Birthday Babes!

So kayak buddy, Pat, and I have birthdays in June. Pat had not explored Asheville. Always looking for an excuse to go back to Wilson's RV Park on the French Broad, I made us a reservation for late June, on her birthday and a few days before mine. After days of torrential rains, the French Broad looked a little high for happy boating so with more rain in the forecast, we decided to do the town.

Pat had never visited the magnificent Grove Park Inn with its twin walk in fireplaces inside the huge lobby, or the terrace restaurants overlooking the valley and surrounding mountains. Despite the fact that it was summer, one fireplace was roaring with flame. My last trip here was in the winter, and the terrace restaurants had heaters under the awnings. It's a pretty grand place that can defy the elements. Those who built the place defied gravity raising stones to this height and capping windows and doors with lintels of hewn stone almost as big as the windows they defined.

F. Scott Fitzgerald and wife Zelda haunted this place, often drunk for days on end. I recently read Lee Smith's book, Guests On Earth, about Zelda and her unfortunate death behind locked doors in the Asheville insane asylum, remembered today as part of Asheville's Halloween Ghost Walk. The books is not as grim as it sounds and gives a wonderful insight into Asheville in its early heyday. The Grove Park Inn heyday continues with wonderful gift shops, a high rise wing of modern rooms (if you are standing at the bottom--the rooms go down the mountain with the Blue Ridge restaurant on top) at one end, and a modern conference center and another open terrace restaurant, the Edison, on the other.

The back of the Grove Park Inn with the Terrace Restaurant and Edison Restaurant

We had a wonderful lunch at the Edison, totally unabashed in our camp clothes. The kids and I came to the Grove Park Inn for Thanksgiving dinner one year when Jessie was a student at UNCA and Ben was enrolling at Haywood Tech that January. The plan was to find them an apartment to share for a year and also spare me the job of cooking for the holiday. As a bonus, there is a wonderful Gingerbread House competition held here each year. The Inn was decked out for the holidays, full of fabulous gingerbread houses but also full of holiday guests decked out in their finery as well--men in silk suits and lots of  jewel-bedecked trophy brides and little children dressed like dolls. A fashion editor could have gotten an entire magazine issue out of what we saw. The kids, with their country upbringing and Quaker values, were a little put off. I think we were all glad for the experience but neither of them was anxious to return. I was relieved to discover that casual was OK in the summer. And that the menu at the Edison was way more affordable than the menu at the Terrace Restaurant. Being in the new conference center wing, the fireplaces (and there were several) had gas logs behind glass. Wonderful ambiance AND not miserable in the summer's heat. The food was pretty awesome as well.

The next stop was the wonderful Asheville Botanical Garden and a lovely walk through the woods among native wildflowers, and after that, shopping at the Grove Arcade, downtown.

The Grove Arcade (image courtesy of Flickr) was build by the same man who built the Grove Park Inn and is full of local crafts, fine jewelry and home furnishings. Pat fell in love with Mission Oak and had plenty to see.

Despite the elegance of the Grove architecture and wonderful cuisine, we ended our celebration at my truly favorite place in all of Asheville--the little shopping center near the apartment we found for Ben and Jessie that Thanksgiving. The Urban Burrito has absolutely the best burritos I have ever had and beneath it and to the right, The Hop offers vegan ice cream for a woman with dairy intolerance. Did I say, "Happy Birthday"? You bet.