How We Spent Our Summer Vacation - The Third Week

In previous posts I have mentioned that Heidi is a very good traveler. She seems to be happy as long as she’s with us, so she’ll put up with a lot. Here she is in one of her favorite places.

And lest you think she isn’t getting spoiled enough, this picture will put your mind at rest. She loves being on her daddy’s lap.

This week we had live entertainment at Creekwood Farm on Saturday evening. Hobo Bill and Kristin played guitars and sang older mountain and railroad songs. I didn’t know most of what they performed, but we sure enjoyed listening to them.

We took our lawn chairs and sat outside the rec center. I was amazed at the lack of mosquitoes. I am always a target if they are in the neighborhood, but not here in North Carolina. Another cool thing was the lightning bugs. We never had them in Colorado, nor in Florida. So that was kind of a throwback to my childhood that was really cool. No, I didn’t catch any, but I must admit that I was tempted!

The next day was a fish fry. One of the campers (Bill Brown) supplied all the fish: trout and catfish. Julian and our neighbor, Ken, spent a good part of the day helping Bill make hushpuppies and fry the fish. We all ate around 3 p.m. and what a feast it was! We were so full we only needed desert later that night.

Since getting the motor home, we’ve struggled with something to take the place of a coffee table. We need all the surfaces we can find and nothing was cutting it, mostly nothing was stabile enough. Our neighbors, Ken & Stacy, had a nice wooden coffee table in their coach which they had had made for them last year in Waynesville. It was a perfect size (small) and would match our coach very nicely. So we went into the same furniture store and had them make one just like it for us. They said we’d have it in less than a week.

By Wednesday we were ready to get out and see the sights again. We went south to Balsam once more and hopped onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, heading east this time. We took it 50 miles to Asheville. Once again we were surrounded by awesome beauty. We stopped in several places, the first of which looked down on the town of Balsam.

We also passed the highest point on the Parkway at over 6,000 feet. OK, it’s not a Colorado mountain, but it was worth seeing anyway.

Here’s another view of the mountains. Fantastic scenery!

And here’s the sign that proves we were there.

Once we got through “oh-ing” and “ah-ing” over the scenery, we actually did get into the city of Asheville. We went into the downtown area and walked around Grove Arcade. It was a small shopping center with all sorts of different stores. Then we had a great lunch at a Thai restaurant there. We’ve been eating quite well, so far.

We had an RV lesson this week. We had a torrential rain around noon one day, complete with high winds. We learned that the way we had the awning secured wasn’t nearly strong enough. Both posts pulled out of the ground. We were able to get out and catch them and secure them so that no damage was done. But it was time to get a better method in place – which is how we spent the afternoon. Julian went out once the rain stopped and bought tie-downs. We wouldn’t be caught with this problem again.

It was time to go out and get some positive fishing results. We drove south through some beautiful countryside to Cliffside Lake near Highlands, NC. This is a gorgeous state park area as you can see from this photo.

We found this little boardwalk area where we could hang out and throw in our lines.

We spent quite some time here, but were stymied once again. Why are there no fish to be caught in this state? We bought licenses. We’re playing by the rules. What’s up with this place? Eventually we gave up the fishing and found a picnic table to have our lunch. Then we drove back home – by a different road, of course.