Wet And Wild

“Foodtopia”, “Beer City”, “San Francisco of the East”, “New Age Mecca”, “Land of the Sky” (which could also be “Land of the Sky Is Falling”, depending on how much rain falls while you are here). Asheville is known for a number of monikers and that only shows how many facets the town has. Foodies and beer drinkers will find a burgeoning culinary scene (fueled by vibrant farmers’ markets and an “eat local” mindset), and a number of microbreweries that put Asheville in the top three cities in breweries per capita. Art lovers will find a thriving arts community, with a whole district – the River Arts District – devoted to it, from paintings and sculpture to jewelry, pottery and glass. For hippies and neo-hippies, Asheville offers Friday nights drum circle, natural health stores, and numerous alternative healing and yoga clinics.

For me, it was the setting. Located over 2,000 feet (610 m) above sea level, Asheville is surrounded by the Great Smoky and the Blue Ridge Mountains, making it both a valley and a mountain town. It sits in one of the world’s most diverse areas, with landscapes ranging from deep spruce forests to meadows covered in wildflowers. A good way to get a sense of the vastness of the region is to drive for a while along the Blue Ridge Parkway that stretches for 469 miles (755 km) from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia all the way to the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. In sections of the parkway, overlooks allow you to see the lush mountains spreading in all directions and I could only imagine how stunning they must look in fall, in fiery yellow, orange and red hues.

But the best way to get to know any place is to go take a hike. There are thousands of miles of trails around Asheville and within a short driving distance are nine of North Carolina’s eleven major waterfalls, including the highest in the Eastern US: Whitewater Falls at 411 feet tall (125 m), currently not accessible due to fire. Most of them are reached on easy to moderate hikes, and the sound of cascading water is definitely soothing. I was lucky in a way: it rained a lot during the first two days of my stay, leaving rivers and waterfalls very full. Which only goes to show that sometimes having the sky fall is not a bad thing.