What To Do In Asheville

I've been tagged

Rules: answer the questions, tag 5 people and then go off on your travels to their hometowns.

ASHEVILLE, NC

Best place to eat: Tupelo Honey Cafe especially for breakfast, try the sweet potato pancakes with peach butter and pecans --"The whole town loves this spot." --Southern Living; The New York Times describes the interior as "an old fashioned tea room."

Best shopping mall: Downtown on Lex:
Minx Boutique - 64 N. Lexington Ave., Asheville, 225-5680,
68 Lexi - 68 N. Lexington Ave., Asheville, 251-1170;
Hip Replacements - 72 N. Lexington Ave., Asheville, 255-7573;
Liquid Dragon Art Studio - 66 N. Lexington Ave., Asheville, 251-2518.
ALSO the best record/cd/vinyl store: Static Age Records 82 N. Lexington Ave. A, Asheville, 254-3232

Famous landmark: The Blue Ridge Parkway meanders 469 miles in the Blue Ridge Mountains between Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks.

Best tourism attraction: Biltmore Estate - Historic landmark built by George Vanderbilt. The estate winery produces red, white, rose and sparkling wines from European grape varieties. Also horseback riding.

Best place for kids: Asheville's Fun Depot - Asheville's only family entertainment center featuring: indoor mini golf, multi-level laser tag, batting cages, climbing wall, soft play area, indoor and outdoor go-carts, bumper cars, the Depot Diner and more.

Popular outdoor activity: Whitewater Rafting at Nantahala Rafting Center. 37 years experience; family, group,& high adventure trips; team building; 5 SE rivers; offering the best whitewater fun in the Asheville area with unparalleled attention to detail on & off the water.

Breathtaking view: Chimney Rock Park - An elevator inside the mountain or a network of trails leads to 75-mile views of the Blue Ridge, 404-foot waterfall and fun animal sculptures. Family and pet friendly. Rock climbing, special events, group activities, dining.

Only found here: Grove Park Inn
It's a majestic stone palace with horse drawn carriages that take your from your car to the front. It has a great spa, world-renowned restaurants (7), bars, golf course. Two fireplaces in the lobby are so large that you can stand up inside of them. My kids have always loved this place especially during Christmas when they have a Gingerbread Baking Contest (2007 competition and displays begin Nov 12).

I should tag 5 people now but since this has been around a bit, I'll leave it open to whoever wants to do it. Just leave me a comment if you also have a list about your hometown.

Lollygagging In The 'Burbs

This is a photo of one of the turkeys that roam my friend Pam's neighborhood; off of Beaverdam Rd in North Asheville. This was taken early Thursday morning and it was still a bit foggy.

There were about 7 more turkey lurkeys that had already crossed the street. They're all over that mountain and they just saunter and lollygag around, taking their time. I think they're quite charming. My friend Pam -- notsomuch.

Happy Birthday, So Long Dear Ones

My sweet daughter and grandson moved away today 220 miles to where her boyfriend's job takes him for now. Sigh... I kept hoping they would be able to stay around here or in Asheville (58 miles away), but it's not to be. For now. And I hope they are able to move back here before long.

She's pretty excited about a new chapter in her life and is looking on it as an adventure and making new friends; eventually finding work again and fixing up her nice apartment. Sometimes people do things the unconventional way. At least they sometimes do in my family. Have a baby first, set up housekeeping, and then get married. And who's to say what's right and what will last. We all seem to follow our hearts and I always say that when you do something based in love, it's really hard to find fault with it. That is my universal truth. Or one of many I've spoken about with my children.

So today Skyler stepped out in faith. (Another one of my simple truths.) She and her fiancé have some challenges ahead but they're optimistic and hard working and are good people.

As I wander through my modest, cozy home tonight I recall how when my life wasn't always stationary I knew that I had a home to return to with family who loved me. It warms my heart to know she always has a place to come home to as well.

I love you baby.

Baby Shower(s)

Skyler's baby shower was yesterday. Whew! I'm still recovering from the activity and excitement. Her oldest and dearest friend from 1st grade on held the shower at her place in Asheville and she has a pool at the apartment complex where she lives which was perfect for a hot July day. She also has a 6 month old son so she's been able to pass down many things already to Skyler for her baby boy's arrival in September.

I also met up with her Daddy (and my husband) at the shower. Speaking of showers, it rained, but only a little and the lingering haze over the city made the water that much more inviting.

