The very friendly barista at the hotel gets us some quick breakfast so we can get on the road early. It’s a pretty morning drive, the trees just starting to turn, the farm stands bursting with apples, the pumpkin patches decorated for Halloween. Just before we turn onto Main Street in Chimney Rock, we’re stopped by the construction crew alternating the single lane across the temporary bridge. It seems that the old bridge across the Rocky Broad River, along with most of the structures on either side of the Rocky Broad River, were washed away by Hurricane Helene. We didn’t mean to be doing the tour of the most damaged towns in North Carolina, but here we are.
It’s easy to see the path of destruction. Mountainsides next to the river were eroded away from the bottom, taking the roads, houses and vegetation on them downstream into oblivion. Some structures are freshly rebuilt, while many others still look like they did the morning after the storm, rooms ripped away, floors dangling precipitously over the edge of the newly formed cliffs. It’s sobering.
But today we're a tiny part of renormalization, helping to restore tourism to this area by climbing Chimney Rock and spending a few hours and a few tourist dollars in the recovering village. We go through the temporary gate, drive a winding 2 miles up, up, up to the parking area and look up even higher to see our first stop.
There’s an elevator, but we’re adventurous and I ate too much last night anyway, so it’s the 499 stairs we take. The lookouts along the way offer panoramic views past Lake Lure to the distant peaks beyond. One vantage point, Pulpit Rock, has an enormous American flag installed which flaps lazily in today’s soft breeze and makes for some pretty majestic images. Me squeezing through the Subway cave may or may not have involved some cartoon sound effects that ended with a lip smacking POP!
Past the top of the Chimney, we stop to look at Devil’s Head, which is a rock that looks like, well…
We continue up the steep Exclamation Point Trail and on to Skyline Trail which takes us around the other side of the summit. Looking down, the colorful shops on Main Street remind Mandy of the model train layout her father set up in the basement of their Arnold Street house. Out-and-back, it’s about 3 miles and roughly a million feet of elevation gain. Pshew.
We’re back in the car around noon and point the car to Lake Lure, best known to the people of the world as the place the dance scenes from Dirty Dancing were filmed. And we get it. In the best possible way, the place has a charming 1950s Catskills feel to it – twisty roads, pine trees, quaint shops, and lakeside vacation homes with wet garages to dock your pontoon boat into. This area was absolutely screwed by the hurricane, but lake-life will overcome. By the time we get back to Main Street Chimney Rock, we’re starving. We get seated on the upper deck of Chimney Rock BBQ, a local institution known as much for its contribution to the town as its smoked meats. The restaurant narrowly avoided damage during the hurricane, so it became home base for the multitudes of volunteers that came to the aid of the village in the months after the storm, feeding the displaced families and workers while providing a place for coordination and camaraderie among the locals and the volunteers. I start with a good local IPA and Mandy picks a Whistle Hop Raspberry Chamomile Hydromel, a less sweet, Barbie pink kind of mead that is crisp and refreshing, and you could barely taste the alcohol. I could definitely see myself drinking one of these on the beach. We chow down on the meat sampler then finish up with Barbara’s very respectable banana pudding. We don’t know who Barbara is either, but she really knows her way around a Nilla Wafer.
We wander in and out of the stores and get into a brief but particularly poignant conversation with one shopkeeper about how the hurricane really pulled the best out of people, everyone setting aside petty political differences to work together for a common goal. Every relationship has an arc. The graph of this one is looking to be very brief, but very intense until she hands us her card. She’s an agent for local vacation rentals so there’s every chance we’ll see her again.
The return trip to Asheville is pretty and we’re back in time to catch a nap before the night’s adventures start. First stop is the city’s famous Drum Circle in Prichard Park. Around 5pm, right in the middle of downtown, in a small commons created by the convergence of three angled streets, men and women start to gather. Each has one or more percussion instruments ranging from full tom sets pulled in on beach carts and improvised bicycle trailers to simple wood blocks pulled out of a handbag. When the group gets to critical mass – around a dozen or so players – the drummers start to do what drummers do. Two of the players clearly emerge as the alphas, and the less experienced musicians listen and look to them for cues. The rhythms are mesmerizing, but the crowd of gathered spectators is even more so. This is a most definitely a hippy town, so it’s no surprise that a tall bearded guy in long flowing robes is doing his best Dancing Jesus routine right in front of the band, eyes closed, hips swaying, arms flailing. The town also has a significant homeless problem, and the thrumming drumming seems to draw the most crazy of the bunch to a single location where the interactions between them lead to the inevitable histrionics and theatrics. University kids getting high and tourists like us round out this bizarre melting pot nicely. A scene it certainly is.
About ten blocks away, we step into the Crow and Quill, a trendy speakeasy on the edge of downtown. The space is well done, dark, cluttered and intimate. The craft drinks are nicely designed, well balanced and innovative. But we can tell this place is still playing through the difficult lessons learned by the double whammy of the pandemic and the hurricane. Specifically, keep it lean. There were maybe 60 people in the place when we got there (about 2/3 capacity) and the crowd grew over the hour we hung out. But the place was staffed by only two bartenders, one of whom doubled as the hostess each time new guests arrived. Seat yourself, order at the bar. This way, during the uncertain times, the owner simultaneously solves the problems of too small a labor pool and too few customers. Once you know how to keep costs low, no sense adding unnecessary overhead.
It’s busier tonight, the start of the weekend, and the streets are lively. We poke in and out of some shops on the way to dinner. Mandy has scored us seats at Curate, the “it” reservation for dinner in Asheville. Spanish tapas in a beautifully restored 1920s bus depot right on Biltmore Avenue. It’s bustling and energetic, just like its influences in Barcelona. We reserved the bar and are greeted by the bartender server who reviews the menu with us. A couple of well shaken martinis to start and we make our picks. Waiting for the first dishes we get to chatting with the fascinating couple from California next to us. Besides the conversation, some highlights of the meal included Pan Con Tomate, toasted house made bread with fresh tomatoes garlic and a ton of olive oil, sublime in simplicity and execution, Escalivada, a dish of roasted red bell pepper, onions and eggplant served chilled, and the most tender octopus I have ever had in my life. The bottle of 2023 Emilio Moro Tempranillo even impressed our new winemaker friends.
Appropriately fed and buzzed, it’s off to the Asheville Music Hall for a double feature. Downstairs, at the club-in-a-club called The One Stop, we hang out with Organ Fairchild, a grey haired Buffalo based groove funk band, for a few minutes before they kick off their set. Blazing instrumentals (“we tried a singer once. Once.”) with a Hammond B3 sound out front. An all age crowd you expect at a Phish show very much appreciating the original music, and we’re impressed by how much the younger attendees are hinging on every note. Upstairs, we stumble upon the after party for the drop of the new Pigeons Playing Ping record which happened in town earlier. Dizgo, the four piece headliner, blends jamtronica with funk, soul and psychedelic rock to a sold out room. The music is new to us, but we’re drawin in quickly by the energy. We’re definitely skewing the demographic curve of the 20- and 30-somethings in the room, but we don’t feel out of place and the people watching is great. And just like that, we’re swept up in the music, the crowd and the moment, partying well into the night.