This year has seen a distinct change in our travelling habits as we haven’t once stepped off continental North America. I nearly said continental USA but that would have been to ignore the wonderful week back in April when we set foot in my old stamping ground of Ontario, Canada.
North America is a vast continent, shared by two of the largest countries in the world by area, offering such an endlessly diverse mix of plains, mountains, forests, prairies, coastlines, weather, nature, ethnic groups, cultures, cities, towns and villages, that it must surely be an easy task to find the ideal place to lay down new roots that will satisfy the aspirations, needs, desires and longings of two not too dissimilar people who are held together by a strong bond of love and a determination to live out the autumn of their lives in peaceful harmony. Well life is never quite that simple, for as well as the aspirations and needs and so forth that we bring into the search for the perfect piece of ground to start the planting process, tagging along behind us are our preconceived notions of what is ideal, acceptable, bearable or untenable, based on the quite varied lessons that life has presented to each of us in the past.
Those who have followed earlier episodes of this blog will know Celine and I have travelled far and wide over the last few years and more than once have been sorely tempted to buy our “ideal” home in the sun, by the sea or in some beautiful corner of a foreign land. Much closer to home, and just a few short weeks after taking up residence in the “promised land” – a.k.a. Southern California, I was filled with excitement at the idea of moving up-country and buying a house in Big Bear Lake, a small town nestling in the woods high up in the San Bernardino Mountains, enthusiasm that only waned nearly a year later when we visited again on Labour Day weekend and, being a rags and sticks fan, I was appalled by the mass of noisy jet skis and power boats churning up the placid waters of the eponymous lake . . .!!
Back in April we made a fleeting visit to Asheville, NC, and being quite taken with that small city, our most recent travels took us there once again for a closer look. It being another community whose charms arise from its location among mountains and midst a vast sea of deciduous forests, it seemed appropriate that we should re-visit when those woodland charms were approaching the end of their multi-coloured autumnal glory and the renowned fresh mountain weather might be starting to show its less desirable side, that of cool winds, grey cloudy skies and that phenomena we miss so much in Southern California, a good dollop of rain every few days. And we were right on the mark, except for the several days of glorious warm sunshine, and the autumn colours, for which the Appalachian Mountains are renowned, had kindly delayed their magnificence, the result of an unusually dry summer, a phenomena with which we Californians are all too familiar.
We had found accommodation for our two-week stay through HomeExchange.com, though were unsuccessful in finding a simultaneous reciprocal exchange with someone who fancied leaving the relative peace of Asheville for the hustle and bustle of the West Coast, “No surprise!” according to our hostess. The house was in the Haw Creek subdivision, a ten-minute drive west of the city centre. Our first morning we breakfasted watching jays and cardinals flitting among the branches of the beautiful trees outside the kitchen window, and the squirrels doing what would prove to be their daily balancing act as, nut in hand, they pranced from picket to picket along the garden fence. Through a gap in the trees we had a view of the nearby mountains, and with the warm sunshine radiating out of clear blue skies, it seemed like we had arrived in paradise, certainly as far as this country loving boy was concerned.
Not completely forgetting why we were there, we eventually managed to drag ourselves away from nature’s spectacle and drove into the city to delve deeper into its offerings than we had six months previously. But getting a real feel for a place in just two weeks is a challenge at the best of times, and when seriously contemplating the idea of moving one’s life there, lock, stock and barrel, the task feels impossible. We did our homework before we arrived and having sought out the services of a knowledgeable local realtor, to whom we had given some ideas of what we thought we were looking for, we had spent many happy hours perusing a long list of wonderful looking properties which we had boiled down to a baker’s dozen to view during our stay. This in itself was a fairly hugger-mugger process, as we had only a sketchy idea of the neighbourhoods around the city and very little feel for their relative desirability.
However, we had a free day before our viewing schedule started and so we began our visit by doing the tourist thing, exploring the River Arts District where one can wonder in and out of galleries, chat to the working artists and of course expand one’s own collection of art as the mood takes one. It also turned out to be a great way to meet locals and to quiz them about their experiences of living in and around the city; no point in asking them why they chose Asheville, as it really is an artist’s mecca. In the late afternoon we happened upon a delightful small farmer’s market located next to the All Souls Pizza Parlour car park, and enjoyed chatting to various artisans, again many of whom had moved to Asheville in the last ten years or so and were totally captivated by the place.
The next afternoon we met up with our friendly realtor, Laurie Reese, viewed six houses of which at least four were totally damp squibs, another was “OK” and only one actually grabbed us. Actually the last house we were due to visit was so awful from the outside, and so obviously different from the MLS description, that we didn’t even get out of the car; it did however, leave us close to the village of Biltmore and we took the opportunity to partake of afternoon tea at the seemingly historic Grand Bohemian Hotel, the interior of which looks like a late Victorian hunting lodge, only to discover it is very much a twenty-first century construction.
