I’m working out how to start this post to the soundtrack of Charles Wright’s “Express Yourself“, one of my complimentary souvenirs brought back from our second trip to Asheville, NC this past weekend. Our first trip to this funky little city back in February 2022 marked our second longest road-trip and the beginning signs of our old car’s drawn-out decline. There’s no apprehension quite like that you get parked outside of a Subway in Hagerstown, MD, four hours into an eleven hour drive when your means of transportation decides to play games with your psyche. We made it the rest of the way and back with a whole lotta hope and a couple visits to the Meineke Car Care Center in downtown Asheville and agreed that, next time, we’d fly.

We flew back from Asheville Sunday morning and left the suitcases, still packed, crowding the entryway of our condo when we got home. If you’re still living out of a suitcase, you are still on vacation; no? As I unpacked yesterday morning, pulling hiking clothes with mud-flecked ankles that shed the glitter of North Carolina mountain dirt on the entryway rug, I realized we left a part of us behind in the mountains and the mist, in the balsam and the rhododendron, in the blueberry brambles and the water eroded summits.

I wonder if the black bears can smell my fabric softener lingering on the trails. I wonder if they’ve walked in our boot prints yet as they await the promise of spring’s looming abundance.

Day 1: Downtown Asheville & South Slope Brewing District

We arrived in Asheville on Thursday in the mid-afternoon, intent on going to a brewery for lunch. Among many things Asheville does well, beer is one of its notable strengths. We headed to Terra Nova Beer Co. in the South Slope Brewing District for a brew and some Mission Pizza. The brewery took the place of the former Bhramari Brewing Company which we visited on our previous trip. I opted for the Svêtlý Ležák 12°, a Czech Pilsner, while Mike went for the Lumos Haze Hazy IPA, of which I stole many sips 😋. To eat, we chose Mission’s Sausage Giardiniera pizza, hefty Roman squares stacked with flavor and crispy, airy crust. More please!

More than satiated with pizza and beer, we headed up the hill to check into our hotel, The Cambria Hotel Downtown Asheville. The hotel was perfectly situated for exploring downtown Asheville, was very comfortable, and had the quickest mandatory valet parking I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing. We savored the view of the mountains from our room for a very short while before deciding a nap might be necessary in order to be functioning human beings later in the evening.

Post-nap groggy and disoriented, we made ourselves get up, get out, and explore. Our next stop beckoned us back down the hill, Antidote Cocktail Lounge & Coffee Bar. The hostess seated us at a little cafe table by the window and we perused the leather bound cocktail menu while taking in the vintage apothecary setting. Red, velvet drapes were tied back from a window in the wall, revealing the distilling works of Chemist Spirits, next door.

I ordered the House of Leaves, intrigued by its holiday nostalgia inspiration, while Mike chose the Vieux Carré in memory of a past trip to Hotel Monteleone’s Carousel Bar in New Orleans. We sipped and chatted and lost track of time a little, then moved on in pursuit of dinner.

Just thinking about Chai Pani to write this post is making my mouth water and I know I am not even hungry. Indian Food is my favorite cuisine and Indian street food sounded like the right idea for dinner Thursday night (and maybe every night, but gotta try different things, ya know?).

Chai Pani was packed when we arrived. We added our name to the waitlist and saw it would be a while before we were seated and decided to pop around the corner to Burial Brewing Co., a favorite from our previous visit.

Burial’s beer is incredible and I also appreciate the place’s strong theming. From the toe tags on the tap handles to the landscaping weaponry on display, Burial leans heavily into the theme of death and eternal rest and yet the place has a bright, happy, natural vibe about it that packs down some of that creepy with the back of a shovel. I remembered the mural (or “the murial”, as one Reddit poster referred to it as and I think it should henceforth be known as such) from our previous trip. It depicts Sloth from The Goonies and Tom Selleck, all buddy-buddy, but Mike and I agreed that it is actually Sloth from The Goonies and my dad.

As we refreshed the waitlist for Chai Pani at one of the barrel tables in Burial’s outdoor tasting area, we shared a Shadowclock Pilsner and reminisced on our memories of the place from our previous trip and how cold it had been that day. With memories of a chilly, bygone, February day in our minds, we were next on the waitlist for Chai Pani and hustled back around the corner to the restaurant.

Chai Pani was bursting with warmth and the aroma of spices. The ceiling and windows were strung with marigold garlands, the walls- painted with turquoise, magenta, and goldenrod. Above the hostess stand climbed two Bengal tigers up an ombre wall. The restaurant was beautiful and I loved it already without even having seen the menu. I was determined to eat there for a different reason anyway, but the surroundings were a welcome addition.

