We had a wonderful vacation in the Asheville, NC area last week. It was more relaxing than I expected. We managed not to run around like maniacs the entire time, and the house we rented in Black Mountain (small town near Asheville) was very peaceful.
The view from the deck at the house we were renting.
This frog is at Lake Tomahawk in Black Mountain - part of the Black Mountain Sculpture Stroll.
There were lots of goslings and ducklings at the lake.
The bumper stickers in Asheville are always interesting!
Hopefully, this is only part one, but I don't always get back to posts.
The fall color is at its peak in Hillsborough, the weather has been in the 60's and beautiful, and we've been spending lots of time outside. We always take a break from our formal homeschooling for the most beautiful weeks of the spring and fall.
We had a whirlwind trip to Asheville this weekend. Daughter was in seven of the fifteen dances in the Fall Dance Concert. For the first time, older son was able to come with us and see a dance concert there. The next day, we all had a wonderful time wandering around Asheville. Here, we're playing Pooh Sticks on a bridge on a trail in the NC Arboretum.
Daughter also really wanted to show Older Son the Asheville Botanical Gardens. Last year, her dorm room overlooked the gardens, and she spent lots of time there wandering, wading, and studying.
Sculpture in the water garden
Perennial sunflowers
Bridge over the stream
We took older son and daughter to brunch at one of our favorite places to eat in Asheville.
The bakery is very local and very organic.
After we dropped daughter off at UNC-A, we wandered around downtown a little more with older son. I thought that this was a very Asheville sort of thought.
I like the painting on this building.
This planter made out of an old, large mixer is in front of the Mellow Mushroom.
Wall painting
Older son took a lot of pictures too so I'm going to try to put a post of those together.
We had been wanting to show Older Son some of the things we've enjoyed in the last year of trips to Asheville. He's usually been too busy with his studies to come along. However, when we dropped daughter off at UNC-A, two weeks ago, older son was able to come.
First, we moved Daughter in to her dorm room. The dorm this year is lighter, and the hallway near the stairs has a view of the mountains.
Over the winter, I forgot about the beautiful beds of perennials on campus. These are in front of her dorm.
One of the two places Daughter wanted to take Older Son was the French Broad Chocolate Lounge. I have yet to get a good photo of it, butclickonthelinksforFlickrphotos. As we expected, he loved it. He had the liquid truffle (which looks and tastes just like the name), and Daughter, Older Son, and I split a chocolate cake, a mint brownie, and a chocolate torte. He enjoyed the desserts there just as much as we thought he would!
If you're in the Asheville area, a wonderfully expressive artist that I know online, Genie Maples, will be having an exhibition, Paint and Chocolate, at the French Broad Chocolate Lounge from September 15 through October 15. Unfortunately, next time we'll be in Asheville is the weekend after it closes. :( You can also enjoy her work at her website.
We had dinner at Marcos, an Italian restaurant that Dear Husband, Younger Son, and I enjoy.
One of the main things I wanted to show older son was Asheville on a summer evening - the stores, the liveliness, the food, and, most importantly, the street performers!
I've always loved these stars in this store on Lexington Ave. We bought one last spring when we were in Asheville to bring Daughter home. We still haven't figured out a place in the house to put the star!
I enjoyed Karen Hollingsworth's paintings, which were in this gallery window. My photo of her book doesn't do justice to the colors, but you can see how they should look at her site. This painting was my favorite of the ones in the window.
There's a lady with a beautiful voice who sings in the doorway of the next store over from this gallery. We've heard her sing gospel, and, I think, blues. I didn't take a picture of her, but we always stop and enjoy for a while.
I've already lightened this photo a good bit. Some street performers in Asheville dress as statues, then "come to life" when you put money in the bucket. She plays her drum, and then curtsies and looks you straight in the eye before going back to being still.
This was a particularly good evening for watching performers in Asheville. These dancers were doing the tango.
There were bluegrass bands playing at Shindig on the Green. At this point, I mentioned that it's kind of like the Festival for the Eno, except at night and without the heat (or the craft booths)(or the sand sculptures).