The city of Asheville nestles in a valley, surrounded by thickly wooded hills with views of distant mountains in every direction. The city centre is quite compact and very walkable, but we had difficulty finding any suitable homes for sale in the few residential districts within the perimeter created by Highway 240 and the French Broad River. From the list of “possibles” that Laurie had provided us, I had upgraded to “favourite” status one gracious older home in the “desirable” Kenilworth district, which was a real disappointment, and another lesson learned about interpreting MLS descriptions. The house would have been very elegant when it was built in the 1920’s and the trees surrounding it would have been much smaller allowing far more light into what had become a very dark home. The “garage” might indeed have been accessible, or even usable, once upon a time, and the “delightful architectural details of the interior” were probably very up-market in its era. But, sadly, the sinking south corner and its associated structural cracks, and the cramped old-fashioned kitchen, convinced us that a top-priced fixer-upper was not what we were looking for. In our previous short visit to the city we had discovered the very attractive, but we presumed rather expensive, Montford Historic District, just north of the highway but still nominally walkable to the city centre, and so we were quite excited when, on our second day of viewing, Laurie found a very reasonably priced three storey home literally a couple of blocks away from our two favourite stores, Trader Joe’s and that other one whose name has now become tarnished by having become part the burgeoning Amazon empire. And what a disappointment that was, demonstrating once more the dangers of judging a book by its cover.
We soon realised we needed to look slightly farther afield and that’s where things started to become complicated. How far away from the centre were we prepared to consider living? Our hopes of being able to walk into the city centre had been somewhat dashed and we both started to accept the idea that a five or ten minute drive, such as we were by then doing regularly from our temporary residence in Haw Creek district, had to be one of the conditions of living in Asheville. Laurie showed us some amazing houses that were positively ideal but, alas, never quite perfect. The beautifully maintained house on Skyview Court, built precariously on the side of an extremely steep wooded mountainside and having the most fantastically gorgeous views from its three balconies, from sunrise to sunset, would have been ideal for the two of us thirty years ago when we could still bound around like a couple of gazelles, and my Canadian chain-saw wielding skills were at their prime. But the threat of our advancing years, mine in particular, and the hair-raising descent just to get into the basement workshop, or to fetch a load of wood for the lounge stove, made it a complete non-starter. Such a shame as I could really imagine us sitting on the balcony, each with a glass of wine to hand, watching the red-tailed hawks circling below us, as we swapped stories of our beautiful life together while the sun slowly disappears down behind the tall pines to our right.
Anyway, dreams aside, the practicalities of life in Asheville are what we came to consider, part of which could include domiciling ourselves in one of the outlying small towns we had begun to hear so much about. Weaverville is one such town about ten miles due north along highway 26, a pleasant fifteen to twenty-minute drive from the city centre, through rolling green countryside. With a population of around four thousand, this compact little town is really more of a homely village and has all the characteristics of same with the usual mix of realtors, banks, cafes, a pizza parlour and an Italian restaurant. It is very walkable, most of the streets have sidewalks, a small lake with a fountain greets you as you enter the town along Merrimon Avenue, the famous Well-Bred Bakery and Café is there to satisfy the inner man and the ‘everything-for-the-apiarist’ store, Honey and the Hive, is waiting to sweeten everyone’s lives. It has all the essentials, even a small shopping centre on the outskirts with one of the chain supermarkets – sadly not one of the two I mentioned earlier – and from our few short experiences there, is replete with friendly residents. And we even found an absolutely perfect house, well within our budget, five minutes’ walk from the town centre, a delightful garden, views across the valley, a sunny south-facing aspect, and in a very presentable neighbourhood; for some reason the owner, who was also the realtor, wanted to sell so that he and his wife could move into one of the posher districts of North Asheville to be closer to town, which of course seemed nonsense to me, though I know Celine was slightly sympathetic to the idea! All in all, to me the little town looked like an ideal place to plant one’s roots . . . or was it?
Perhaps a comparison with another apparently popular little town was called for. And thus, one rather damp, rainy day, we drove to Black Mountain 16 miles north-east of Asheville along Highway 40. Very different from Weaverville, Black Mountain with twice the population appeared to be decidedly more touristically inclined with its many eclectic shops, seemingly busier in spite of the wet weather, and with less of a “village” feel about it. It had a fair selection of eateries, many of which were closed by mid-afternoon, so we ended up eating simple wholesome fare at Trailhead Restaurant, a hangout for the locals judging from our noisy fellow diners. We did a bit of gift shopping and then took a short drive around the residential areas, but overall the town left us less than impressed and I believe all three of us – we had Celine’s brother Darius staying with us for a few days – decided Weaverville was probably the nicer of the two.
