Asheville is the main city in fat western North Carolina and the coolest place in South at over 2,000 feet elevation, chilly in winter and not as miserably hot as the rest of the South in summer. It has a reputation for being of best small cities in which to live in America, a kind of relaxed, chilled-out hipster locale far away from bustle of bigger cities. If were to live in the South I would likely choose Asheville if for no other reasons than the weather and scenic mountain location.

Asheville has a lively downtown core for a small southern city, kind of artsy with a liberal southern hippie-chic kind of vibe . The mountain man look is definitely very in here with lots of boys with beards. Politically-correct lefty sanctimoniousness combined with hypocrisy can be cloying, but I have to admit that liberal places are more interesting and more fun. There aren't many places that vote strongly "Red" in the American political geography that are in any way pleasant places to live.

Asheville is considered to be city with great emerging beer culture (is that an oxymoron?) with numerous new microbreweries taking advantage of clean water from watershed in the surrounding mountains. For happy hour I went to Wicked Weed Brewery, the weed being hops rather than something else, to try three beers. It was nice that they are available in small 10 ounce glasses to taste several with weird flavors – Ginger & Szechuan Peppercorn Saison, Caramel Apple Ale, and Porch Crawler brewed with cherries, raspberries, and serrano peppers.

Asheville was long a summer resort where the mountain air was supposed to cure all, including numerous sanatoria for those with TB . One of the city’s current sights is the boyhood home of author Thomas Wolfe, actually the downtown boarding house owned by his mother where he grew up and set some if his semi-autobiographical fictional works. The tour is quite interesting and different from other homes of famous people.

Asheville’s biggest single attraction is the Biltmore Estate, the home of George Washington Vanderbilt that’s aid to be the biggest house in America, a gigantic French Chateau that looks like a Loire Valley Castle on steroids. I visited with the estate with my family in 1982 and then again in 2003 on a cross country trip. I contemplated visiting again until I checked online and found the cheapest package that included house and grounds is now an outrageous $59. Yes, that includes winery tour and tasting and some other things you can see on property but still seems steep even if you get a $10 discount by buying your ticket at the Asheville visitor center.

So I instead went to the Grove Park Inn, a grand dame of a hotel that is to Ashville what the Broadmoor Hotel is to Colorado Springs. Like the Broadmoor visitation has grown with modern wealth and it’s had to add some less attractive modern wings onto the original hotel. I decided to spurge on the buffet breakfast to get a full tummy to last me through the day once I decided I was going to skip the Biltmore Estate.