icicles
view
soaking up the sun
glassmine falls
icy road
organizing at Jim's
Beatrice's new clothes
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After a weekend of merriment, Hannah, Daniel, and I said goodbye to Erin and Josh and hit the road to Asheville. (Hannah had some friends in Asheville to visit, so she decided to come along with us.)
As we rode, the temperature fell to down below 30 F. We kept climbing higher and higher (eventually up to Grandfather Mountain), which was both good and bad: climbing mountains was the only way to stay warm, but the higher we got, the colder it got. Flurries blew here and there through the brisk air, and foreboding grey clouds boiled about in the sky above us. The descents chilled us to the bone—it was all we could do to keep our toes and fingers from going numb.
The view from the top was awesome. A tall, menacing rock face ascended to a peak on the right (that we assumed to be Grandfather Mtn), while on the left the mountain dropped away below us. At this point the parkway forms a long bridge that literally wraps its way around the side of the mountain. We don’t have any pictures—it was too cold for sightseeing (we were also at our highest elevation up to that point; 4500 some odd feet)!
We desended a bit (to a hopefully safer altitude) and setup camp just off the parkway. We built a fire, drank some hot chocolate, and made polenta (with lots of cheese and butter to help stay warm through the night). Meanwhile, the wind blustered about behind us and the flurries whirled through our little camp. When the time came to leave the fire the 3 of us crammed in our little 2 person tent, each burried deep inside his or her sleeping bag.
When we woke up the next morning the temperature was around 22-24 F. Brrr!! The sun came out a bit here and there, but the day remained quite chilly. We stopped at the orchard along the parkway and picked up 30-some apple drops. Delicious! They helped us forget, at least momentarily, the penetrating cold.
That night, fried apples (again lots of butter) and rice with split peas.
The following day it finally warmed up a bit. The sun came out and we stopped to rid our various extremities of the cold. We climbed up and up (past the turn off to Mount Mitchell) to Craggy Gardens. Lots of melting icicles clung to the rock walls along the way. We hit our highest elevation (5677ft)—boy were we glad we weren’t here the day before!
At the top we met Tom Redinger of East Asheville, who invited us to stay for the night. We had planned to go on to Jim Ashburn’s house, 18 miles farther, but we welcomed the early stop and promise of a hot shower! Tom (unknowingly) offered us our favorite snack—apples and peanut butter—and cooked us a hearty (and tasty!) meal of spagetti with meat sauce. We couldn’t believe we were in Asheville!
Asheville in and of itself was quite an experience! We stayed with a number of different people and spent a lot of time hanging out with Hannah. Eventually we made it to Jim’s, out in the country, and began the task of disassembling our trusty steeds and packing them into bike boxes for the journey ahead.
On Monday we saw Hannah off on her way back to Virginia, ran a few errands, and returned to Jim’s that night for the final packing.
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