She got loads of good stuff. Mostly cute clothes. In fact I saw a sea of every shade of blue piled up in a large box. Skyler already had gotten a bassinette, a car seat, a playpen, a tub, and a few other large items. Up until yesterday she hadn't received any diapers yet. Most of her friends are not Mothers and I noticed that Mothers always give diapers to pregnant ladies. Perhaps a new Mother doesn't realize how golden (and expensive) those things are until the baby's arrival. Then she'll be thanking everyone for those diapers. And baby wipes. If she doesn't get another thing, she's in fine shape now for the arrival of big O.

She will more than likely call him "Oliver Phoenix".

Okay. I've blogged about her and now it's time to text or call her. =)

Well, my Skyler is back home which is great news! She's not sure what her next move will be, but at least she's not going to move to St Louis, MO. She had an excellent job offer while she was gone.

Do you have a favorite morning drive radio program you listen to on the way to work? I listen to Bob & Sheri which is also in a lot of cities now around the country. They're a fun couple and they became part of my routine years ago. She's written a few books which are pretty funny.

I digress. I just drove over the mountain from NC to TN on the edge of a major snow storm. When I say "mountain", I'm talking about the mountain that's part of the range that has the highest peak this side of the Mississippi River. I travel back and forth from NC to TN a LOT. Asheville is called the Land Of The Sky because of it being a mile high or so. Mother is about 30 miles from the state line in Tennessee and my house with Skyler and hubby is about 30 miles from the state line in NC. The state line is a mountain range that finally has an interstate straight through it now after 30 years of building and blasting through the mountains. With lots of time in court about the deets.

Wow, I sure can ramble, can't I? Well, I decided to make this Susan*Jayne website totally LIVE and off the cuff. No rough drafts, just wild keystrokes slapping out something tedious and tantalizing.

I'm off to check my email, news, and of course, visit with YOU!

Just thinking about the differences between Asheville, NC, and this small town I grew up in in Tennessee.

In Asheville this morning I saw many people jogging right by beasutiful Beaver Lake. Others were out and about on bicycles going for coffee or tea or to the post office. People were on Vespas, in convertibles, pulling boats, just taking advantage of a lovely June morning. This to me is Asheville. Full of activity and life.

But in small town, USA�

If you see someone on a bicycle, it�s probably because they have a DUI.
If you see someone jogging, they probably just stole something.

Okay, that's a little harsh, but there is a blatant difference.

Another Time, Another Place

I had Sesame Chicken last night and began thinking about the first time I ate sesame seeds on something. I was in Asheville, NC, with the infamous Frank Brown and we were riding around in his ancient Volvo. With a fair amount of munchies we stopped at Moritz Bakery on Merrimon Avenue and got some freshly baked Sesame Cookies. They were the best things I'd ever put into my mouth.

They were paper thin, crisp and buttery and we bought a whole bag of them. I don't know if it was the atmosphere or the herb (safe bet), but those were absolutely the best cookies I'd ever tasted.

Funny how that is. Or maybe you go see a movie and are so enthralled with it and years later you have the opportunity to view it again and discover it's not so good afterall.

Anyway I've had Sesame Cookies since then and they're not nearly as good as the ones Frank and I had in another time, another place.

Tagged by the lovely Shirl

Four jobs you�ve had in your life:
1) Singer
2) Bartender
3) Supervisor at JCrew
4) Employment Office (job counselor/contractor)


Four movies you could watch over and over again (not to be confused with favorite movies):
1) La Femme Nikita (the original French sub-titled one directed by Luc Besson)
2) The Fifth Element (Bruce Willis, Gary Oldham--also directed by Luc Besson)
3) Angels In America--HBO miniseries; does this count?
4) Dancer In The Dark (with Bjork)


Four TV shows you love(d) to watch: More tv since I've been in Tennessee.
1) Curb Your Enthusiasm
2) House
3) The Colbert Report
4) Project Runway- designer reality show on Bravo


Four places you�ve lived:
1) Elizabethton, TN
2) Asheville, NC
3) Atlanta, GA
4) New York

Four places you�ve been on vacation to:
1) San Juan
2) Nassau
3) Amsterdam
4) Daytona Beach, FL

Four places you would rather be (or where you�ll like to visit?):
1) If we're dreaming here, I'd want to be with Robin at Myrtle Beach, SC, which was our getaway spot.
2) Docked off the coast of Sardinia with Johnny Depp
3) Vancouver, BC, Pacific Northwest--Oregon, Washington State. Exotic locales are great, but I'd love to see more of the US & Canada
4) Around Watauga Lake in east Tennessee--at the Peace Tree where we (husband #1) lived


Four of your favorite foods:
1) coconut shrimp
2) strawberries
3) dark chocolate truffles
4) all i can think of for now....!


