go hike a mountain

February 21, 2008

We woke up to gray skies and mild wind this morning, not bad weather for tromping around on the land my parents and aunt and uncle own. There’s a total of about 11 acres all together, three semi-flattened lots for houses and the land behind the lots that extends to the top of a ridge. The hike up to the ridgeline was pretty steep. Here’s a view of Jackie’s cabin from my dad’s lot.

We had to descend down some gullies because the incline was so steep.

Jesse started yanking on a vine and we decided to leave it because if you could find it while hiking up to the top, it was as good as rope.

We spent most of this day poking around downtown Asheville. There was a very good outfitter called Black Dome that had some good winter gear deals. I bought some casual shoes. We went back to the cabin for some spaghetti and an episode of Lost. I’ve never seen the show, and I was totally lost.

February 22, 2008

This morning there was a lot of fog hanging in the valley. Here is a panoramic view from Jackie’s front porch of the road that runs into the valley.

After leaving the cabin behind, we went to explore Black Mountain, the next town over from Swannanoa. There were a lot of little shops, but many of them were closed for the season. We did find another outfitter here called Take a Hike as well as a map shop where we bought a 3-D topo map of the area (with my parent’s land on it).

From Black Mountain we drove straight to Charlotte so we could catch a Bobcats game. We found the Bank of America Stadium where the Panthers play.

Charlotte has a downtown area not too different from Memphis, minus the Beale St. atmosphere. There were plenty of tall buildings, men in suits and coffee shops.

We were able to get $20 seats for $10 at the game because of some sort of promotion they were having. They were pretty good seats, too. There weren’t many fans and people started leaving early because the Bobcats were trailing most of the game.

They should have stuck it out, though. The Bobcats tied the score in the last few seconds of the game, forcing overtime with the Sacramento Kings. At the end of the overtime period, they were really close again and could have won the game if they had scored 2 in the last 7-second play they had, but whoever had the shot missed the basket. It was a lot of fun. We left the city and slept somewhere along the highway just south of Charlotte.

February 23, 2008

We decided to drive to Savannah to say hello to one of Jesse’s childhood friends and to tour the city for a few hours. One of the parking garages had beautiful flowers in its planters.

We walked down River St. to see the tugboats and find the candy and souvenir shops.

Jesse and his buddy Ron.

From Savannah, we drove toward Gainesville where we were going to spend the night. We made it there in time to go to The Top for dinner, on Main St. in downtown Gainesville, one of my favorite restaurants from when I was in school. I made Jesse try corn nuggets, these super good little dollops of creamed corn that are breaded and deep-fried and served with a garlicky sauce. He had a turkey melt that he says is one of the best sandwiches he’s ever eaten. And then we split a slice of Heath bar peanut butter pie for some more sensory-flavor overload. With full bellies we turned in for the night at a rest area just outside of Gainesville.