Family Trip to Asheville, NC

During the summer of 2022, my extended family got together for a week in Asheville, North Carolina. Family trips are always special, since we’re all scattered around the southeast and don’t see each other regularly. It was a great opportunity to spend time with my sister and her boys, my parents, as well as my husband and kids.

Here are some of the activities we enjoyed while we were there.

Wicked Weed Brewing

Wicked Weed was my one “must do” brewery. I love their beers, and had heard lots of good things about their downtown location. Apparently there’s often a line of people waiting to get in, so we got there for an early lunch on a weekday, and were seated right away in their outside area.

I personally didn’t know the story behind the name “Wicked Weed”. I got my first hint when I walked through the inside area and saw a HUGE mural of King Henry VIII on the wall. If you know me, you know I love medieval London, and though Henry VIII is a bit past my area of interest, he’s still pretty fascinating. Also not someone whose face you’d expect to find on the wall of a North Carolina brewery…

The menu cleared up my confusion. Apparently Henry VIII is quoted as saying that hops (a major ingredient of many beers) is a “pernicious and wicked weed”. Holy cow! A shortly-after-medieval-era king’s quote was the inspiration for the name! I think this was just perfect.

The four of us (husband and teen daughters) had lunch here and we all enjoyed our food. I also ordered the Classic Flight, which consists of their Pernicious Ale (IPA), Day Light (American Light Ale), Freak of Nature (Double IPA), and S’mores (Imperial Stout) beers. They were all really delicious. Next time I would try the Hoppy flight, but I wanted a variety and some that I hadn’t already tried back here at home.

Food-wise, I ordered the Carolina Bison Burger with pimiento cheese and bacon jam. SO GOOD! My family enjoyed the shrimp po’boy, kale Caesar salad, and Cubano sandwich.

Their daily brewpub tours are free, but participants must be 21, so we didn’t join one, unfortunately. We’ll have to go back later. I would definitely come here again! Also it’s really conveniently located in downtown, and a short walk to shopping areas like the Grove Arcade, as well as a number of other breweries.

The North Carolina Arboretum

If you love plants, then the North Carolina Arboretum is a must-do. Located just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Arboretum features different gardens as well as a number of hiking paths. Each of these gives you different exposure to the North Carolina outdoors.

My favorite garden here is the Quilt Garden. It’s a grid of planted squares with concrete paths in between, planted in such a way that it looks like a quilt. They change the plants seasonally, so if you go at different times of the year, you’ll get to see different “quilts”. Just beside the garden is a raised area that lets you get a more aerial view so you can truly see what the quilt looks like.

Some other gardens that I really like are the Bonsai Exhibition Garden and the Stream Garden. And I just adore the Rocky Cove Railroad, which is an entire landscape designed around a model train system.

The Arboretum also features several hiking trails of different lengths ranging from a quarter mile to just over a mile. We visited during Arbor Evenings, when the feature live music along with wine and beer. So since it was close to dark, we only did part of a trail. But it ended by Willow Pond, where we saw a lot of butterflies and even a hummingbird moth!

There is a nominal entrance fee to visit.

Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary

If birds are your thing, then you have to go to north Asheville’s Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary. The land was originally slated for retail shopping, but in 1988 after raising $400,000, the Blue Ridge Audubon Chapter of the Audubon Society purchased the land. They restored it, added interpretive signs and benches, and built an inner path for walkers and birdwatchers, and an outer trail for runners.

There’s a parking lot for easy access, and right as you enter you’ll see purple martin houses and a faux “chimney” built to house area chimney swifts. We didn’t see the swifts, but there were two purple martins sitting outside the house.

From the parking lot, if you take the path to the left, it will take you to the edge of Beaver Lake, where we saw a song sparrow and two green herons. The path is circular so you’ll get to the lake either way. In the middle is a beautiful wild area full of native plants, where we saw a ruby-throating hummingbird darting among the flowers.

Some other bird species we saw were an indigo bunting, and nesting American goldfinches.

Some sites online mention that they offer guided tours here every Saturday. We found that information to be outdated, so we enjoyed the sanctuary independently. After emailing with Audubon’s past president, Tom Tribble, I found out that they do the guided walks here only on the first Saturday of each month, at 8am between April and September, and at 9am during the remaining months.

There is no fee to park or enter.

Blue Ridge Parkway

Asheville sits right on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a scenic drive that links the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

Not for the faint of heart, the Blue Ridge Parkway has winding roads, up- and downhill climbs, and can be a bit scary or nauseating for those with a fear of heights or who suffer from motion sickness. But if you like these drives, the scenery is amazing.

You can get onto the parkway from several locations within Asheville, and on it you’ll find a number of things to do. We got on the parkway and headed north, and made our first stop at Folk Art Center at Milepost 382. Inside were beautiful displays of artisan works, as well as a store that carries many arts and crafts from local artists.

From there, we continued north to the Craven Gap Trail, where we saw some butterflies and hiked a bit of a trail that was mildly challenging and quite fun. We randomly picked this hike because it was labelled as the only place a United States President has visited the Blue Ridge Parkway; President and First Lady Obama hiked here in 2010. (I’m not sure how they know that no other president ever stepped foot on the parkway, though!)

Further north we found the Craggy Gardens visitors’ center at milepost 364.4, then we kept going to the overlook for Glassmine Falls at milepost 361.2. Unfortunately the falls were almost completely dry, and it required binoculars to even see the bare trickle of water present. However, we did see a beautiful cedar waxwing from the overlook, so all wasn’t lost! We also saw a lot of swallowtail butterflies.

All in all, the Blue Ridge Parkway is worth a drive at least once in your life, and more if you enjoy it or want to do many of the hikes whose trailheads are on the parkway.