We'll start by admitting the lie in the title. I am not 10 and 3/4. I am, in fact, 34 and closing in on my 35th birthday in August. With that said however, as I type this, I'm closing out what passed for my summer vacation -- a two week period between the spring and summer semester of my ongoing education to become a forensic social worker.
Last week, my partner and I went on a cruise with a... we'll call her "unique"... friend of ours who had never been out of the country and who agreed to go if we went with her and her husband. Thankfully she behaved herself and there were no international diplomatic crises as everyone had been expecting. We were rather surprised ourselves. Unfortunately, that cruise didn't cover any new ground: my partner and I have already been to The Bahamas twice.
You may view our previous travels to that exotic land
here and
here.
Yesterday we decided to go somewhere none of us had been before. With the "unique" friend in tow, we headed off to a wilderness area about thirty miles from our house, walked around without actually seeing what we'd gone there to see (more on that later), before closing it out with some of the most delicious Chinese buffet food to be found in this part of the state.
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One of the best things about Asheville is that you can go from gem-quality urbanism (on a small scale, but gem-quality all the same), a treasure trove of historic architecture, great restaurants and shopping and breweries and everything else we're known for, to
this in less than half an hour. If you stay in Buncombe County itself, you can go from the glories of the city to the glories of this in about fifteen minutes.
We went to the Shining Rock Wilderness by way of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Shining Rock is at a considerably higher elevation than the city, which means that even though everything down below is fully leafed out, things at the top of the higher mountains are still catching up. Also, the plant life at the top of the high mountains is considerably different than that at lower elevations due to the fact that the mountaintops are exposed to higher winds and more lightning-strike fires. The ecosystem of a high mountaintop in the Southern Appalachians is somewhat "blasted" in comparison to what you find below.
The Amazon Basin is the only region of the planet with more diversity of plant and animal life than the Southern Appalachians. This is due to the fact that you have high levels of rainfall combined with low elevations, high elevations, and everything in between. At every step of the way you have uniquely adapted plants such as this fluffy lichen.
This is my home.
What you see there to the right is what's called a "laurel hell." Laurel hells are thickets of mountain laurel and rhododendron so dense and impenetrable that they have been known to snare animals and people alike. There are historical records of children going into laurel hells and never coming out again, and farmers likewise going in and not coming out again after pursuing animals into them.
Fun fact: the Shining Rock area is one of the areas supposedly haunted by one of the best of the Cherokee boogeymen -- or, in this case, boogeywomen. While the witch U'tlun'ta (Read about her
here.) was supposedly eventually killed by Cherokee hunters, if ever you're in the woods of Western North Carolina and see a cloud of flies buzzing around a boulder or a pile of rocks, you'd do best to steer clear because that may be her. In human form, U'tlun'ta looked, and apparently smelled, like anyone else but in her stony-skinned true form she gave off an awful smell that attracted legions of flies.
Thus, that fly-plagued rock may just be U'tlun'ta lying in wait...
And yes, we saw a couple of rock piles besieged by buzzing clouds of flies while we were on our little stroll.
We never made it all the way to Shining Rock, so named because it consists of an enormous outcropping of quartz. See that large track? That's a bear print. See the smaller track? That's a smaller bear print, meaning... mama and cub? Not far ahead of these tracks we heard grunting and snuffling coming from the trees up ahead and decided it would be prudent to turn around and head back.
Not that it did us much good. The Asheville newspaper reported this morning that while we were out hiking in the woods, back in the city a bear crawled through an open window at a house in a rich part of town, explored the house while the owner ran outside, and eventually crawled back out of the same window by which it entered and went on its beary little way.
Lest we forget, there was also an incident a few years ago where a bear in downtown Asheville gave a saxophone-playing street musician quite a turn when it tumbled over a fence on Biltmore Avenue and landed right beside him on the sidewalk. Bears in the parking decks at the hospital where my partner works are also not uncommon in the warmer months, and we've also had them show up in the parking lot of the hotel where I work. That's why we lock the doors at night.
I was rather surprised by all the water up there. Usually the mountaintops are a lot drier than the areas downslope. Up there though there were springs and streams all over the place.
We found a small white stone studded with spots like that. Upon closer inspection, the spots turned out to be garnets.
Some other hikers came up behind us with a very impatient dog who had to -- just
had to -- lead the parade.
Really, this more than my home. This is my Home, and the two are quite different.
After we left the Shining Rock Wilderness we decided, rather than head straight home, to go to a Chinese buffet in the town of Brevard that has achieved legendary status in this area. It's by far the best in the region, and people are always thinking up excuses to go all the way out to Brevard to go to it.
Why do I mention that with this picture? Because this is beside the road you take from the wilderness into Brevard.
And now, in order to make this nominally a City Photos photo thread, here is the aforementioned (tee hee -- I said "aforementioned") Chinese buffet.
Yum.
Allow me to reiterate. Yum.
Where else can you drive out of the wilderness and land at... sushi?
This great big fish thanks you for viewing this thread.
Goodbye from Western North Carolina.
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