Asheville, NC

It rained off and on all Friday night and into the wee hours of Saturday morning, but by the time we crawled out from under the covers the sun was peeking through the cloud cover, and the forecast was for partly cloudy skies, and a very low chance of rain.

Jeanette & Dennis courtesy Bonish Photography - taken in Cedar Key at the Tiki Bar in 2012.

Our main plans for Saturday were to meet up with NuRVers Dennis and Jeanette (who also write a blog entitled Cheddar Yeti) in downtown Asheville.  They are currently staying in Tennessee, about 80 miles west of Asheville in their 1978 Bluebird Wanderlodge.  Ever since we met them in Cedar Key in March of 2012 we have been trying to hookup with them again, and this is the closest proximity we have been to each other.  They had wanted to visit Asheville, but didn't want to drive their coach over the mountains, so they drove their car into Asheville.  You see the lengths we NuRvers will go to in order to meet up on the road!  Dennis and Jeanette are 30 somethings who started living on the road full time back in 2009.  They both work on the road with Jeanette doing graphic design, and Dennis website development and maintenance.  When we first met them last year they had a Lazy Daze Class C motorhome, but this past Fall they sold it and bought a 1978 Bluebird Wanderlodge bus.

A morning 2 mile walk along the French Broad River

Once more I get ahead of myself......around 10 we decided to take advantage of the walking/biking path along the river and walked 1 mile southwest along the river and back for a total of 2 miles.  At the turn around point of our walk we got a message from Dennis saying they were on the road and would meet us around Noon time at the Tupelo Honey Cafe on College in Asheville.  We got back just before 11 and started to get ready to drive into town.  We're only 3 miles from downtown so it was about a 10 minute drive for us.

As you might imagine parking in the downtown area can be problematic on a Saturday afternoon, and it was, but we managed to find a metered parking spot on the street....$1.00 per hour.  We put in 8 quarters and headed over to the cafe.  We had barely put in our reservations (1 hour wait....this is a very popular eatery....4.5 stars on Yelp) when Dennis and Jeanette walked up.....we stood talking outside the cafe for what seemed like just a few minutes, but in reality was an hour.....the time just flew by.  We sat down at our table around 1 pm, and before we knew it another 2 hours had flown by.......

Asheville has a LOT of micro breweries, and taprooms, and one of the best was right across the street from the cafe, so we headed there next to sample some local brews.  We had barely sat down at the bar when Dennis noticed the "Roaming Pint" decal on the wall....it's the glass of beer with the "location" button on it...right in the center of the picture.  This means our friends Brian and Maria have preceded us!

Our non-stop conversation continued over a couple of 8 oz draft beers.....as we were exiting the Thirsty Monk I looked at my watch and realized it was 4 pm....I should have been putting more quarters in the meter 2 hours ago!  We walked briskly over to our spot to find we HAD NOT been ticketed, or towed....whew.....we put 8 more quarters in taking us to 6 pm when parking then became free for the rest of the evening.  

Basilica of St. Lawrence

From there we walked over to the Basilica of St. Lawrence, and the around town poking our heads in antique shops, and thrift shops.....we walked into a place called Lexington Park Antiques....Dennis and I were deep in conversation, when I began to become aware of the enormous size of this store...several thousand square feet.  We spent close to an hour wandering the isles of this store, and TLE found a couple of prizes.....1) a cool, almost new, Country Gentleman hat for $15, that was worth over $45, and 2) a book......first book in a long time.  The rest of us were not drawn to anything we could not live without, but it is a very cool antique shop.....I found a lot of vintage tools....some well over 100 years old. Another cool antique shop was Featherheads Emporium run by Kimberly Sherrill, a very personable young lady.  While the others looked around I talked with her about a book she was reading...."Every Day" by David Leviathan.....one of our NuRver friends, Pace Smith, had mentioned on Facebook she was reading the book.

By the time we exited the store it was after 6....in fact they had locked the store doors just after we came...closing time!  We were all hungry again, so we walked about .3 miles over to Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria to eat supper, and sample a few more local brews.  Again, another 2 hours just flew by with uninterrupted conversation.

We spent around 8 hours with Dennis and Jeanette sharing experiences, talking about some of the problems they have had with their Wanderlodge, and just talking about life in general, and specifically about living full time on the road.  We parted company at the intersection of College and Hayward, where we met 8 hours earlier, to walk to our respective cars....they had an 80 mile drive home at 8 something pm.....again, we are grateful they took the time to drive over an hour to spend the day with us in lovely Asheville, NC!

Dennis and Jeanette are westward bound to California where Jeanette's family lives.  We are hoping  to see them again in Southern California later this year.

Asheville is a must place to visit if you are in the area.....we barely scratched the surface of things to do and see there.  We will try to do more in the next couple of days, but you really need a week, at least, to see most of the good stuff.

We got home in time to catch the second half of the Witchita v. Ohio State NCAA game....Witchita won to move on to the Final Four, along with Syracuse who beat Marquette earlier in the evening.  More NCAA action Sunday afternoon.

Thanks for stopping by!