The Harebrained Scheme

We spent last weekend up at my sister's with her lovely children. Seriously, I came away from the weekend thinking--"This is what I need in my life, a 15 year old girl." My niece is AWESOME. She cooked and fed us, she wrangled her brothers and she distracted the Boy so that I could work on a freelance project, she's neat, quiet and non-whiny. It was amazing.

Anyway, while we were up there, Chris hatched this crazy, harebrained scheme of going to Asheville for a few days to celebrate the anniversary and his graduation. I said, "Sure!" I'm generally up for his antics, but I added the condition that he call the recruiter at Mission and talk to her about employment possibilities.

Monday morning I did some laundry and some packing and bought the tickets for Biltmore online. Tuesday morning dawned rainy and gorgeous and away we went. It's about a 4 hour drive from Burnstopia to Asheville. The plan was to head out, take as much time as the Boy deemed necessary for the drive and meet up with Chris' aunt and grandma in their little camper on Cold Mountain. (Yes, that Cold Mountain.)

Now...if left to my own devices, I would take a book and read the whole way, because that's how I roll. The Boy fell asleep and Chris and I talked most of the way. When he woke up he was hungry so we decided to stop to feed him some lunch. We kept looking for promising signs and what we finally settled on was one for the historic Fort Dobbs.

We turned off and drove this winding road. Neither of us had any idea what happened to make Fort Dobbs so historic. Chris even called his best friend Jeff to ask him to wikipedia it for us, but alas, he did not answer. After a long and winding road we arrive at Fort Dobbs. Which looks like this:


Hmmmm, we were a little unimpressed. But there was a great covered picnic area and restrooms so we stopped. The Boy had an alfresco diaper change and some lunch. We noticed another small but slightly better constructed cabin and so went to inquire what happened at the historic Fort Dobbs.


Turns out that Fort Dobbs had a run-in with the Cherokee during the French and Indian war. Who knew? Anyway, the fort had long since been destroyed but you can walk around the archeological remains and see the old well. The first cabin was under construction, the reenactors are building a log cabin using the same tools and methods they would have used in the 1750s. The guide/reenactor man was very nice and let us explore the exhibits in the small but better built cabin.

We got back in the car and headed out to the mountains. Now, for the next part of our story, you must understand that Chris spent much of his summers growing up traveling between Savannah and the camper. He knew the way sufficiently for us to spend some time up there when we were living in Athens, but since moving to NC (for some reason) we haven't made it up there. So we headed in to the mountains and Chris promptly forgot how to get there.

We took the wrong exit and spent the next two (2) hours driving in circles trying to figure out how to get OUT of where we were and IN to the part of town that we knew and needed. Chris finally gave up and called his aunt to come and get us. We pulled in to this place:



I tried really hard not to see this as an omen for the week in Asheville. And aside from mixed signals and more driving around lost, we managed to soak up some lovely sunshine and the Boy got to get out of his seat for a while and have a break and a snack and yet another alfresco diaper change.

We met up with Aunt Nancy and Grandmama and drove over to the camper. We visited with some friends of their's, we dipped the Boy's feet in the small creek, he got lovely presents and we headed out to dinner.

(Just by way of an aside. I have to say that I'm routinely surprised at how many people are enchanted by my Boy. I think he's beautiful and charming and sweet and adorable but I'm his Mother and therefore not the most objective judge. Same goes for the Grandmas. So it's always a lovely surprise when total strangers come up to us and comment on how cute and curious and well-behaved he is. And living the South, it happens A LOT.)

Needless to say, what with all the driving and the historicness and the getting lost and the being loved on and the cold water and sunshine, we had worn the Boy out. He fussed most of the way to the hotel, but eventually fell asleep. We checked in, bathed him and got him down for the night.

(Many PROFOUND thanks to Whimsy for buying the Boy this camera when she was here. I was initially skeptical, but I brought it with us and man, it saved our BACON during a couple of I-Have-Had-Enough-Of-My-Car-Seat meltdowns, so thank you, Whimsy! I will never doubt again.)