Easter fell late this year and it was a good opportunity to get out of Dodge to find some adventure. I took a foray to Asheville and vicinity and was shown the sights. Rain was scarce and heat and sunshine abundant. I couldn’t have asked for better weather.
Hopefully I will pop out a few nuggets of goodness about the trip in the next few days, but **spoiler alert** I will tell you right now: I had a great time. The food was awesome, the company was fantastic, the views were beautiful, the ambiance all around was entirely conducive to enjoying life. Hopefully my food reviews will be fun and I will get some little travel snippets out there, but for today, I need to start with camping. It was a total highlight. I was asked by an Asheviller – is that a word? - what were my three favorite parts of my visit and I only got to one before the conversation spiraled into stories and all kinds of chat around the table (perhaps another post?), but I will tell you now that camping was definitely one of the top three things.
My first camping of 2011 was at Hot Springs, NC where the Appalachian Trail teases the French Broad River and the little town welcomes thru hikers to natural hot tubs and a respite from dried nosh. Awesome. We pitched our tent at the edge of the high-running river and took off to catch Max Patch before settling in for the night.
Max Patch (Bald) is a summit that, while perhaps not the tallest mountain in the range, certainly has got to be among the most breathtaking. It was hazy on our visit, but not hazy enough to obscure the view of Tennessee, the Great Smoky Mountains, the Black Mountains, Craggy Mountains, Pisgah Ledge, the Newfound Mountains, and the Walnut Mountains of Madison County -- all from a 360 degree vantage point. The haze just made the world seem a little bigger for some reason. The drive up to this cleared patch of grassy earth was equally astonishing. As we drove up the dusty winding Little Creek Road, it was easy to believe I had plunged into an entirely different world. Time seemed to have forgotten it: a barn covered with oxidized license plates and others yielding rusty boards to the earth, houses with No Trespassing signs on their debris-filled front porches, one-room churches grasping at the crystal clear stream’s bank. To come out of the forested twisting time-forgotten ever-rising path into a sunshine-filled clearing was all part of the experience. We breathed it in and I tried to absorb it into my cells. My camera refused to do it justice. After some pause with the grass and binoculars, we time-traveled back to the campsite with the good vibes of Max simmering at depth.
With the light into the valley turning a glorious burnt yellow, I enjoyed a limey G & T and we relaxed into the site . After only a moment’s contemplation, we decided we needed more fuel for the fire for both the joy of the flames and for the cooking coals. On the dinner docket: sausage sandwiches with Manchego, onions, and peppers all on lightly fire-toasted buns. I put together a yummy roasted potato and onion pocket as a side; and we ate well, drank well, and enjoyed the fire immensely. The guitar was strummed most expertly, and above the noise of the raging river, we sang and played late into the night. Welcome to camping 2011.
The morning brought a bit of rain and a slight hang-over, but nothing a little tour of the Grove Park Inn, a mojito, and some live bluegrass music couldn’t cure. Camping was a great success. Food next. This was a whetting of the appetite. 
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