On the road again...

Here's my way late post about our road trip last weekend. We had planned on going to New Orleans and up until Thursday night while we were watching ER (don't laugh, Doug's the one who watches it) that's where we were going. Then I got a wild hare and suggested we go somewhere else we hadn't been before. So we settled on Asheville, North Carolina, an 8 hour drive from Memphis. I love car trips, I can get a ton of knitting done, at least when I'm the passenger. I drove the leg from Memphis to Nashville and let Doug drive the rest of the trip. He snapped this on the road, apparently I was concentrating really hard on my knitting. It's a long drive, but as you enter Middle and East Tennessee the landscape changes into mountains and plateaus and it's so pretty. We got into Asheville around 8PM or so. We would have been there sooner but we got lost on the way to the hotel. Apparently the difference between Woodfin Avenue and Woodfin Street is a big one.

We stayed in downtown Asheville and it was charming and busy and full of shops and art galleries and restaurants and musicians. Our hotel room was perfect with a big, fluffy bed AND chocolates on our pillows. Chocolate never fails to impresses me.

We ate here:
The Green Sage Cafe
Mellow Mushroom Pizza
Tupelo Honey Cafe
Early Girl Eatery (so good we ate there twice, see pancakes below)

The Dripolater CoffeehouseWe didn't have a bad meal, everything was tasty and everyone was so friendly. There was a used bookstore (Montford Books) that had records and happened to be next door to a fly fishing store (for Doug) so we wandered around there for awhile. I bought some John Updike and Eudora Welty for the library and a couple of records for that collection. Doug was ecstatic to find a KISS album and a promotional Deadwood record.

Of course I found a yarn a store...or two. I tried to limit myself though. I only bought four skeins total. I went to Purl's Yarn Emporium on Wall Street and it was such a nice shop, big store windows with knitted dragons(!) hanging from the ceiling. The yarns were arranged by color and I tried to snap a picture but it turned out all blurry. I got two skeins of Sublime Organic Cotton in a beige-y color for a spring hat. I also went to the Earth Guild which was a few blocks away from Purl's and they sold craft supplies as well yarn. I got two skeins of white SWTC Bamboo there for maybe a shawl or something.

Saturday we visited the North Carolina Arboretum. Even though not a lot was blooming they had a nice bonsai exhibit.

On Sunday we drove down to Chimney Rock State Park, about 45 minutes from Asheville. Again, a gorgeous drive and we had perfect weather. We climbed up to the rock via a set of stairs straight up. It only proved to me how terribly out of shape we both are. But once we got to the top it was a great view and we took the elevator down. There are some falls there too and we took a short walk over to see them. Part of the park was used to film scenes from "The Last of the Mohicans" if that tells you anything. See the top of the rock? That's where we walked to.We didn't have nearly enough time to see everything we wanted to, so we'll have to go back. I was really impressed with how beautiful the landscape was, how walkable the downtown was and how much art there was everywhere. It's teeming with creativity. Another fun car trip, although we're almost always ready to come home by the end. We miss our cats (now you can laugh).