According to an article by Kay West published on Eater.com, when Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina back in September 2024, amid much structural and emotional devastation, local business and residents were also left without power and potable water. World Central Kitchen arrived in the region within 48 hours after the storm and quickly partnered with local restaurants in order to establish access to clean water systems and feed the victims of the storm and the emergency responders who came to the region’s aid. Chai Pani was among many Asheville restaurants that prepared and distributed free meals for those in need in the wake of Helene’s devastation despite high costs of daily water deliveries and the storm’s heavy blow to regular restaurant operations. That, along with my preference for the cuisine, made eating there a high priority on my itinerary for this trip.

We filled our bellies with Aloo Tikki Chaat, Sloppy Jai, and Chili Chicken and washed it all down with Athletic Brewing’s Atlética Cerveza, which was decent but not my favorite Athletic brew. Afterwards, we rolled ourselves back up the hill to our hotel for a good night’s sleep.

Day 2: Montreat & Downtown Asheville

We parked our rental car in the small, upper lot of the Lookout Mountain trailhead in Montreat Friday morning and changed into our hiking boots. Mike walked over to the posted trail map and after a moment said, “Welp, I don’t love that.”

“What?”

I joined him in front of the trail map and he pointed at a paper plate someone had written on and tied to the board.

“That was yesterday,” said Mike of the reported black bear sightings at the summit, “And the day before.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I don’t love that either; I don’t love that one bit.”

We debated whether or not we should stay. The view was supposed to be one of the better ones in the area and we had been pretty lucky to get a parking spot at the trailhead, but the possibility of encountering a bear seemed too likely. We had seen a large group of women embark on a different hike from the lower parking lot, Rainbow Trail, and took an ounce of comfort in the thought of safety in numbers. Our decision was made. We left our trail snacks in the car.

Trekking through the trees and the rhododendron, turning our heads about like two large owls, we made our way along the Rainbow Trail. It was very green and we kept up a steady conversation, not wanting to seem sneaky to any potential bears in the vicinity. Thankfully, we did not cross paths with any bears, despite every dark object raising cause for speculation and our adrenaline levels. We got comfortable enough on the trail that we decided to take the spur that led up to the Lookout Mountain summit, after all. The trail to the summit was a steep, short climb, and had a decent amount of hikers on it scrambling up and down the rocks as we made our way up. The view did not disappoint, but all the same, we didn’t linger.

We reached the parking lot unscathed, relieved, and craving chicken and waffles. We got back in the car and headed back to the city to freshen up and get some brunch.

On our first trip to Asheville, we went to Tupelo Honey for brunch our first morning there and then went right back again the next day. There was no question where we would be eating brunch this time around. We asked to sit at the bar and ordered the chicken and waffles, avocado toast, and some Athletic Brewing Upside Dawn Golden Ales, still very relieved that we hadn’t encountered a bear on our hike.

After a nice little post-brunch nap, we set off to visit a brewery we’d skipped last time around, Green Man Brewery. We brought our beers up to the third floor and headed out onto the terrace. The sky was full of overlapping gray and purple clouds, but it was warm and the terrace was covered anyway. Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band played through the speakers. Ex-pressss Yourself! – Whatever you dooo-uhn– dooo it good-uhn! walking tiptoe on top of that swaggering bass line. It’s the kind of song you can’t help but move to. On top of that, it seemed like a good mantra for the eclectic, funky, colorful, denim-patched pocket of the world that Asheville is. Have I got anyone else listening with me yet, I wonder? So, let the horns do the thing they do y’all.

After another non-creepy visit to Burial Brewing and sharing an appetizer of their intriguing broccolini, we headed back up the hill to get some real dinner at Crêperie Bouchon. I ordered a glass of red wine and the Ma Poule savory crêpe. It did not disappoint.

After dinner, we walked a few blocks over to Sovereign Remedies, a low-lit cocktail lounge that I’d wanted to try last time, but we didn’t end up getting to. I liked Mike’s drink, the No. 27, better than mine and we ended up ordering a second to share because the place was cozy and relaxing and it just seemed like the right thing to do, okay?

Day 3: Blue Ridge Parkway & Asheville Yards

The Saturday forecast was the nicest for our trip and so we chose to do the higher elevation hikes that day instead of Friday. If we were going to hike up a mountain, we wanted to see vistas at the top, not just clouds. The roads leading up the mountain are also very winding and it is safer to take them when it’s not all foggy out.

Hurricane Helene wreaked some havoc on the Blue Ridge Parkway and sections of the National Park Service-governed road are still closed to the public. Since Mike had first researched the hikes we’d take, back in February, the sections we wanted to try had opened up again and so, we drove our little blue rental car up the winding roads and along the scenic parkway, passing by vistas on the way in hopes of snagging a parking space at the trailhead.

