Asheville, North Carolina

After our scenic drive down the Blue Ridge Parkway, we finally made it to Asheville, NC and checked into our roadside hotel for the night.  Hotels are pretty expensive during leaf peeping season, so definitely plan in advance if you want to save a few dollars by booking your hotel early.  Asheville is a city in western North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains that, aside from the iconic Blue Ridge Parkway drive, boasts the Biltmore Mansion, music heritage, and a great food and beer scene.

As an early Christmas present from my fiance's parents, we were able to visit Biltmore Estate.  The Châteauesque Biltmore House was built between 1889 and 1895 by George Washington Vanderbilt II and is currently owned by a Vanderbilt descendant.  The entrance fee is pretty steep, but I thought it was pretty interesting to walk through a house that was more or less advance for its time, such as installing a 70,000-gallon heated swimming pool and one of the nation's first bowling alleys in a private residence in the basement.  There's currently even a winery to visit on the estate.

On the grounds there are also gardens and greenhouses.  My particular favorite were the rose gardens--never knew there were so many different kinds of roses!

Twenty-five miles southeast of Asheville is Chimney Rock State Park, which has a ton of hiking trails and encompasses 1,000 acres.  One of the most popular areas of the park is Chimney Rock, a 315-foot granite monolith, seen above.  They have elevators, but it was definitely worth the oodles of stairs (hello, exercise!) to finally reach the top.  Great views!

We also had a little bit of time to visit Saint Paul Mountain Vineyards, one of the local wineries that's about a 30-minute drive from Asheville.  They're a family-owned winery and the first commercial vineyard in Henderson County.  It's been over two years now since we visited so unfortunately I can't remember what we tasted (and this was during my pre-blogging days when I didn't document everything), but I thought they were pretty good for the only North Carolina winery I've been to!  Like Virginia, North Carolina has a fair amount of wineries and I'm sure a number of them take advantage of the unique terroir of the Appalachians.

In short, the Asheville area is a great place to visit since there's something there for everyone whether it's hiking, leaf peeping, beer and wine tasting, the music scene, or even the food scene.  (There are some great farm-to-table restaurants in downtown Asheville.  We splurged on some delicious dinner at The Blackbird.)