Although house-hunting was a major reason for our visit, there was far more that we needed to learn about life in and around Asheville. We checked the countryside by taking a few trips out of the city and a short test drive along the famed Blue Ridge Parkway. For our first sortie we headed in the direction of Knoxville, Tennessee, to meet old friends for lunch. The drive was initially viewless for it does indeed rain at least a couple of days a week, bringing mist down low over the hills, and the choice of eatery was somewhat unusual, being a Russian-American roadside café called Grill 73 just off the highway of the same number, somewhere outside the town of Newport. However, the food turned out to be delicious, the company was good, and we had our first experience of driving through the Great Smoky Mountains.
Our next excursion was more focused on the surrounding countryside as we set out to drive the I-441, the one highway that goes right through the middle of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from Cherokee to Gatlinburg. We stopped for a coffee and pee break at the Oconaluftee River Visitor Centre and then heading northwest we soon saw our first caribou resting in the woods across the river. This was when I learnt that Park Rangers are much more than good-looking gals and guys in Smoky-the-Bear hats, as I got severely reprimanded for foolishly trying to get closer for the perfect photo; perhaps the signs saying “Keep off the field when caribou are present” should have given me a clue! From there onwards the road went steadily uphill, winding more and more, and offering us some wonderful lookouts with glorious views across miles of autumnal colours as the 130+ different species of trees, for which the region gets its reputation as the most bio-diverse part of the country, fluttered their red, yellow and scarlet leaves for all to admire. Our objective was Clingman’s Dome, at an elevation of 6,643 feet, the highest mountain in the Smokies and the highest point along the Appalachian Trail (read Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” to learn more). Luckily it is very auto-accessible, although the parking is so limited it must be chaotic in the height of the tourist season, and once parked near the Information Centre we had an easy half-mile paved trail to take us up the final 300ft to the summit and its 45ft high observation tower from where one has a magnificent 3600 panoramic view of the surrounding mountains. It was while we were atop that tower that I began to have fears that living in Asheville or that general area, one could possibly become punch drunk with the sight of not much else than trees. A slightly scary thought to one who professes to love the idea of living in the countryside and has just started to become acquainted with the natural beauty of western North Carolina.
To complete the day’s experience, we finished the drive through the Smokies finally passing through, but with no wish to stop, the singularly unattractive city of Gatlinburg, an awful concoction of the worst, most grossly touristic parts of Niagara Falls in Canada, Las Vegas, Blackpool in England and Disneyland, plus every other tourist mecca the sane savvy educated tourist tries to avoid, before eventually finding ourselves all alone on the most untravelled road imaginable. Highway 32, the link between Highway 321 and the I-40, is hardly even a two lane road for most of its length as it twists and turns its way through a myriad of lonely forested hills and valleys, the undisturbed fallen leaves carpeting the tarmac, and making me for once begin to doubt the veracity of Google’s direction finding capabilities, especially as dusk was fast approaching and memories of the 1972 film “Deliverance” started to flash through my brain accompanied by the sound of duelling banjos! But what a wonderful drive it was, ending at the Walters Hydro-Electric Plant on the pigeon River as we crossed the border back into North Carolina, joined the I-40 and drove home on normal roads once more.
On our penultimate day, we drove south-east along highway 26 to the Tryon Equestrian Centre, to satisfy brother Darius’ abiding passion for horses. We were lucky enough to visit on a day when trials for an upcoming major event were taking place, so we did see some impressive horsemanship, but otherwise the venue was fairly dead, so we soon headed back up the road to Hendersonville, another town that some people compare favourably with Asheville. Their implication is that it is perhaps a little more refined, but the town-wide power-cut that greeted us did nothing to confirm that view, the dead traffic signals causing us one rather alarming near-incident. Powerless, practically all the shops, cafés and restaurants had closed for the day, all the more unfortunate as the town was preparing itself for its annual Halloween Parade that evening. One brave lady working the afternoon shift in the Black Bear Café bucked the trend and was kept extremely busy as we and everyone else in town sought out her coffees and croissants.
A chance conversation at Tryon had elicited the advice that we really should visit Dupont State Forest whilst we were in the area of Hendersonville, and as the weather was so obliging, sunny and cool, we went back into the countryside to see Hooker Falls and Triple Falls. The 10-15 ft drop of the former is not that impressive to the casual observer but is evidently a favourite testing ground for the bravado of local kayakers and we watched a half dozen brave souls as they projected their little polyethylene craft over the edge of the cascade, bobbing up from the maelstrom of foaming water a few seconds later. The Triple Falls however were a wholly different visual spectacle. A brisk ten minute walk up from the car-park took us to a lookout where we had a dramatic view through a break in the trees across the valley to a series of three successive cascades thundering down the rocky hillside towards us and being forced to take a sharp right turn as it reached the river below; there’s certainly no lack of water in these hills!
