BBQ is your New Best Friend

Travel Post #1  Asheville, North Carolina
 
This summer we traveled from Roanoke, Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina.  Asheville is a great place thriving with art, music, and outdoor adventure. I lived there for a short time 15 years ago and I have been anxious to go back.  Asheville is a mixture of Boulder, CO; Santa Fe, NM and the South all rolled into one town. 
 
We hiked the Pisgah National Forest, drove the Blue Ridge Parkway, toured the downtown funky art co-op's, visited the Biltmore Estate, and ate some Carolina BBQ.  We all ate BBQ-even my child who is allergic to the 'Great American Diet"*.    Here is little more detail about our great weekend:



The Art of the Picnic:  My previous post highlighted to importance of planning ahead and knowing the details of where, why, how long, etc.  The first day of our road trip, we planned to hike to a waterfall off the Blue Ridge Parkway. We planned the timing so that we would be able to have a picnic lunch at the trail head, then proceed with our hike.  After our hike, we headed to downtown Asheville to tour around and enjoyed a rootbeer float (after we checked the ingredients of the ice cream).  My allergic to the GAD kid wanted water only, but he could have had an Italian Soda.



Biltmore Estate is the largest private home in America.

Using your Tools and Planning Ahead:  The next day, we visited the grand Biltmore Estate.  We started out early because we wanted to have lunch on site so we could hike in the afternoon.  We packed a lunch for my GAD kid and referenced the menus online for the restaurant options at the Biltmore. Since we planned ahead, we knew that our daughter could have the BBQ ribs for lunch. 

View from the top of Looking Glass Rock

Get out There!: We left the Biltmore for more adventure in the Pisgah National Forest and headed towards Brevard.  We did not have a solid plan for the rest of our day, our only focus was on hiking Looking Glass Rock and stopping by Sliding Rock for a ride on the natural rock slide. Dinner was not even on our minds at 2pm.  Our hike was beautiful, but long.   It was about 5 miles of hiking and we finished around 5pm.   Since we had promised our kids that we would take them to Sliding Rock, that was our next stop. 

My New Best Friend: BBQ for dinner!  Sliding Rock was an absolute blast and we stayed for over an hour taking multiple runs down this natural water slide.  At the end of the day, we were tired and extremely hungry.  So much for my planning mantra!  We headed back towards Asheville which was at least another 45 minutes to an hour away.   We remembered seeing a BBQ restaurant at our turn off for the hike and decided to at least try and check the ingredients and menu. We knew that natural hardwood smoked BBQ is GF and does not have added smoke sauces that can contain wheat, soy, etc.  We were so happy to hear that our son could eat their BBQ and as a bonus, they had baked potatoes on the menu!  That is a winning combination in my book, and my son had 2 baked potatoes that night!


*Great American Diet:  Diets that rely upon wheat, milk, eggs, soy, and nuts.