Welcome to Asheville

If you look on the map of my route you can see that there is one area of the country where I have spent a whole lot of time. Almost two months prior I was on the other side of the mountain in Gatlinburg. However, it was a very worthwhile stop to come back and see Asheville for a few days. For three nights I stayed with Rick. Here is how this one worked. I stayed with Lauren in Birmingham. Lauren introduced me to Jenna. I ended up spending just one night with Jenna’s family. Jenna introduced me to her friend BP. BP called her nephew Rick in Asheville to ask if he’d be willing to host me. And a month later I made it.

Rick is a single guy with a nice apartment that’s full of books. A lot of the books consist of nature, national parks, and wildlife. I picked up the Readers Digest book of most scenic drives in the country. I’ve hit a number of them now. We spent a long time discussing national parks and scenic areas of the country. After a career in the Coast Guard, Hawaii is the only state that Rick hasn’t been to, so we had a lot to share about the country. He even spent some time in Traverse City, MI and made some trips to the Houghton/Hancock airport just a short ways from my house. Rick’s got a great assortment of snacks around the place and my favorite, Gardettos!

The three big activities we took part in were walking around downtown, driving up to Linville falls on the Blue Ridge Parkway and watching Where Eagles Dare with Clint Eastwood and Home Sweet Alabama with Reese Witherspoon. Asheville reminds of a smaller Ann Arbor or something like that. After now I should be able to do better at classifying all these towns, I’ll have to start working on that.