Rockin' around Asheville

Friday was all about the Blue Ridge Parkway, or at least that was the plan.  We got on the road at about 10:30, we headed south out of Asheville to pick up the Blue Ridge Parkway about 35 miles south of the city where we had left off a couple of days ago.  We stopped while we were still in Asheville for gas; again we found the cheapest gas we could find on our gasbuddy app, this time paying $3.69.  Not the cheapest we’ve seen but still much better than the northeast.  When we were almost at the entrance to the parkway, we stopped for a geocache (surprised?).  This one was hidden on the property of a pottery store.  The owner of the store hid the cache so we were not uncomfortable searching for it.  As Chris was searching for the cache near the parking lot a guy came up to him and asked what he was doing.  Normally Chris would have to explain geocaching to the person but since this cache was hidden on the property of the store, he figured that the person asking must be playing games with him, knowing full well what Chris was doing. So Chris’s answer was something along the lines of “what do you think I’m doing?”.  The guy answered something along the lines of “I don’t know” and Chris immediately knew this guy really had no idea why we were poking around in the bushes.  After explaining geocaching to Corey, who was an apprentice at the pottery store, Corey was very interested in finding this box in the bushes.  Now the pressure was on.  We had to find it to show him we weren’t some crazy people poking around where we shouldn’t be.  After searching for what seemed like forever, Corey found the geocache.  He was sooo excited.  He said that he has worked here since January and he sees that box sitting in the bushes every single day but he never knew what it was.  He also said that since it wasn’t his, he has never touched it.  Corey wouldn’t last 2 seconds back home.  He is much too polite.  So Chris explained how geocaching works, showed him all of the geocaches in the area (he was quite impressed that there were so many) and thanked him for helping us search.  Then we were on our way.

We hit the Blue Ridge Parkway and started driving.  We probably stopped at every single overlook on the way snapping pictures.  We ended up driving only about 50 miles on the parkway, but it took the better part of 5 hours.  The drive started out kind of foggy, in fact for much of the first several miles, each and every viewpoint was either in the clouds or very close to it.  There was not a lot to see.  What we did see a lot of, was motorcycles.  There were probably more motorcycles on the road today than all other vehicles combined.  It wasn’t wall to wall motorcycles, but probably half of all of the vehicles we passed were bikes.   We hit the highest point on the parkway, according to the sign, it was at 6053 feet.  It too was surrounded by clouds and fog.  We also took a short hike today, to the top of Devil’s Courthouse, which was a 15 minute hike each way (all uphill, at least in one direction) from the parking lot.  According to Cherokee lore, within the mountain is a cave where the devil lives.  We didn’t see the devil today but we can say for sure that the climb up was tough.  Even though it was only 15 minutes, it was all uphill and we gained about 300 feet of elevation in the four tenths of a mile or so walk.  The views however, were amazing.  There certainly was fog in the distance in some directions, but in other directions it was quite clear and you could see for miles.

Our car is the little white spec in the middle of the parking lot.

We stopped at dozens of more overlooks, took a bunch of pictures, and finally made our way to the Blue Ridge Parkway information center, at milepost 380 or so (parkway is 469 miles, with mile post 469 being on the southern end), at about 4:00.  We picked up several guides to attractions near the parkway and bought a book on short hikes that you can take from the parkway. 

Since the information center is actually just outside of Asheville, you can probably guess where we decided to stay the night.  Yup, Asheville.  This is unusual for us, as we rarely stay more than one night in any city or town when we take roadtrips.  On this trip, not counting the week we stayed in Huntsville for work,  we have so far stayed 3 nights in Atlanta, and now a third night in Asheville.  We unfortunately didn’t want to spend  the money or points to stay another night at the Indigo so we stayed again using points at the Fairfield Inn, about 10 miles south of town.  We made a reservation for the Lazoom tour, which according to trip advisor and Indigo, is one of the top attractions in the city.  It is essentially an open air bus tour of the city, but with a comedic twist.  The other cool thing about this bus tour is that they advertise themselves as being a BYOB tour.  Everyone on the tour (except us because we were running late) had the second B with them.  This made for an interesting tour.  Imagine it, a bus load of drunks and you are the only sober ones.  So when the bus stopped for a 10 minute break half way through the 2 hour tour we figured, if you can beat ‘em, join ‘em.  We bought some beers for the second part of the tour at the Thirsty Monk, and it was just as entertaining during the second hour as it had been during the first hour.  The tour was advertised as a comedy tour and it had three main guides, the bus driver, Choo-Choo, who pretty much just drove our funny looking purple, open air bus; our narrator, Augusta, who was a woman who claimed to be from Asheville and was dressed like a can-can dancer; and another guy who made random appearances dressed in various outfits throughout the tour.  The woman was extremely entertaining.  She had a thick southern accent, whether or not it was real, only she knows for sure; and she was quite funny.  The guy making random appearances first appeared as a nun, then he was dressed as a fruit cake, then as a nun again, but this time drinking a beer, then as a nun a third time, but this time riding a 5 foot tall bicycle, and finally because we are in the Beer City, he was dressed in his best beer drinking attire.  The whole bus laughed for two hours straight.  Despite the comedy spin they put on this tour, they actually gave us a nice, historic tour of the city, pointing out interesting places and facts as we rolled along.  The comedy side only made it better.

Once the tour was over, we sat in the beast trying to decide what to eat since we hadn’t had a real meal all day long, just snacks.  As we sat there we saw a Mexican restaurant across the street which looked appetizing.  Jackie checked foursquare and it had a bunch of good tips, while Chris checked tripadvisor where he found several other good tips.  So we went in.  The food was amazing.  We each got taco plates which we split plus we got two appetizers (guacamole and tamales) and a dessert of Kahlua flan.  We also got something else….a 64 ounce fishbowl margarita.  It looked exactly how it sounds.  A giant fishbowl full of blue margarita.  Ordering this was a no-brainer.  We were each going to get margaritas, which were $5 each.  Chris saw some other diners drinking these $5 margaritas and he figured that the glasses they serve these drinks in were at most 8 ounces, but probably slightly less.  The fishbowl margarita, on the other hand, was only $14 but it was 64 ounces full of margarita goodness (that’s a half gallon to those of you who aren’t good with numbers).  We went for the fishbowl.  As we were drinking our monster drink the waiter asked how it was.  We told him it was great and he then told us that our drink was the very first one that the restaurant had ever sold; they had just put the fishbowl margarita on the menu today!  So you could say we are pioneers of the drink!  Once we got our bill we were shocked.  For the same meal back home we figured it would be anywhere from $90-$100 before tax.  Here however, $53 after tax.  We want to live here.

After paying our tab we headed over to the Asheville Brewery to buy a couple of growlers of beer.  The guy in front of us on the tour brought a growler with him and it looked so tasty that we had to get one for ourselves.  Jose and Chris will be enjoying a few glasses of Rocket Girl in a week, that is if Chris doesn’t beat him to it. 
Finally, we headed back to the hotel.  Tomorrow, more of the Parkway.