Another day, another hotel chain

With a bit of sorrow, we left Nashville -- which we loved -- and headed on for South Carolina today and a family wedding. Roughly, this meant some 9 hours of driving, but we managed to break it up with lunch at the Clingman Cafe in Asheville, North Carolina, in the up-and-coming River Arts District. I've been to Asheville a few times in the last few years, mostly for business, and I think it's a picturesque, interesting place to visit (and presumably live), but I had not been anywhere near the Rivers Arts area before. It looks like a lot of empty warehouses, but bit by bit, they are being filled with new businesses.

After five hours of driving, we were fortunate to make it to the Clingman Cafe before it closed at 4:30 PM. The food, and coffee, was great. Afterwards, we got back in the car and made it to Mt. Pleasant, just outside Charleston, around 8:40 PM.

So, not much to report today. We made no non-essential stops along our way. We started at a Holiday Inn Select, and wound-up at a Marriott Residence Inn. To make up for today's lack of eventfulness, we'll share a few photos and thoughts from previous days. For example, here's our encounter with a very tall woodsman on the campus of Northern Arizona University (NAU) a week ago. We'd asked for directions to the "Muffler Man" in a Flagstaff grocery store...

D&P: "Excuse me, how do we get to the Walkup Skydome at Northern Arizona University?"
Grocery store employee: "Where?"
D&P: "We're trying to get to Northern Arizona University."
GSE: "I don't know where that is."
D&P: "Oh, OK, thanks an---"
GSE: "Wait... do you mean NAU?!"

Here are some Native American ruins we saw in Arizona, not far from the Grand Canyon. These were built by the Lomatki over 800 years ago, and abandoned for reasons unknown c. 1250. Amazing, somewhat spooky, and beautiful to see in the setting sun.




And here's P in Sun Studios with the original microphone (so they told us) used for recordings by Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, et al., some fifty years ago.

(D's note: Yeah... pretty much what he said. Also, I want to note that we just arrived in Mt. Pleasant only to find out that my dad, in his 60s, now has a soul patch. Pretty cool. Also, the aforementioned Marriott Residence Inn makes great chocolate chip cookies. And yes, it's been that slow of a news day, folks.)

So now we'll end with the Top 6 Things We're Already Missing about California:

1. Our neighbors;

2. Our cousins and college friends scattered around the California coast;

3. The lack of humidity (although D's hair is quite happy to have the humidity, thank you very much) and the great weather overall;

4. The eucalyptus trees on the drive to Carmel (actually, we're just missing the ability to drive to the Carmel/Monterey area, period);

5. P's former coworkers. And while we're thinking of that...

6. Buffalo spaghetti

Honorable mention: Rasputin Music. P made two dire observations when he came to Fresno: That (1) Tower was the closest thing to a "hip" record store in the entire San Joaquin Valley, and (2) Tower was going out of business (ok, that second thing was national, not just local, but still...). It's like the old WC Fields joke about 1st prize being a week in Philadelphia, and 2nd prize being two weeks in Philadelphia -- it was bad enough that Tower was the hip record store, but then to have it go out of business... (D's note: I don't like this reference.) So it was Fresno's saving grace to have Rasputin Music, a Bay Area chain, move into Tower's vacant shell in short order and provide a decent place to find music for our final year in California. It also served as a destination for the less desirable CDs in our collection prior to our move.