North Carolina to Georgia

Ashville is one of those towns that people visit on vacation, and after 2 months they move there and figure out how to support themselves later. A community of cool kids that are super friendly. We dug it. We spent a few nights here, mostly because we loved the town, but also because we were travelling hard for the previous week.


A brief discussion of the joys of food in Ashville... Ashville has a arts district in some industrial buildings by the river, which were ridiculously difficult to find. But it was worth it: some of the best BBQ of the trip at 12 Bones BBQ! Also amazing: White Duck Taco, which had Thai tacos, Fish Tacos, Duck Tacos, and all other sorts of weird tacos by a talented San Francisco chef. 

Also worth mentioning: Ashville is the beer capital of the east coast. Despite our best efforts, we probably only sampled 2% of the beer varieties they make there. And guess who's now setting up shop there?... that's right, Chico's own Sierra Nevada Brewery!

So this is kind of embarrassing, because this is the SECOND picture on the blog of me stuffing my face, but it is an accurate portrayal of our trip thus far so I will allow it. The three baskets of tacos in front of me were from White Duck Taco. All good, and made better because we could eat outside. 

We took a day trip BACK to Tennessee (this museum wasn't open a few days before) to go look for fossils since I (Anna) am a bit of a dinosaur geek. The town of Gray Tennessee was building a highway about 10 years ago, and came across the jawbone of a tapir, which hasn't lived in the United States for some 4 million years. They had come upon a sinkhole which contained millions of years of fossils. Some weird animals that lived back then in Tennessee: rhinos, camels, tapirs, giant short-faced bears, pandas, sabre-toothed tigers (that's right), and giant sloths. 

All of the animals were terrifyingly gigantic. How'd you like to see one of these buggers in the woods?  It's a short-faced bear, of the genus: bearisholyshittacus. Image stolen from wikipedia.

Here is a picture of the dig site that looked more like a hole in just about anybody's backyard:

After more than a couple of days of not knowing what day it was, we realized that Thanksgiving was rapidly approaching... AND we wanted to visit Tom's longtime friend Dan Brady in Georgia. So after some polite posturing, we crashed the Brady/Finnegan Thanksgiving! We had a great time and ate way too much. It was so much fun for me to get to know Dan and Micaela better, and to meet the Finnegan family.

This is a picture of Dan. He let us stay in the Brady mountain cabin, and whipped us up a homemade dinner. Then he pulled out some mix tapes from the 90's and we had some great memories from a few years back. Can't touch this.

There may have also been some moonshine sampling. We bought it off some guy we met on the side of the road (wink wink). It was the tastiest turpentine I've ever had!

The following night was spent at Dan and Mic's full-time house, in their newly built guest suite which felt more like a hip flat than part of a family house.  

After an amazing breakfast and some soccer with the Brady kids, we headed over to Charleston, South Carolina. SO worth a visit: amazing gardens, amazing homes. We sampled local bourbons at The Belmont and popped into Jestine's for some incredible soul food. We are always happy with great architecture and food! A highlight: we ran into Nat, a mansion owner, smoking a big fat cigar outside of his castle... Tom chatted him up and he took us in for a tour of his house! The Southerners are incredibly hospitable.

We had more of the same in Savannah, Georgia. Savannah was one of the first planned cities in the United States... They interspersed the most amazing little gardens with the neighborhoods, so all the old homes were a short walk of the most charming public spaces. I really can't say enough about these towns: they are a couple of the prettiest places I have ever visited.

We popped into a lower level antiques shop in Savannah, browsing (not really) $18,000 bureaus from the early 1800s. The owner mentioned the upper floors of the "shop", which (since we went in the basement's side entrance) we didn't realize was actually a crumbling historic mansion. We got to spend an hour poking around this lovely 1830s home. A previous owner - some poor (but not really I guess) old lady - had an active roof leak, abundant mold, peeling lead paint, and crumbling plaster crown moldings. I thought it was romantic.

The inside:

The outside:

Today we left Savannah are are on our way down to Southern Florida. Next stop: Miami and the Everglades National Park!