out of Boone in another direction there was an even bigger slurb with things the size of Walmart. Two days earlier I had visited Waynesville, a town of 10,000 that I wasn't suited for but which I think many people would like; Boone with about the same population would please fewer people as a residence. Besides the college the other attraction in Boone itself is the Dan'l Boone Inn. It's very much on the style of the Pennsylvania Dutch restaurants in the Lancaster area that cater to busloads of tourists. Limited or no-choice menu and family style service at communal tables. Since this was before the height of the tourist season and on a quiet day, they didn't insist on communal dining. So I, at a table for one, and the couple, at the table for two, next to me, for example, had an unusual service. All the food was brought out to each table simultaneously in separate dishes and you served yourself. This had the disadvantage that things tended to get cold quickly [the serving dishes weren't covered]. Unfortunately, I had gotten there too late for breakfast which is what I would have preferred and so I had the prix fixe lunch: " Fried Chicken, Country Style Steak, Country Ham Biscuits, Mashed Potatoes & Gravy, Green Beans, Cut Corn, Fresh Stewed Apples, Coleslaw, Biscuits, Dessert, Soup or Salad, Beverage". In reality there wasn't a choice between soup and salad; the dessert was a choice between cherry cobbler which I got and strawberry shortcake. There was nothing wrong with the meal and I could see going back in a social setting. Almost everything, however, was mediocre except the fried chicken and the biscuits but it still was a good value for the money [$12.95] and would be good for a family. The first thing that popped into my mind was a comparison with the similar style Jarrett House in Dillsboro where I had been on Friday. Except for the biscuits, all the food at the Jarrett House wasn't just better than at Dan'l Boone, it was better and very good in absolute terms. The prices are almost the same.  At Dan'l Boone the food tended to be cool, at the Jarrett House piping hot. The atmosphere is more relaxed and less touristy at the Jarrett House. And perhaps, just by chance on the days I was at each, all the staff at the Jarrett House were attractive young semi-sophisticated women, while all the staff at  Dan'l Boone Inn were young male semi-wisenheimers, presumably from the college, making wisecracks and jokes with the elderly widows who made up most of the clientele. Again, the tourists I was seeing tended to be elderly  widows and a very few couples of elderly women and very healthy looking husbands .... with one exception, the motorcyclists. On the interstate up from Spartanburg on Wednesday, a work day,  over 100 motorcycles, mostly touring machines, had passed me going in the opposite direction, towards Spartanburg and Charleston. On the day outing I took through Waynesville and Highlands on Friday there was a constant presence of motorcyclists going both in and also against my direction. It seemed unlikely that there was a rally, since Wednesday and Friday were workdays. I do know that there are several motorcycle tour books like this Asheville-specific one [and this general one] to the area [which I had meant to buy for this trip but got distracted] and so maybe the area attracts a disproportionate number of motorcyclists for the scenery, although based on my experiences driving a car I don't see how you could see much scenery riding  a motorcycle which requires much more concentration.  I found out later there had, in fact, been The Myrtle Beach Bike Week the week before and that there was a good chance that the 100 motorcycles I had seen on I-26 on my arrival day were the tail end of that. Later I learned an even more likely reason for all the motorcycles: there is a big business of organized motorcycle tours of the North Carolina mountains originating in Myrtle Beach and run by Carolina Motorcycle Tours. But I think there may be yet another answer to what they were doing out on workdays. Almost all, 95+% , were the Harley Electra-Glide and Honda Gold Wing type tourers, many towing trailers and tents and the kitchen sink. Possibly most of them were retired. On Sunday I saw only a few motorcycles on the side roads I was using but there was a concentration of them in Boone and at the Daniel Boone Inn, younger, leathered RUBs and make believe wannabe tough guys; these were not retirees but it was a Sunday. Comment that doesn't fit any specific day: Restaurant prices: Boone and Waynesville, far from Asheville, are exceptions. But I'm always surprised when I hear about and experience restaurant  prices in  Asheville. Uniformly you get less for your money than you do in the Washington area [one particular sore point with me is the plainness and lack of decor in Ashville restaurants which serve ordinary food at DC prices] and far less than you get In New York. Yet people seem to keep flocking to the restaurants and I see no way people in the area can be earning high incomes. I've been jokingly told that there are aging hippies living on their trust funds but, even if true, that can't account for the shear volume of overpriced restaurants. I had heard that many retires were moving into  the area. But in my mind "retiree" means someone living on social security, a limited fixed income. But this trip when I was out of Asheville most of the time, I realized that the kind of retirees that are moving to the area are wealthy, very wealthy, retirees. They don't necessarily live right in Asheville, but apparently in that part of the country people think nothing of driving 20 or 30 miles to go shopping or to go out to eat. maybe the money these people pump in can keep the restaurant prices inflated. Leaving Boone I came down the eastern side of the mountains on US 221 but there was a detour and I would up going down US 321 past signs reading "Expect Dense Fog Next 8 Miles" and the signs were accurate. The road was far enough east of the main mountains that it was easy driving when the fog lifted and you could see ahead. Just before I reached Interstate 40, I stopped at a gas station to make sure I was heading in the right direction. The mechanic told me he didn't know [how do you not know you're a ½ mile from the only interstate highway within 100 miles?] and told me I should wait until his boss-man returned. I've only heard the word boss-man as a joke but apparently it is still alive. I was near Lenoir, about 60 miles east of Asheville when I hit the interstate and still had to cross Black Mountain on it, through fog [at 3:30 pm in the afternoon] and greatly reduced speed limits. At the  downtown public library in Asheville I tried  to check my mail but the line was very long. So instead I talk a walk and went back to the Grove Arcade to take a picture of the interior.         When I got back to north Asheville, around 4:30, there was a small get-together at Henry's: Laura and her family, Paul, Andrew, Thomas [Stephen had already left for Washington for his orientation at the Smithsonian in preparation for the trip to Guyana. [Click image to the left to see full size]  At that party and at other times during the week I was thinking  of the foreign language capabilities of most US language students,  while conversing, in English, with Laura and Valerie. I've had so many dealings with Laura over so long a period of time that I no longer notice her excellent, nuanced  and sophisticated English; I merely  take it for granted, automatically,  unthinkingly. But I couldn't just take it for granted this time because Valerie whom I had just met - and who has never lived in the US or in another English-speaking country -  also speaks fluent and intellectual English. Laura's family left in time for Thomas to get them to a pet supply supermarket to bring US "exotic" things back to their family pets in France. Random thought that doesn't connect with any specific day: This trip I started using Kimberly Avenue instead of Merrimon Avenue to get into the residential part of north Asheville from the highway and from downtown. It makes a big difference in the impression Asheville makes on a visitor.

