After about two weeks in one place, my brain starts to get itchy. We moved every two years when I was a kid, so maybe this is related, but maybe I’m just restless. My need to get out of town is primal; I’ll drive to Cincinnati just to go to the Target up there because what if their Target is different and they still have this or this or this?
Anyway, this wanderlust (pun definitely, wholly intended) means that I’ve been to every town in a six hour range of anywhere I’ve ever lived. I also don’t have a ton of cash (I just finished humanities grad school, so I think we all know what that means), so I’m not doing anything that fancy. Enter Asheville.
For the uninitiated, Asheville is in the western part of North Carolina, and it is not close to anything you think it is close to. The drive took us about 5 hours all told (I am morally opposed to stopping. Ever. At any time. Unless it’s at the Lodge Cookware Outlet.). Raleigh is a couple hours away, but it is also, somehow, not close to Chattanooga or Charlotte, really. No matter! You’ll get out there, and it’ll be pretty, and you won’t care that it took several hours longer to get there than you/Google Maps had estimated. It’s a weird place, to be sure- it’s a college town, but also a resort town, but also a place where hippies and buskers like to congregate and have drum circles. Needless to say, I think it is the greatest place on earth.
If you go, and you definitely should, here are some things I think you should try out. Continue reading →
