North Carolina - Day 2 - a trip to Asheville

Murphy KOA, Murphy

Monday, 12 June 2023

I'd planned to spend one day while I was staying at Murphy to drive over to Asheville, a city I've heard a lot about.  That day came sooner than I expected because my inhaler was so low on dosages that I absolutely had to go now.  Well, that or have trouble breathing so . . . .  And Asheville was the closest location of a CVS.

today's route -
the upper orange line

Google said it'd be a 2-hour drive each way, plus I had a lot of errands to run when we got there, so we left the campground by 6:35, soon after it became light.  The forecast was for rain and there was thick cloud cover, including low clouds in the mountains.  The KOA campground is down in a valley, but once I'm back up on what you might call street level, it's easy to see part of the Blue Ridge Mountains not far away.  Today's drive crossed the Blue Ridge Parkway a couple of times.  Very pretty area.

Past Andrews, the road was designated the Great Smoky Mountains Expressway.  It runs through the Nantahala National Forest and is a long winding road with no shoulder, passing through thick trees.  Oncoming traffic often cut the corners and a couple of times almost hit me because I had no way of pulling over.

Kudzu all over everywhere.

Along the road I came to 3 areas with 7% grade - we were going downhill pretty steadily.  What I found down at the bottom of all that grade was the Little Tennessee River where river rafting seemed to be very popular.  At the Paddle Inn, that offers places to stay along with the rafting, I saw a big Trump 2020 sign.

Later I came to the Tuckasegee River.  At Whittier (no highway sign), I saw a large building labeled "Uncle Bill's Flea Market."  It was there that a guy pulled out right in front of me as if I wasn't there, and I had a car on my left so couldn't pull over.  That left me with one option: to slam on the brakes and hoped they worked.  And that idiot just kept on driving as if he hadn't just escaped death from having an RV slam into the driver's side door.

Asheville is a pretty city of 94,600 residents, and has many amenities, including several dog parks.  I stopped at the one closest to town - French Broad River Park.  At first I was confusing this river with the Broad River in Georgia.  But the Broad flows south to the ocean, where the French Broad flows west into Tennessee.

The French Broad River runs through town and the park is quite large.  I saw people walking a long paved path, some bicycling, and quite a few going to the dog park.  This was a large dog park and all the dogs were well-behaved.  As I'm often seeing these days, Dext was interested and mixed some with the other dogs, but mostly he just wanted to sniff things and mark territory.  I'm assuming he had no spare liquid left in his body by the time he was done.

The road away from there took me by the Biltmore Estate, which is open to visitors - for a minimum price of $79 (not in my budget).  They bill it as America's Largest Home® (the trademark sign is theirs, not mine), and I suppose it is, given its 175,000 square feet.  It was built by George Vanderbilt as a country estate, which seems an odd way to describe such grandeur.  I found this photo online, so you can judge for yourself.

The Biltmore House

Asheville has a strong arts presence, which shows in several ways around town.  One not quite artistic place is a pinball museum.  A zillion years ago I played my share of pinball and was mildly interested in visiting this one, until I found out the admission fee is $15 which, to be fair, includes some game play.  But it was way out of my league.

We stopped at a PetsMart (more food for the kittens), the CVS, a grocery store, and then on to the Montford Historic District.  This area looks like the Hyde Park area in Austin (if it had hills) - lots of houses that are around 100 years old now, lots of big trees.  I'd hoped to stop by a neighborhood park in that area, but many of the streets were narrow, all of them were on hills (makes it hard for me to parallel park the RV), and I decided to look for another place to stop.

We found it at the local visitor center.  This too was built on a pretty steep hill, but the parking areas had been leveled off at different elevations of the hill, so I could get into a spot.  Dext had lots of grass and trees to sniff, plus he met a couple of dogs that were also getting walked.

On the way out of town we stopped at a recycling drop-off center, and I got rid of everything I'd collected, including the plastic #1 clamshells.  A great feeling to be rid of a bathroomful of would-be trash.

Then we drove back southwest, discovering 6% and 7% grades going that way too.  Suddenly the whole valley - and the RV cabin - was filled with smoke.  It smelled like burning tires.  Canadian wildfires?  It was pretty bad for a bit but we finally left it behind us.