Monday Andrew and his wife Laura, who had arrived around midnight from Atlanta,  stopped off at Henry's around 6 am for cereal on their drive to Manhattan via Tom's River [their grandmother] and Secaucus [their motel]. They're going for Laura's sister's graduation from The New School. Andrew was especially looking forward to the ceremony because it was scheduled to be held in Radio City Music Hall, I told him to make sure he sightsaw the men's room but he said he had been told that by several people. I left at 7:30 for GSP, passing a major traffic jam - no movement at all - at the entrance to Asheville; luckily I was heading in the opposite direction and the drive back to the airport was easy and uneventful. I thought I'd be able to fill the rental car up at the airport but there's no station and I had to go back to the Interstate to get a gas station. I knew the rental; agency would have charged me extra if they had done the re-filling but didn't realize what the difference was: I filled up at $1.29 @ gallon, they - I learned at the desk - would have charged me $4.60 @ gallon. I had a lot of time to kill at the airport and had a scrambled egg sandwich as a very late breakfast. The airport was quiet and relaxed. It was the same Dornier 328 with 32 seats going back but his time there weren't two passengers but 12 or 13. I learned from the stewardess that the plane flies at around 21,000  feet, while the small jets fly at around 32,000 to 35,000 feet. I also realized how slowly these planes went up and down compared to the quick time the jets do the landings and especially the take offs. There was no ear popping and certainly no pain on these flights. But then I realized that it  was probably bad for my "Flying test". The last two flights when I had gotten sick began with sinus congestion that got infected and worsened. Since these propeller planes didn't put my sinuses and Eustachian tube under the same stress as jet planes do, I'm still not sure what I learned from flying instead of driving to Asheville. And speaking of slow ascents and descents, the descent to the Reagan Airport was going northwards and relatively low and slowly  over the Potomac. The views of my house and especially of Old Town were picture post card perfect - or unreal. It was  similar to the views that you see in the sunlight  in Iceland. But I had used up my film. Took the train from Reagan to Huntington, saw the Metro bus #9 pulling out but got onto a Fairfax Connector #101 just as it was about to leave so I didn't have to walk home.

Manhattan January 2002	Exchange Place June 2003	Asheville House Sep 2002	Manhattan April 2003	Graduation Birthday May 2003	Hoboken October 2003	Operetta and Amish 2005	Jersey City / Manhattan  September 2004	Thomas' Graduation May 2002	Hoboken and Harrison Fall 2005	Operetta  2006
Manhattan December 2001	Manhattan March 2002	Manhattan April 2002	Andrew/Laura Wedding Oct 2002	Wedding Pictures Oct 2002	Ashland King's Dominion	Cumberland and Western Maryland RR 2005	Jersey City Stained Glass	Jersey City and Three Broadway Revivals April 2004	Jersey City and Manhattan Trolley Tour  November 2004	Hoboken and Harrison Fall 2005	Comments? Corrections? Broken Links?

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