Four websites you visit daily:
1) SU
2) Google News
3) Yahoo Groups - 60s &
Beyond
4) Newsgator.com where I have over 180 blogs I read


Four tagged:
1) eany
2) meany
3) miney
4) mo

TEST POST---My EBC site won't publish this morning, so I'm trying to run down the problem. Looks like it's my server which seldom has outtage probs. Not like I had anything earthshattering to proclaim. But when you pay $72 a year for them to keep their server running at all times, a 6 hr and counting outtage just downright sucks.

Still in Tennessee. I'll probably stay until the end of the year. Then? I don't know. I would move my family over here if my daughter would come, but she doesn't want to. A seventeen year old girl being asked to move away from her friends to another state? Now just where have I heard that one before?

It was June of 1970 and my situation was a little different. I moved from this very house (which was leased for one year to someone) to Asheville when my Dad was relocating because of his job. We moved into a beautiful, old, 3-story home on a hillside in Asheville. Three months later I would be moving out on my own via my old VW van, into a dormitory on the ETSU campus in Johnson City, TN. But that's another chapter in the SJ saga.

I put away my clean laundry and Skyler's. I then wipe down the kitchen counter, put away the clean, dry dishes; place 3 home-grown tomatos on the window seal, although they're so ripe that they could burst and don't need any extra sunlight. Tomatos just want to sit on the window. I've also cleaned the bathrooms and taken out the trash. And I settle in to watch some appontment tv, which for me today is sports shows on ESPN.

I realize I'm worried about my daughter and her friend, Sam, who've left early for a concert in the city and cannot sit still to watch tv. I keep jumping up remembering something else I could be doing. She's not driven on the interstate highways before and was taking the back roads into Asheville. She's unsure of the directions to the new venue and I was worrying about her getting lost and ending up on the Smoky Park connector.

It's near downtown Asheville where 3 major interstate highways, I-26, I-40, I-240, come together over the French Broad River. I always get chills driving around that area. Cars are merging from all over the place and are jockying for best position; road rules be damned. I usually have a little word of prayer on this stretch of road and also call on my guardian angels to guide me. My main angel is my Father who passed away 14 years ago.

Sounds a little dramatic, I know, but the older I get the more unsure, but careful I am behind the wheel. When I was young and driving I was invincible, as we all were. I also had several wrecks. Now I'm older and more aware because I know what can happen on the highways. My daughter is a very good driver, but I'll never stop worrying until I see her walk into the house. I now know how my parents must have felt when I was out with friends at 17.

UPDATE: She pulled into the drive at 10:00pm. Yeah...umm, better check her head for possible fever or other illness.

{Kittens & Plan B}
I've had this Felix download program for four or five years and Skyler and I used to get a big kick out of it. So the new kitty was on my desk and began chasing the cursor around on my monitor and I happened to remember I still had this interactive Felix The Cat Desktop Toy. Most definitely NOT the Felix the cat X-rated cartoon version. As soon as she wakes up, I'll show it to her. She's sleeping on the desk near the mouse. How appropriate.
JCrew's HR department contacted me to say that the Offices and Call Center are no longer in Asheville; it's moved to Lynchburg, VA. All that's left is the Distribution Center where all the clothes, etc, are shipped out. (If you call the catalog to order, they ship from there.) So Plan A, aka 'the JCrew Job' is gone, since I'm really not your Shipping & Receiving kind of gal.

Bele Chere weekend is upon us. That means for the next three days, downtown Asheville will be the scene of the South's largest free outdoor festival. One of the best things about Bele Chere is that it has something for everyone. Loads of crafters come from all over, and vendors supply all their best food. Raft rides, helicopter rides, and of course, music, music, music! There's probably a dozen stages with various types of music offered. Alcohol is served except on Sunday, which is Family Day. Shuttles are best for getting in and out, I've found. The people I run into are probably the best thing about Bele Chere, and the vendors with their handmade silver jewelry and clothes are usually where most my money goes. I'm sitting it out this year, but this is Skyler's 16th Bele Chere in a row. Does your town have a big event? Please tell me about it.