Another town said to be popular with retirees moving into this region, and conveniently located on our road home, is Brevard where we did our usual quick drive around and walk through as the sun started to disappear behind the surrounding hills. Less than an hour’s drive from Asheville the countryside around Brevard was less densely wooded and the airy feeling of rolling horse-country was in some ways a welcome change from the never-ending pageant of autumn colours with which we had, by then, become familiar. Unfortunately, the town itself appeared a little too much on the tranquil side, bringing on fears of early, rocking-chair induced senility, something that Asheville could never be accused of doing.
Back in our cosy Home-Exchange dwelling once more, we contemplated all the other things we had done to make our two weeks stay so entertaining: an evening of culture when we watched the Russian Ballet performing Swan Lake, delicious eats at just a sampling of the city’s eclectic mix of fine restaurants including Spanish style tapas at “Curate”, “Rhubarb” where we ate outside while enjoying the antics of a trio of hill-billy musicians playing tin-can double bass, spoons and banjo on the sidewalk, and slightly more refined dining at “Chestnut”, plenty of enjoyable walks along city streets window-shopping and admiring the many Art Deco buildings, seeing black bears, red foxes and grey wolves up close in the West NC Nature Centre, taking afternoon tea at the Grand Bohemian Hotel in Biltmore village, and seeing a wild black bear wandering peacefully through someone’s garden on the slopes of Mt Patton. And we didn’t sample any of the breweries, visited only a fraction of the many art galleries, and completely failed to find time for any of the museums or one of the many concerts on offer.
Even so late in the season, it was easy to imagine that with so much to offer, Asheville becomes very busy during peak holiday periods and so it is also understandable why so many locals complained about the traffic, parking difficulties and so forth, “compared to how it used to be”. But to someone coming from the frenetic lifestyle of Southern California the traffic was hardly noticeable, apart from the evening rush hour when there would be a few more than the usual half dozen cars waiting with you at red traffic lights and road rage was totally absent. It is a city in which the slower pace of life and the laid-back atmosphere contribute to quickly making one feel comfortable and at home. But do we still want to live there? That is a moot question, for much as we enjoyed Asheville’s many qualities, we are still unsure whether we will also enjoy its cool winters and, even more fundamental, we still need to convince ourselves that a major deracination is what our lives really need.
After a couple of weeks, I was sorry when the time came to leave Asheville behind us, but we had planned to extend our trip down into South Carolina, to visit my son Tom and his family who relocated there six months previously, and sample the delights that Charleston had to offer. This time we used the services of HomeAway.com to find ourselves a cosy little single storey duplex in Mt.Pleasant as our base for the week. About mid-way between Tom’s new home and the centre of Charleston we were well placed to both enjoy the family and get a brief taste of life in that land of reputedly hot humid summers, mosquitoes and hurricanes. November was of course the wrong time of year to experience any of those hazards, so we were able to enjoy ourselves unthreatened. Charleston is a compact city full of elegant old homes from its Colonial days and we enjoyed our peregrinations through its narrow streets, mostly on foot, but once ably supplemented by a ride in a horse-drawn carriage with a very erudite driver who delighted us with his intimate tales of the lives of the homes and owners alike. We took a few trips out of the city, to a couple of plantations, to Seabrook Island, and one day we drove down to Savannah GA, another fascinating old Colonial city. With reminders at every turn of either the ignominious defeat my British countrymen took in the War of Independence or the part the locals played in the American Civil War, history abounds everywhere. These attractions together with Charleston’s large protected harbour, and the sailing opportunities that offers, the miles of beautiful clean beaches and a cost of living considerably lower than they had left behind in SoCal, it was easy to see why Tom and his family decided to make their move. But the surrounding countryside is flat and low-lying, wetlands abound as many rivers wind their way through the swampland, making a complete contrast with where we had spent the previous fortnight. Add the three aforementioned negative threats to a peaceful life into the account and I still know which of the two I personally prefer.
Undeterred by our continued indecision, Celine and I always enjoy our travels and are off again in a few months, this time for a prolonged journey to Poland, to meet family and friends and for me to experience more of Celine’s homeland. Perhaps upon our return we will ruminate further about the uprooting idea. Who knows, we might probe into the possibility of buying a second home in Poland, or even consider moving there! After all the world is our oyster and we are both still young enough to wield a sword to open it! (Thanks to Mr Shakespeare and his “Merry Wives of Windsor”.)