This was my favorite group! The Red Hot Sugar Babies played wonderful Dixieland music. I'd love to see one of their concerts, but they only play in the Asheville area so I'll have to see if a visit there coincides with a concert.
Here's another view where you can see the pianist.
"Hot Tamale Man" was one of the songs we heard them sing (the sound on the video gets better after the first minute).
My favorite song of the ones they sang is Sugar, here sung by Billie Holiday:
I posted Part 1 (about our trip up to Asheville to see daughter's dance performance) two weeks ago, and, even though I had the photos ready, I never got back to posting them.
The plan was that we would drop daughter off at her dorm at 4 pm so that she could get her work done and we could get home by about 8:30 pm. However, after dropping her off, we realized that we needed a bathroom, and the Asheville Botanical Garden was just around the corner so we'd just stop there for a minute.
You know we can't just stop in briefly at a garden:
Dear husband, off to do some sketching while younger son and I wandered. Here is his sketch post.
There were lots of (trilliums? trillia? trillium? I've found all three recommended) trillium plants blooming that day.
Dear husband has gone to sleep already. I'll ask him what these are tomorrow.
Sweet white trillium (I took a photo of the tag for these)
Bleeding heart
I love the way the white sycamore branches caught the sunlight.
We left the Garden in time to get home by 9:30. However...
... as we were approaching the town of Black Mountain, where we stayed for a wonderful vacation two years ago, I mentioned that, if we were younger and had less sense, I'd suggest a walk around Lake Tomahawk. Dear husband said that he had been wanting to take a walk there and that we'd be tired whether we got home by 9:30 or 10:30. Younger son, actually, almost was the only voice of reason, but he decided he'd like to take a walk too.
It was beautiful there:
Cherry blossoms framing the lake and the Seven Sisters Mountains
We're in high spring right now, and the weather has been beautiful. Blogging is taking a bit of a back seat. :)
Last Friday and Saturday, we were in Asheville for daughter's dance concert. She was in four dances - three of them in a row - and she led the middle one of those three. She was in Foxtrot, African jazz, and Ballet dances. She choreographed and led a theater dance to James Darren's version of Come Fly With Me. She decided to make it an audience participation dance. If you're a Facebook friend of mine, I "shared" a video of that (and the ballet performance) that someone posted.
The audience responded wonderfully - lots of dancing all up and down the aisles and both in front of and behind the block of seats. There were probably about 50 people dancing onstage - mostly dancers, but about five (by younger son's count) regular audience members.
Four of that five weren't related to daughter. :)
I had such a blast dancing and enjoying her dancing and leading. She seemed so calm and poised!
Then I sat back down in my seat for the ballet dance, and tears started streaming down my face.
[No photos because it's too late to call and ask her if she minds my posting them.]
The next morning, we all wandered around downtown Asheville. We had seen these stars in a window last summer when we brought her to college. We decided to buy one last weekend. We have no idea where we're going to hang it!
I didn't take that many photos because... well... I wasn't focusing on that!
Shady Grove Flowers on Lexington Ave is a lovely, eclectic store. Here's their small garden tucked in back. We came away with two more vases to hang on the walls. We can't put vases out on tables downstairs because Tamlin, our boy kitty, loves to eat flowers. He doesn't eat daffodils, however, so this is the only time of year that we can have flowers at the table.
Lina, however, likes to drink the water from the vases. She doesn't knock them over...
...too much.
I also love the Grove Arcade, which was built in the 1920's and is architecturally fascinating:
...and north. This is the point at which I started to get a little claustrophobic. I'm not much for crowds (Dear husband took this photo).
Street performer
I loved Downtown Books and News - good overall, it also had a wonderful science fiction/fantasy section (and was a nice break from the crowds).
The Botanical Gardens at Asheville are right next to UNC-A, making them quite popular with students.
As I just found out a few minutes ago, it turns out that their website says that wading is discouraged. It must be only mildly discouraged because there were no signs there saying that, and there were a number of sets of stairs to help one get down to the water.
