Back from the Mountains

We returned from the mountains this afternoon, after a pretty good trip. Yesterday's plans for hiking and disc golf went by the wayside early, as Lori opted for shopping and eating instead. There are plenty of great places to do both in Black Mountain. I hit up one of my favorite spots, Black Mountain Books, after seeing a copy of my buddy Bert Dunkerly's book, The Battle of King's Mountain: Eyewitness Accounts in the window. I don't always find something I want in Black Mountain Books, but on this day I bought not only Bert's book, but two relative classics as well, Nearby History by David Kyvig and Myron Marty, and The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840 by Jack Larkin. Speaking of book stores, I also had a chance to visit The Captain's Bookshelf in downtown Asheville. This is one of my all-time favorite used book stores, though I rarely buy anything there. The prices are usually a bit out of my range, but it's a lot of fun to browse at this place.

There are a ton of good places to eat in the Asheville area, but we did all of our dining in Black Mountain. With the variety available there, you have a good bit to pick from. My Father's Pizza is a simple Italian place with great pizza and stromboli, plus a number of traditional pasta dishes and a decent beer list. No trip to Black Mountain is complete for us if we don't eat some German food at the Berliner Kindl, which has a great beer selection and fairly extensive menu, not to mention a deli featuring German meats, cheeses, and other goodies. Camino's is a fairly new Tex-Mex/southwestern style restaurant and we enjoyed our first visit there. There are a number of other restaurants, coffee shops, and a couple of bars in town as well.

We did manage to get in some disc golf on the return trip today. We stopped in Burlington and played the Wellspring course at Cedarock Park. There are two courses at this park, Wellspring and Cedarock. Wellspring is a wooded course, with short, but fairly tight holes. Cedarock is a "grip it and rip it" type of a course, wide open, but long (and I mean long) holes. I don't care for wooded courses that are too tight, but Wellspring ended up being pretty fun. I hit two of the longest shots I've ever made today, one from about 60 feet and another from approximately 150 feet. I was pretty stoked about that.

So the brief vacation/anniversary trip is over. Tomorrow its back to work, but I enjoyed the weekend and Lori did too. We are planning another trip to the mountains for Christmas. We are going to take my stepdaughter and do the Biltmore thing, and whatever else strikes us.