The Caspermeyer's Three took a long weekend vacation to the western North Carolina mountains; home base, Asheville. We left Saturday morning and took the LONG way, up 575, through Ellijay and Blairsville, GA. We had lunch at FATZ. The waitress looked surprised when I said we had never been to one before. We're seeing them everywhere up here, so must be a mountain thang, and pretty good.
After lunch we weaved our way into North Carolina. And when I say weaved, I mean we literally fish tailed back and forth and all around all the mountains. My navigator had a queasy stomach, and my little daredevil was grabbing her feet and yelling 'WEEEE' from the back seat. We went through Highlands, Cashiers, Sapphire Valley, Brevard, and landed in Hendersonville, North Carolina just in time for dinner at the North Carolina Apple Festival. We strolled through downtown Hendersonville, and dined on gyro's, BBQ, grilled corn, and FRIED APPLE PIES!
We then headed up the road about 30 minutes to Asheville for Shindig on the Green, featuring clogging and mountain music. It was a beautiful, cool evening, and we really enjoyed the music.
Sunday morning, we took a Trolley tour through Asheville to get our bearings, and then did some walking and looking for lunch. Asheville is known as a foodie haven, so the good restaurants have long waits..... we tried to get into the Tupelo Honey Cafe, but it was over 1.5 hour wait. Our little miss has no tolerance for those types of waits....not to mention her father..... so we walked over the Grove Arcade area and started looking at other options. But given the long, holiday weekend, it was not looking good. Until we stumbled upon Chorizo. It had no wait and was surprisingly delicious. I had a Crab Stuffed Avocado, and Matt had a Flank Steak Pupusa. We also had an Argentinian Beef Empanada to share with Grace. So much food, and so good. We are so blessed with a little girl who has an adventurous palate!
We headed back to our hotel for nap time and then headed to the LAAFF festival. Holy freakshow, Batman. And I think I saw him, wonder wo-MAN, and spiderman. Along with many other costumed and intersesting Ashetonians.
Unlike the apple festival, at least this one served beer. :)
We used a recommendation from our friend Emily, and detoured out of the festival into Bouchon, a little French Bistro, with a patio out back that was pleasantly shielded from the ambiance out front. We enjoyed our little french dinner; beet, apple, walnut, goat cheese salad, pomme frites, steak and rabbit.
Monday, we were up bright and early to start our 2-day pass to the Biltmore Estate.
We spent almost 3 hours touring the house. That was a lot to ask of Miss Grace. But she was very good, overall. We gave her plenty of opportunities to walk, even up and down stairs inside the house, and the let her run wild on the front lawn.
The Estate was featuring the Flower Carpet while we were there.
We ate a quick lunch at the Estate, and then let Grace start her nap as we drove around the rest of the Estate and figured out what we were going to do for day 2. We finished up nap at the hotel, and then headed out for drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway (celebrating 75 years this year!). Amazing views.
I can't even believe how gorgeous it will be a month from now when the leaves really start to change (we saw about 3 trees starting...).
We capped off the day with dinner at the Tupelo Honey Cafe (utilizing invaluable call ahead seating, but still waiting about 20 min for a table). We had biscuits (which we decided are NOT as good as Swallow in the Hollow), with a blackberry/raspberry jam, sockeye salmon special, with a corn and bacon relish, and blueberry coulis and squash caserole (yum), and a southern Stroganoff, with goat cheese grits and a zesty cilantro pesto. We thoroughly enjoyed our dinner (our daughter was a bottomless pit!), along with local microbrews.
Tuesday, we were up bright and early again to pack up and finish our Asheville Adventure at the Biltmore Estate. And today was Adventure day. We rented BIKES! Grace has two favorite things. Dogs and Bikes. Not sure where the bike obsession came from, but she gets so excited when she sees them and motorcyles. So we thought this would be a big hit. Not quite.
Ready to go, a tad apprehensive....
The first half of our roughly 8 mile ride was ok. It was on a paved path with this view.
But the second half was off road, and maybe a tad too bumpy and scary for Grace, as she screamed the entire way.
After our bike ride, we had lunch at Cedric's Tavern in Antler Hill Village before a quick tour of the winery. Then we were on our way home....going the faster, more direct, but still hilly way home.
Overall, we had a wonderful family vacation. Here is an album of all our shots, before the battery died in my camera, luckily on the last day.
Asheville 2010