One of the forested areas we drove through was named the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest.  I was curious whether Kilmer had originally been from this area, but there's apparently no contact.  Kilmer was born in New Brunswick, NJ, and was killed in the Second Battle of the Marne during WWI.  As far as I could tell, the naming of this forest is simply in admiration of Kilmer's poetry in general and, of course, his most famous poem "Trees."

Then we were back through Andrews and back to the campground.  We got in around 4:00.  I had to dump the waste tanks and Dext wanted a walk, which I made a very short one.  And then we all relaxed for the evening.  But we didn't get any rain all day, and it was a productive, pleasant experience.

North Carolina - Day 1 - getting there

Murphy KOA, Murphy

Thursday, 1 June 2023

Google said today's drive would take 2½ hours, so I figured on an all-day drive.  I knew we'd cover mostly local roads, where I can mostly equal Google's estimates, but I also knew it would cover mountainous areas, where I've found I can rarely drive as fast as the speed limit.  I usually take those curves much more cautiously than someone local would do.  So I left the Anderson, SC, campground at 8:40.

today's route

Not far down the road from Anderson we came to the town of Townville, which indicates a lack of imagination on the part of the early inhabitants, though I'm sure the current residents like the name just fine.

We passed a sign warning "School Prayer Zone" with 2 stick figures: a girl reading a book and a boy kneeling with hands folded in prayer.  It seemed odd to me because why would anyone think passing drivers needed this warning sign?  I just couldn't imagine 2 kids beside the road doing either of these activities (though I used to read books while I was walking home from high school).  So if no kid was expected to be kneeling beside the road (or in the road) why was that sign needed?

South Carolina has a town named Fair Play.  The local myth/history is that the town's name came from a fight between 2 pioneers, when a bystander shouted, "Play fair."  Which of course suggests they hadn't been and isn't much of a character reference for the early folks.  But that's the story.

Westminster seemed a much larger town and labels itself "historic" and the "Gateway to the Mountain Lakes Region."  I see on the map there are several large ones not far from here.

We passed through a massive area of kudzu draped all over everything in its path.

An online photo of kudzu -
kind of creepy, isn't it?

In the small town of Long Creek, I saw a business sign that said "☾ Shine Whiskey."  It took me a minute.

Crossing the Chatooga River put us into Georgia for a short distance, not far from Tallulah Falls where we camped last month.

A sign told us we were passing the turn to Black Rock State Park, saying it's Georgia's highest state park.  At 3,640' elevation, it's got a genuine claim to Georgia fame.

We found ourselves once again on the Blue Ridge Parkway and came to the Continental Divide.  I missed the elevation posted on the sign and can't seem to find it online, but the Black Rock State Park straddles the Continental Divide, so I guess that gives an approximate elevation for this pass.

At the town of Dillard I saw a sign that said:

   Keep America Great

   Trump 2020

   Let Trump Be Trump!

Considering the current criminal charges against the former president for unlawfully retaining top secret documents, including nuclear secrets, I'm sort of hoping Trump decides to become someone else for a change.

And then "Welcome to North Carolina!"

North Carolina
my 48th state

At the town of Franklin we passed the Scottish Tartans Museum, which seemed unusual to me, but maybe this area was colonized by a batch of immigrants from Scotland.

I'd found a dog park in Franklin online, and we found it in reality.  It was what you might call out of the way from any but local traffic, but Google's directions worked out fine and Dext enjoyed the break.

Sadly, Google's directions for how to get back to the highway were abysmal and I ended up wandering around and finally finding the roads I came in on that Google's leaving directions completely missed.  So we're not still wandering around Franklin.  Seemed like a nice little town, but not where we were headed to.

At Franklin we switched to US-64 for the rest of the drive.  Signs told me it was designated a North Carolina Scenic Byway - and it certainly was scenic.  Lots of trees, lots of lupins and paintbrushes along the highway - very pretty.  Very scenic views, too.

And we were back on the Appalachian Highway, driving through the Nantahala National Forest which is so big it seems to cover most of western North Carolina, as you can see from all that green on the route map above.

We passed through the Winding Stair Gap, elevation 3,820' (already higher than Georgia), followed by a 5% grade for the next 2 miles.  Somewhat ominously, a sign there said that by law, all trucks must enter an information area.  From what I could see, NC wanted truckers to be prepared for how to drive on the road ahead.  And that 5% grade was followed by a 7% grade for the following 2 miles.

And we got to Murphy campground at 12:50 - just more than a 4-hour drive.  More than Google said but not as much as I was expecting, which is a good thing.