How to Spend a Day in Asheville, North Carolina by Matthew Caracciolo

View from Chimney Rock.
www.matthewcaracciolo.com
 

How to Spend a Day in Asheville, North Carolina

by Matthew Caracciolo

My wife and I were on our way to Charleston, South Carolina to pick up our son at the grandparents’ house and decided he could wait another day so we could have an adventure in Asheville, North Carolina.

Equal parts Appalachia and Portland, Oregon, Asheville is the perfect destination for travelers who want to spend the day hiking in stunning wilderness and the evening at a brewpub. The city is surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, which means there are countless recreational opportunities within your grasp. Downtown, on the other hand, is brimming with restaurants, craft breweries, and boutiques. It’s really the best of both worlds.

What makes Asheville even more inviting is that it’s between us Ohioans and the beaches of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, meaning you can incorporate a stop on your way to or from your beach destination if you’re making a road trip of it. Even if you have just one day to spend in the area, it’s well worth it to carve out some time and spend at least a night here. My wife and I spent two nights here—a late arrival and early departure—so we could have a full day in Asheville.

The Biltmore

Let’s get this one out of the way. The most notable attraction in Asheville is the gigantic Biltmore estate, built by industrialist George Vanderbilt and the largest private residence in the United States. There’s 8,000 acres of gardens, trails, wineries, and other attractions on the grounds. It’s Disney World for people interested in high culture from the Gilded Age, and as such is priced accordingly. Admission to the estate starts at $64. While I hear it’s well worth it and, depending on your interests, there may be special events that further entice you to visit (there was a Downton Abbey exhibition while we were in town), this was not in the budget for this trip. You could easily spend a half day, or a relaxing full day, wandering the grounds and exploring all its offerings. We opted for a different, more affordable experience.

Hickory Nut Falls

Chimney Rock State Park

One of my favorite things to do is find movie shooting locations and visit them. This is easier to do in Ohio than you think; big titles like The Shawshank Redemption and The Avengers were shot entirely or partly in Ohio. The mountains near Asheville have stood in for the mountains of upstate New York for at least two movies: Dirty Dancing and The Last of the Mohicans. Chimney Rock State Park was a filming location for the latter. The finale of the film, when Hawkeye and crew run up a mountain to catch up with their enemies, was shot in the park to take advantage of its sweeping views. The scene culminates at the top of a waterfall. Unfortunately, as I discovered when we visited, that precise trail that they filmed on is no longer open to the public. Still, the views are spectacular. To hike underneath the filming location, you want to take Hickory Nut Falls trail which takes you to the base of 404-ft tall Hickory Nut Falls, one of the tallest waterfalls east of the Mississippi River. To reach the top of the waterfall, where the climax of the finale was filmed, take the Skyline Trail. This trail goes into the woods and comes out to the waterfall rather than follow the path that the actors ran through.

In COVID times, the park is operating as first come, first served. We showed up when the park opened at 8:30am and was one of the first 20 or so cars. When we left the park around 11am, they were still letting people in, but about an hour or so later, the gates were closed until more people left the park.

Hickory Nut Gorge Brewery

Village of Chimney Rock

At the base of the state park is the village of Chimney Rock, a miniaturized Gatlinburg, TN of sorts. There are cheap places to eat, rustic and kitschy gift shops, and a good number of places to stay if you intend to spend a significant amount of time in the area, a little under an hour’s drive southeast from downtown Asheville through windy mountain roads. Lake Lure, where much of the filming for Dirty Dancing took place, is only a few more minutes east. We weren’t ready for lunch quite yet, so we grabbed a drink and some pretzels at Hickory Nut Gorge Brewery, which has a seating area along the rippling Broad River.

On the drive to Chimney Rock from Asheville, we noted the number of roadside restaurants and antique shops along Rt. 74. Nothing was screaming our name in Chimney Rock, so we stopped at a hot dog stand on the way back to Asheville and looked in at an antique store. If you’re in no hurry, this is a good way to break up the drive.

Blue Ridge Parkway

The Blue Ridge Parkway, operated by the National Park Service, connects Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. At 469 miles long, it winds through mountain passes passing campgrounds, hiking trails, and scenic overlooks. The road skirts the outside of Asheville, making it an easy option for a driving excursion. About a half an hour from Asheville is the Craggy Gardens Visitor Center, from which you can take a short hiking path through a mystical forest of scrubby, fern-thick forest to the top of the mountain where an extensive patch of rhododendrons was in bloom when we visited. My wife repeatedly said ‘this is where fairies must live.’ It was remarkable to see a completely different ecosystem than the tall trees at Chimney Rock only a few hours earlier.

The great thing about the Blue Ridge Parkway is that you can do as much or as little as you’d like and it’s free.

Craggy Gardens

Craggy Gardens

Craggy Gardens Rhododendrons

Downtown Asheville

So you’ve spent all day outside hiking and you’re ready to be pampered a bit. Grab a shower at the hotel and head to Downtown Asheville.

Asheville is gaining a reputation as a dining and craft brewery destination. The city reportedly has the most breweries per capita of any city in the United States. When you’re downtown, you’re not too far from any of them. There are also art galleries, boutiques, bookstores, and in general a lot of opportunities for grazing, drinking, and window shopping. Plenty of downtown hotels mean you could conceivably skip the sweaty hiking part of the day and spend your time wandering the walkable city center steps away from your hotel room.

My parents had previously visited Asheville and warned us of the difficulty of getting a table at dinner time. We arrived downtown just before 5pm, thinking that since we were on the early side of the dinner rush we might find something easily. We wandered into the Grove Arcade building, browsed its classy Battery Park Book Exchange (which has a champagne bar and live music), and ambled throughout town scoping out dinner options. COVID precautions negated any such luck as restaurants are forced to admit fewer patrons. Some restaurants were already no longer taking names for the evening. We lucked out in getting a table at Salsa’s with about a 45-minute wait. All that is to say you should make dinner reservations unless you’re satisfied by a take-out option.

For dessert, though we were already stuffed with salmon guacamole and fajitas, we walked over to French Broad Chocolate Lounge for some mousse. We looked into a handful of shops on the way back to our car and called it an early night—we’d done a lot that day.

French Broad Chocolate Lounge

Other Options

As you can see, you can get a lot of mileage out of a full day in Asheville. However, if you have more time to spend, there are endless hiking opportunities in the area. There are also some creative neighborhoods to check out such as the River Arts District. And there’s plenty of good food to eat and beer to drink. I hope to come back some day and check out some of the attractions we missed.

Matthew Caracciolo is a freelance writer and author of The Waygook Book: A Foreigner’s Guide to South Korea from Monday Creek Publishing. He also maintains his own travel blog, Travel is Fatal, on his website. To find out more about The Waygook Book or Travel is Fatal, please visit matthewcaracciolo.com.