I'd been eager to check out Asheville for a while, especially given its description as the "Boulder of the East" and its mountain-town culture. People from Asheville are invariably proud of their hometown and more than willing to talk about it - it's one of those rare places with a shared sense of civic pride. Didn't get to check out the town itself too much, but I did get a brief sampling of the area's outdoorsy offerings. The wonderful Blue Ridge Parkway, a road stretching from Virginia to North Carolina through the best of Appalachian scenery, runs right through Asheville. On this day, however, this part of the road was shrouded in a thick fog. Though beautiful in its own eerie way, it wasn't exactly the grand vistas of blue-tinged hills (oh, sorry, "mountains") that makes the region famous. You couldn't see more than about 10 meters.
But fog is an easily controlled animal, trapped by its heavier-than-air need for low elevations. So if one goes through a tunnel, hypothetically, through a mountain over which the fog cannot pass, you might just have a better view. Here's the before...
...and the after:
On the clear side of the tunnel, we got the gorgeous views, as advertised. To bad we had already cashed in out hike pre-tunnel. Past the tunnel, there was a narrow pass - that saddle shaped depression connecting two topographic highs. This pass was just low enough for fog from the neighboring valley to spill over, and it looked like a slow-motion river.
Take away point was that I'm pretty jealous of Ashevillians. All along the BRP are stops to go hiking/running, etc. There's an embarrassment of outdoor recreation riches remarkably close to town. Though it's hard to argue that the offerings rival those of the Rocky Mountains, it can't be beat for proximity.
And now for another prolonged gap in posts - heading south to Easter Island this morning, where it's summer and 90 degrees. Time to work on the mid-winter tan. Oh yeah, and Happy New Year!
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