At least I spent a good bit of time on the rocks (dear husband, obviously, took this photo).
The Hayes Cabin. We were busy talking so I didn't take many pictures. It was a lovely afternoon.
On the way home: Winston-Salem in the setting sun.
It's been a light blogging week. I'm working part-time again, in a department I used to work for. I'm glad the opportunity opened up! I've been focused on that and on younger son, who's been sick. Also, Typepad has had major problems the last week (particularly with photos!) so I decided it would be less frustrating to just ignore this blog for a few days.
We had heard that UNC-Asheville had a lot of students that go home on weekends. Daughter found out that that's particularly true the first weekend of the semester. After a very quiet weekend, we were pretty sure that Labor Day weekend would be even quieter (we were right). She didn't want to come home because that would keep her from getting used to it as quickly, which I really understand. She welcomed a visit, though, so dear husband and I went up there last Saturday and Sunday. Older son had lots of work for the Design School, and younger son wanted to stay home and play with friends. Now that they're back in school, he really treasures the time he can spend with them!
Old Salem, a historic area in Winston-Salem, is a good stopping point for a walk, baked goods from the Winkler bakery, and photos.
The light was beautiful that morning...
...as was the sky.
The home Moravian Church.
We spent the afternoon walking around Beaverdam Lake in north Asheville. That's a heron flying by.
In the evening, of course, we wandered around downtown Asheville. Shindig on the Green, a summer, weekly, musical series was going on. Each group only performs a few numbers onstage, but they hang around and play on the sidewalks or at the edge of the park. We saw over a dozen. It's fascinating to walk around and listen to all of them.
We were trying to stay at a hotel with points, and the closest one was an hour away in Johnson City, TN. This seemed like a very long way on Saturday night.
Sunday morning, however, it made for a beautiful drive back to Asheville!
Why sit inside and have breakfast when there's all this beauty? We ate at this overlook on the NC/TN line...
This week, we brought daughter to UNC-Asheville for her freshman year.
We wandered around Asheville the evening before move in, and, like usual, Asheville was loads of fun (sunset over Pack Square Park, above). The next day was busy with move in, shopping for a few more things, and a bit of wandering around UNC-A. For the most part, I was able to focus on what we were doing and enjoy the days.
I did have trouble at the end of lunch on move in day. Bernadette Peters started singing in my head. Quite bizarrely, she was singing a song that I haven't heard, or even thought about, in years. Now, she's one of my favorite Broadway performers, but this song was too much. Not the words themselves because they're not at all relevant in this situation. What is relevant is the bittersweet, poignant feeling* evoked by both the words and the music of Tell Me On a Sunday.
At the restaurant, I was able to boot Bernadette out of my head using the Blackeyed Peas' Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night , which we had heard at Bed, Bath, and Beyond (Strangely, the music in my head when we said goodbye, later, was Roger Daltry singing in The Who's Baba O'Riley,** which we'd heard while getting ice cream at The Hop, and which has no relevance at all).
However, the next day, after we'd left daughter in Asheville, Bernadette kept returning with Tell Me On a Sunday. How to kick her out for good?! I needed something stronger. To fight fire with fire, I turned to more Broadway. At one point, while walking around Asheville, we had ended up singing a brief bit of Open a New Window, sung by Angela Lansbury in Mame (okay, and I was kind of singing it to daughter):
Open a new window, open a new door, Travel a new highway that's never been tried before. Before you find you're a dull fellow, punching the same clock, Walking the same tightrope as everyone on the block.
The fellow you want to be is three dimensional, Soaking up life, down to your toes. Whenever they say you're slightly unconventional, Just put your thumb up to your nose, and show them how to -
Dance to a new rhythm, whistle a new song, Toast to a new vintage - the fizz doesn't fizz too long! There's only one way to make the bubbles stay. Simply Travel a new highway, dance to a new rhythm, Whistle a new love song, toast to a new vintage, Open a new window every day!
* And that's all I intend to write about how I'm feeling.
** A song which I've liked for... let's just say... decades. However, I've never known the name so I had to do a Google search for "The Who," lyrics and fields.
