A Month in Asheville
We enjoyed our stay in Asheville so much last year that we immediately made plans to stay again the same place, a year in advance! After our adventures in Peru, it was lovely to come back to “our” familiar condo in the historic Asheville Times Building in the heart of Downtown. We rearranged the living room furniture a bit for easier TV-watching, but otherwise every detail of the place was as perfect as we remembered it.
It seems there was always something happening in Downtown Asheville. There was a May Day Rally soon after we arrived, with people marching for a variety of causes including public school funding, workers' rights, immigrant safety, and healthcare access.
On Saturday mornings, the Farmers Market popped up just around the corner. Across the street from our condo, Pack Square was a popular site for community events. Downtown After Five was a monthly event with art vendors, food trucks, and free concerts. (We watched a salsa band perform on Latin Dance Night, but unfortunately the sound system was lacking.)
Our good friends Hope and Dave drove up from Greenville for a visit, with some truly excellent wine. (Thank you, Karen and Jimbo!) We ate well, too - Steve made crispy chicken for dinner, and Dave made omelets for breakfast. We visited the North Carolina Arboretum (read about it HERE) and talked and laughed for hours. Every get-together with Hope and Dave is a treat!
We saw more good friends when we flew to New Jersey for our 40th college reunion. As the plane left Asheville, I enjoyed the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was fun seeing the massive Biltmore Estate from the air! (Read about our last visit to the Biltmore HERE.) It was quite a different landscape from the Port of Newark, an industrial sprawl with the Manhattan skyline in the distance. Read about Princeton Reunions HERE.
On the ground level of our building was the Black Mountain College Museum. BMC was an avant-garde arts school near Asheville, with many influential artists as students and faculty. The museum had been closed all month, and reopened just in time for me to see their new exhibit, Black Mountain COLL(A)GE. Read about BMC Museum HERE.
On the surface, Asheville seemed to have recovered after the devastating floods from Hurricane Helene twenty months ago. Downtown restaurants, shops, and galleries were open (though some beloved spots had closed forever). On the weekends, tourists strolled the sidewalks, and markets and festivals brought in crowds. Tourist numbers are rebounding. But the residents of Asheville are experiencing lasting effects, such as nervousness when it rains. One Lyft driver told us that the worst impact of Helene was to his circle of friends, since most of them re-located to faraway places. It was heartening to hear another resident observe that the storm brought neighbors out to help one another, bringing back a spirit of community that had previously dwindled. We were glad we could play a small part in Asheville’s continuing economic recovery, and we plan to return to this wonderful place as often as we can.