Graveyard Fields was first. It’s not as creepy as it sounds. According to signs posted near the trailhead, the name came from a natural phenomenon caused by a heavy windstorm the felled many trees and over time left the stumps and trees to rot and become overgrown with mounded dirt, giving the appearance of tombstones. Since a forest fire blazed through the valley in 1925, these tombstone-esque stumps are no longer there. The only actually creepy thing about Graveyard Fields to me was, once again, the fact that the area is home to a high population of black bears. Mike remembered that my backpack had a built in whistle on the strap. We gave it a try and it was nice and loud which gave us some sense of security, if only a little. But hey, you take what you can get on the trail.

The Graveyard Fields loop traversed muddy trenches, spongey boardwalks, and stream crossings and offered waterfall views. We started off towards the lower falls, the more impressive of the two large falls on the 3.2 mile trail. We wound our way through the rhododendron and the sparse blueberry bushes, along the packed down dirt and the mud, and across boardwalks and bridges to get to the lower falls view point. We were owls again, looking all around at frequent intervals, wary of rocks and dark tree stumps in the distance that were bear-shaped only in our minds.

After spending a few minutes taking in the lower falls, we continued back along the trail toward the upper falls following the few and far between blue blazes that marked the way. There was a little rock scrambling involved to reach the upper falls and the sound of the rushing water was soothing, the mist- cool and refreshing on our overheated faces after the climb.

The parking lot was more than full when we got back and we were happy we’d done at least one of the hikes we’d planned to. We hoped to be lucky enough to get a spot at the next trailhead that led up to Black Balsam Knob. Luck was on our side as we found a space along the road by the Art Loeb Trail Access that connected to where we wanted to go.

I think the Art Loeb Trail was my favorite of the hikes, albeit, the shortest. The trail was steep and cut through tall, fragrant, spruce trees, emerging out upon a water-eroded, rocky summit that’s surface resembled waves of glitter. The ground in the forest was red with damp, shed spruce needles and smelled fresh and earthy. There were many hikers in our view at all times, but not too many to take away from the enjoyment of the trail.

We joined up with the trail leading up to the Black Balsam Knob summit, climbing those sparkling waves and meandering dirt paths to reached the 360 degree views of the round-topped, Blue Ridge Mountains.

Winding our way back down the Blue Ridge Parkway, we pulled into every vista overlook to take in the view. It looked very similar from each one and we got to see Looking Glass Rock from multiple angles which was neat. With tired legs and feet and hungry bellies, it was time to head back to the city.

We got some lunch at Twisted Laurel, downtown, which we visited last time- pesto chicken pizza and a cauliflower curry bowl with fried chickpeas. Both were decent. We were excited for a concert we were going to at the new Asheville Yards later on that night, but we were tired from our earlier excursion into the mountains. Our daily vacation nap was in order if we wanted to make it through hours of standing later on.

After our little sojourn at the Cambria Hotel, we headed back out to squeeze in a downtown brewery before the show, DSSOLVR. We enjoyed our beers in the pleasant back patio area amid a little artist market that was going on.

We headed down the hill again, to the concert, the opener already playing when we arrived. I had never heard of Mipso before, but I’d listen to them now after enjoying a few of their songs. My favorite of the songs they played was probably “Coming Down the Mountain”, but I was very excited to see who we’d come to Asheville for.

After seeing Trampled by Turtles perform in Harrisburg, PA back in October, we knew we wanted to go to another show. When Asheville popped up on their tour schedule, we thought that would be a really fun experience and would probably have a fun crowd. We were right. The set list was full of familiar favorites and a couple of songs we didn’t know, but for the most part we sang along and moved to the rhythm of the strings. This time they played one of my favorites called “Burlesque Desert Window“, which I dare you not to shake your tail feathers to, if you give it a listen. 🦉

With growly bellies after the show, we headed a few blocks away for some late night bites at Daddy Mac’s. The restaurant was full of people in Trampled by Turtles tees and hats and whoever was running the music playlist caught up to speed pretty quick and put the boys on. We finished our meal to “Wait So Long” before settling up and heading back up the hill to our hotel for our last sleep of the trip.

To end this post, I’ll suggest Trampled by Turtles cover of Iris DeMent’s “Our Town” for some easy listening. I’m listening to it now as I type these final lines, thinking of Asheville and the good memories made there this trip and last. All I can do is look forward to the next visit and the next after that. The mountains have patience like no other and the water is slow to break them down.

“Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town, can’t you see the sun’s setting down on our town, on our town. Good night.” -Iris DeMent