Lake Powhatan USFG, Asheville, NC
For the last several years we've been talking about where to celebrate our ten year anniversary. Every time we'd visit a National Park or one of the Great Lodges, we'd ask ourselves, "Should this be the place to celebrate?" When I began planning this road trip I actually started from our anniversary weekend and planned backwards and forwards from there. We love the mountains, Asheville has a great vibe, and it's the beginning of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Seemed like a good choice and after our big date today I can honestly say we made a great choice!
The campground is only about 20 minutes from downtown Asheville so it made for a pretty easy drive. We were kinda winging it, but that was half the fun. We unloaded our bikes, made a trip to the Visitors Center and took a lap around town scoping out the myriad of activities happening - and quite the mix of activities it was! We rode close to 20 miles going from one event to the next. Asheville is in hill country so it was a lot of going up and down some pretty long hills. Our eclectic day took us to a Mountain Sports Festival located in a park near the French Broad River, a Monsanto GMO protest ''festival", several craft fairs and our fave, the French Broad Chocolate Shop. French Broad Chocolate is a small handcrafted bean to bar shop that has an almost cult like following in Asheville. I was really impressed that they had several shelves stocked with other handcrafted bean to bar chocolate makers as well as their own chocolate, confections and pastries. It was fun to see Videri chocolate was included too. Perhaps one day Cello Chocolate will be on the shelf!! Ned and I bought several (maybe 7?) bars of the chocolate we've been meaning to try, along with a nice tall glass of stout and proceeded to taste a bit from each bar. (Really - it was just a taste!) I definitely believe our chocolate is just as good.
After this afternoon pick me up, we continued to ride our bike thru town enjoying all the people watching. This town could easily rival Berkeley in it's wacky uniqueness.
We saw purple comedy tour buses, pub cycles, musicians on each street corner and jugglers. We had dinner at a sidewalk cafe and listened to some amazing music. Ned captured some on video, when we get a better cell connection I hope to post it on FB.
When we rode our bikes back to Winnie, past French Broad Chocolate, we noticed the line was out the door and up the block. Dang, glad we hit it when we did. I'm so glad we have another couple of days of just hanging around and enjoying this very fun, romantic city. And Molly, Megan and Josh - happy anniversary to all of us. You kids make it so much fun to be a family together!
