A Story About Life and Living It

Having descended from the top of Tennessee we headed to the North Carolina side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We stopped briefly at an old mill which has been running for over a hundred years. They still use it to make flour which they sell to support the park.

After leaving the park we headed off toward what turned out to be the low point of our trip. We had read online that Asheville, NC was a neat city, so we headed there with plans to visit and find a place for dinner. Lani learned before we left that the only thing in the entire town that is free is a Catholic Basilica finished in 1909. The church was full of paintings and statuettes, just like most Catholic churches.


Unfortunately, the rest of the town wasn't as neat. We really tried to like it, but it's just hard to like a place that really tries hard to copy your home town, but fails pretty miserably. Everywhere we went there were "Keep Asheville Weird" shirts (an obvious knockoff of the very popular and original  "Keep Austin Weird" shirts), vegan restaurants, and other hipster establishments. The major problem was that it didn't work. The town had kind of a "forced" feel to it, like they were trying too hard to make their town into something it isn't (a hipster town) instead of keeping it like it was (a nice southern town). The other major bummer was that most restaurants on the main streets closed at 5. I'm no tourism expert, but that seems a little early. We ended up going to a restaurant that proposed to serve us good southern cooking, but was actually just overpriced and not very tasty. I'm sure Asheville has some redeeming qualities, but we missed them.

After our Asheville debacle we headed up the Blue Ridge Parkway toward the Black Mountain Campground. We had intended to pitch our tent for the night, but by the time we got there it was pouring rain and pitch black. We were so tired we ended up just sleeping in the car. Needless to say, it wasn't very comfortable.

The next morning we had scheduled an attempt at Mt Mitchell, the highest point east of the Mississippi. We had planned to make it a 10 mile round trip hike. With all the rain the night before we opted for the 5 mile round trip version instead. That version was just as muddy, super steep, and tons of fun.


We ended up bushwhacking a fair way up the mountain because of a wrong turn. Super fun.


We were rewarded with a nifty tower on top of the mountain. You can see Lani thanks to her bright orange shirt:


The view wasn't much because of the clouds, but it was spectacular nevertheless.


On top of the tower is a map of North Carolina with the USGS marker inset into the map at the actual location of Mt Mitchell within the state.



It may not be very high at 6684 feet above sea level, but it felt like an achievement nonetheless, especially after all the mud (did I mention that it was muddy?).


Lots of the yellow circle trail markers had witty comments written in them. This one had us worried:


Fortunately, we didn't see any raptors. That may have ended poorly for us. What would have ended well was a zip-line down these wires:


Lani found some more mushrooms to be excited about:


I convinced her not to eat any, but in exchange we stopped at the restaurant on the way down and had a very tasty sandwich. I guess I should explain why there was a restaurant on the mountain. The whole mountain is part of Mt Mitchell State Park. As part of the park there is a road all the way up to nearly the top of the mountain. We saw a lot of people there who had driven all the way up and who kept giving us really funny looks since we were super muddy. They were obviously having a hard time figuring out how we had gotten so messy just walking up from the parking lot. It was pretty funny. Anyway, about halfway up (or down, in our case) the mountain the trail crossed by the road right next to a restaurant with a beautiful view of the mountain, so we stopped there to grab a bite.

After our BBQ sandwiches we bid adieu to North Carolina and headed out toward the other, more southerly, Carolina.