Asheville, NC

Thursday, August 21st

Strange thing about Asheville....flash back to the weekend before 4th of July, I was talking to a friend/relative (can't remember who) about my road trip and heart's desire...in this conversation I mentioned how I would like to find a community like Corvallis, OR. I liked the simplicity of Corvallis and the community when I lived there, but it was lacking something for me, which contributed to why I left. Well, that following Monday I was covering the main reception desk at work and a lady came in with her 2 kids to meet her husband for lunch. While checking them in I found out the daughter's name was Savannah (at the time I had been looking at possibly relocating to Savannah, GA), which prompted me to say, "I'm going to be in Savannah in about a month and a half". The mom responded, "are you moving there?" I said, "not sure, I am just going to visit the east coast, not sure where I will end up." To which she replied, "if I could live anywhere on the east coast I would live in Asheville, North Carolina, it reminds me of Corvallis..." Huh...my curiosity was peaked, Asheville was now on my radar. I checked it out on the net and sure it looked cute and possibly a cool place to live, but it was in the mountains, and there was one thing I felt sure of, that I wanted to be on the coast...in a nice little, quaint coastal community. Anyway, the next day I was working at my uncle's shop and he called me into his office and said, "so what' this? you are moving to Georgia?" I replied, "I don't know if I will end up in Georgia, per se, I just want to check it out....I'm not sure where I will be." To which he responded, "you know I would probably check out Asheville, North Carolina". Seriously? Did he just say that? I felt like maybe the Lord was trying to get my attention, so I figured I was visiting Asheville, regardless of its non-proximity to the ocean.
The next weekend (4th of July) I went to San Francisco and absolutely fell in love with it and in all honesty my enthusiasm from visiting San Fran palled my excitment for the upcoming open road adventure. It took about 5 days for me to get into the preparation mode and in hindsight I had forgotten all about Asheville. Don't recall thinking about it at all those last days I was in Oregon. It wasn't until my stop at the rest area in Bozeman that Asheville reappeared on my radar. It was during my conversation with Kevin, the gentleman I met there, when he told me (after I told him of my trip) that his dad ended up moving to a nice little town, "Asheville, NC". The minute he said that my heart about dropped.....seriously? It was so obvious to me that I was meant to be in Asheville and I pretty much built it up in mind as being my final destination.
So, here it is Thursday, August 21st and after spending a few days with my friend Jenn in Durham, I decided it was time to go to Asheville. I started heading west (Asheville is a couple hundred miles from the Tennessee border). The further west I went the more I was hating the idea of heading back into the Mountains...but I forged on. I arrived in Asheville around 2pm, drove around and found a hotel in the heart of one of the "50 Most Alive Places to Live", according to Modern Maturity. I walked around the Grove Arcade where all the boutiques, pubs, bistros, art galleries and bookstores converge. Asheville is cute, trendy and definitely alluring, however, it wasn't where I wanted to be, because I felt like it was where I had already been. If you take the Pearl District, east Burnside, Hawthorne and Belmont in Portland, and put it in the middle of Corvallis and take all that and put it in the mountains....you have Asheville. And I didn't want to be there. So, the next day I resolved to not have an answer for the question, "why was this put on my radar?" and started driving east once again. I decided to go to one of the coastal cities I had targeted before I embarked on my journey; Wilmington, North Carolina.