Road Trippin’ Part Two
*FYI, I totally was going to post this yesterday when I got home from class, but my host was down. See, people are conspiring against me and my already-failed quest to post every day this month.
We spent most of Saturday bumming around Asheville and surrounding parts. I really loved this town. I’d move there. There’s tons of weirdos and progressives nestled in the mountains. Downtown was walkable and the weather was sunny and warm. We ate a late breakfast at Early Girl Cafe. You can read about it in my Novice Foodie column today yesterday. I drank some decaf coffee and the food made me happy.
We ducked into several little shops, including a head shop where a young couple with their three small children were sharing a lovely Saturday morning buying a bong. I thought I had accidentally ingested whatever was sold from the back room, because, pardon me, KIDS in HEAD SHOPS are not something I typically encounter; I had to do a double-take and hope none of the kids knocked over the flavored rolling papers display. I guess head shops in the South are more family-friendly, but if I was a head shop owner (I’ve considered it) I don’t know that I’d be down. I was freaked out by this occurrence, so we dipped and went to the head shop next door. Asheville is the type of place where, instead of two Starbucks across the street from each other, you get two head shops next door to each other. I can live with this.
We decided the best thing we could possibly do was aim for a mountain and try to get lost. We did so, easily. We found ourselves in picturesque mountain community at the bottom of Graybeard Mountain named Montreat, which consisted only of homes nestled among the Montreat Conference Center and Montreat College.
This place was so incredibly beautiful, I immediately felt like I was in the movies and that I was not allowed to be there because I might break something. I kept thinking a stern-faced nun was going to demand to know why I was taking dozens of pictures of swans with my phone and then shoo us out for being too flawed to visit their pristinely-perfect community.
Then we ended up meandering towards Charlotte on the backroads. We went through Lake Lure, which I wish I had known was where they filmed Dirty Dancing, because I would have gotten out and poured one out for P. Sway and probably done a bunch of shit that the locals rolls their eyes at because tourists do it ALL THE TIME and think they are being clever.
Maybe, in hindsight, it was okay that I didn’t know Lake Lure was where Dirty Dancing was filmed.
(On November 18th, 2009 at 1:01 pm)
Glad you had a good time. Head shop experience of my own: browsing and then having a former student (I had him for 8th grade in CoMO) come in and start asking questions and telling me how I was a teacher who inspired him to get it together and that he is now playing golf in college, still skateboarding is indebted forever to me since I helped him start to care about school.
Nice.
Like the hair cut.
(On November 18th, 2009 at 10:07 pm)
Dude. I was totally going to tweet you that you should drive by Lake Lure, but I forgot about it. It’s like you are reading my mind. Are you? If so, most of those thoughts were jokes. I would never do any of those things. Anyways, my Mom and Step Dad used to live in Ashville. It’s a beautiful city with lots of strangely placed hippies.