Skyler and Samuel are watching the movie, "Half-Baked" for probably the 15th time and I'm trying to catch up on blog visits. Shirl is back from vacation.

I faxed my resume to JCrew, a company I used to work for today. In Western North Carolina, there's not a whole lot of job opportunities. I was going to school in the day and working at JCrew at night. You tell them when you're available and they work with you. JCrew was a weird stop on the job carnivale of my life, but they loved my freaky self. And after climbing up the ladder a little, I no longer had to deal with customers, just the other folks who worked within the hub of the company. They have a Call Center and Distribution Center here in Asheville.

I always figured I could maybe go back to work for them, even though I left to take a better paying job and a more prestigious position, I still wish I'd never left. It's a young company and I worked in a variety of positions: Supervisor, Trainer, Ran Work Flow(--Directing calls to associates and doing the scheduling, vacation and benefit times). I later felt they were pushing us older folks out when they started downsizing. Many middle managers were cut and I left before my job got cut and also a good job opportunity arose. Of course, I gave them the 2 week notice and trained a replacement.

Didn't mean to turn this into another resume, but let me go, won't you? You know how hard it is for me to talk about myself. We'll see what happens. I hope to hear from them in the next few weeks. If it's meant to be.....Thanks for listening.

Merrimon Ave, Asheville, NC 
This picture stuff is neat. Hello.com in conjunction with BloggerBot. You download a little program to manage photos on. Looks pretty nice if I do say so myself.

I had a brief article about my thoughts on blogging in the newspaper here today. The reporter found my sites and contacted me to do an interview about blogging for the Asheville Citizen-Times newspaper. So that was a little strange, since I'd pretty much been incognito around my area and use a pseudonym for my last name when I write. He'd wanted to come to the house and get pictures of me blogging, but I had to back out of that. He featured my Easy Bake Coven site and other area bloggers who have nice sites. A positive experience and I was quoted word for word.

Birds are flittering all around; squirrels are scampering at the base of trees; looking for any morsels to score. They know when storms are coming and they don't even have cable.

"A mixture of sleet and snow is expected to develop in the predawn hours Wednesday... And continue for much of the day... With an additional threat of some freezing rain in the afternoon." Says WeatherBug.com. BRING IT ON! Anyone who half way knows me knows that I absolutely LOVE snow. [I'm in Western North Carolina - Asheville]

Gingerbread Houses

We have an enormous grand old inn here in Asheville, NC, that had to be blasted out of these Blue Ridge Mountains to be built. Presidents and other dignitaries, have stayed here, as well as us regular people from all over the world. It's called the Grove Park Inn.


Each year they hold a Gingerbread House Contest, which is judged and set up for folks to visit through the Thanksgiving/Christmas season. But anytime is the perfect time to visit. It's an event just to visit the Grove Park Inn. With huge fireplaces big enough to walk around in, grand pianos tinkling in the lobby, and the circular cobblestone drive with old time horse-drawn carriages out front. Glorious! And I've found several photos online of the gingerbread houses.


Elizabeth Prioli's creation of Hogwarts Castle [pic on the bottom] from the popular Harry Potter series won the grand prize last year at the annual Grove Park Inn's gingerbread house competition.

Change Of Seasons

It's such a beautiful day today. I am reminded of why I chose to live here in the first place. It's a day that makes you want to take a picnic lunch and a go on a nice hike in the beautiful mountains. It's still technically summer until the 23rd, but the sunlight is slanting a little lower, casting a glow on the fields ready for harvest. Cooler days make comfortable excursions through coloring forests. There's plenty of adventures to be had. It's my favorite time of the year. And my part of the world enjoys the autumn onslaught of changing leaves and tourists that is a huge industry here in Asheville, NC, near the Blue Ridge Mountains. Taking a drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway is what many tourists and natives enjoy. Nature's annual autumn color festival is certainly one of the greatest shows on earth.


Close by is also the Biltmore House, and also Chimney Rock that you can visit. The peak "Leaf Season" is usually the middle of October, and is pretty much over by Oct 31.

This is my new blogchalk:
United States, North Carolina, Asheville, Grove Park, English, Susan, Female, 46-50. :)