Asheville and the Blue Ridge Mountains – Phyllis

First, Art

It’s not often that we spend most of a day focusing on the arts, but Asheville is the place to do it. Folk arts have become one of my favourite subject areas. The Folk Art Centre near the Swananoa entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway takes both an historical look at the arts and crafts of Appalachia and showcases and present-day artists carrying on the traditional crafts.

My sister has an interest in weaving, so naturally, I had to send her pictures of a “Barn” loom made from rough hewn timber that was readily available to the early homesteaders. It’s a cumbersome machine, though that did not affect the quality or beauty of he end product. The local women were so adept at intricate patterns, like the Double Bow Knot, that a traveler to the area once set up a weaving industry in the area.

I enjoyed the examples of wood work. There were intriguing dressers and bench seats on display, as well as carvings and home-made dolls with carved and painted faces and handmade clothes. The basket weaving is always intriguing but I did wonder at the skill needed to get even the curved shapes of some items. The best example was a large basket, cinched vertically in the middle with perfect symmetric curved sections on either side of the handle.

Later in the afternoon we went to the River Art District right in Asheville. The buildings housing the artists covers two square miles in an old industrial area near the railroad tracks. The buildings are open to the public and the artists are there working, explaining their wares and everything is up for sale. I expect that there were a couple of hundred people working in the area.

One of the most interesting pieces was a human carousel built be a retiree who took up an interest in wood carving. His piece is 6 feet tall and all the figures represent known figures, He had Dwight D Eisenhour, Elvis Presly, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, etc. each figure was about 6 inches high and they were all packed into the carousel, which is capable of turning and playing music.

There were also quilts and clothing. I am not huge fan of textile arts, but I can appreciate how difficult it is to make and dye the cloth and then create an object or article of clothing from that substrate.

Second, Pinball

Asheville boasts about a Pinball Museum. Its not really a museum, its an active arcade filled with noisy pinging machines lining the walls. For $15 USD you can play all day, if that’s what you would like to do with your day. I counted 30+ machines. I saw an old Pong machine and the back room had more up to date video games. I never played pinball much. I don’t remember actually seeing that many in places I hung out, and I probably would have had a hard time parting with the quarter to play. However, Ken did play in his well misspent youth, as he calls it. Here is a picture of him playing one of his old favourites, Captain Fantastic.

Blue Ridge Parkway

The road through the Blue Ridge Mountains took 50 years to complete and is about 480 miles long. Like so many big park projects, this one was started in the 1930s. It has the first Viaduct built in the US, finished in 1987, and is very impressive for the time, but nothing compared to what’s being built on the TransCanada in the Kicking Horse Pass.

The drive is beautiful, though. In parts it would remind you of Highway 1A through Banff. In other parts its like the Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier Park in Montana. The forests are largely deciduous, unlike the mixed and or coniferous forests we see in most of Canada.

At 4600 feet, the leaves weren’t all out, yet. We were able to see down into the valleys. Once the leaves are fully out, you might miss the fact that you’re driving along a ridge in places or on the edge of sharp descent in others. The overlooks were plentiful and well-marked so it took several hours to cover the short section we visited.

It’s a popular place for intrepid cyclists, which counts me out. Some of those folks looked like they were struggling through those hills.

We stopped for lunch in Blowing Rock. It is a town, the biggest settlement we saw on the drive and we decided it was the Banff of the park. Even so early in the season, when all the visitor centres aren’t yet open, it was a bustling place. The wind is so strong around this rock overhang, apparently, that you don’t lose anything dropped over the side. The wind brings it back to you.

We had a really nice fish lunch at the “Speckled Trout”.