Hows my little Ashevillian?

Asheville, North Carolina is a really really great town. It definitely has several of my heartstrings attached. You might remember me mentioning this a few months ago, and this trip solidified and reaffirmed it.

A few months ago Laura's parents offered the whole Davis gang an all expense paid family vacation to Asheville. Admittedly a strange place to take a family vacation where most family members are under 40 years old. We certainly made the most of it, more so, we even had a good time!

Laura and I broke off from the family early on a rainy first day to work in a stop at the Highland Brewing Company where we managed to walk onto a tour that was starting just as we walked in the door. We got really excited because we toured while people were actually working, which was pretty cool! We saw a guy pouring hops into a tank! This seems pretty trivial, but we rarely see a brewery in action on a tour since we are always visiting on weekends, with the exception of Lienie's where we saw the bottling line rolling briefly. Highland is the biggest brewer in Asheville and I was bummed it didn't work out for us to visit during our first time around, which is why I was so amped to get there this time. My overall impression was that they are making solid, and clean beers. We really liked their Gaelic Ale (and so does everyone else apparently) and aside from their fantastic trappist style (test batch) they didn't have anything that really stuck out as full flavored and outstanding, they were more crowd pleasing mild beers. Which is probably how they became the biggest brewery in town.

The next day we headed to the main attraction of our vacation, visiting the Biltmore Estate. Way back in 2007 (remember that year?) I got to visit the Glensheen Mansion in Duluth so naturally I was drawing comparisons to both of them for the first ten minutes until I realized they are nothing alike aside from being large old houses.

Example: Glensheen is a big house (with a name) and someone was killed there. Biltmore is not only a big house (with a name), but looks like a French castle with English decor, atop a massive property with immaculately manicured grounds, gift shops, restaurants, animals, gardens (for both restaurants and beauty alike), a winery, a resort, and tourists, lots of tourists.

If someone really wanted, they could spend two entire days exploring all of Biltmore's offerings. We managed a guided tour of the house, some animal time, and a trip to the winery. The winery was pretty cool because one of their tanks (of over a dozen) could contain our annual capacity. Which makes sense, they claim to be America's most visited winery. We didn't spend much time walking the grounds because nothing was growing (thus nothing blooming), I don't regret this decision. One of my favorite things of our time at Biltmore was the fantastic banana split that Laura and I shared. Yum!

Lactose be damned!

Supposedly the most photographed thing at Biltmore...a pretty lame photo-op if you ask me.

The next day we got some family time in playing at a great wooden playground and hiking around/geocaching at the North Carolina Arboretum. Afterward we got a trip to the Asheville Brewing Company & Pizzeria. I liked that the pizza slices were as big as our heads. I also liked we found another growler to add to our collection.

After our walk downtown I realized that Asheville is truly a great city. From my small glimpses now and then I found that I love the diversity of people, the hills, the trees, the lack of corn, all of the breweries, the signs everywhere saying 'Put your $ where your heart is - Asheville', the many good looking places to eat, and drink. I love that driving only an hour from town will give you plenty of opportunities to camp, hike, and sightsee. The only thing I think the town is missing is a snowy winter. If someone were to ask me what would make up my ideal place to live I would point them to most of this list. I'm anxious to visit again for some more exploring.

Leave your 'Choking the Chicken' jokes in your head, thats a turkey.