Another visit to Black Mountain

Sunday:

This morning Connie and I got up and walked for a while, then had some breakfast before riding our bikes around the campground. We decided to go back to Black Mountain since they were having an arts and craft festival in town this week-end. We invited Walt & Tina from the RV-Dreams Reunion Rally to join us and they agreed to. We drove over to Black Mountain and spent some time going through the booths at the festival. When you are living this full-time lifestyle the first thought you always have is: Is this worth carry around in the RV for the next few years. So although there were some nice items at the festival, none of us bought anything.

Black Mountain Arts & Craft Festival

We went to the Black Mountain Ale House (we stopped here while on the Pub & Grub Crawl last week) with Walt & Tina after finishing with the festival to sample some local brews. We tried the beer from three of the local breweries: Catawba, Lookout and Hi-Wire. We discussed where Tina & Walt had traveled (they have been full-timing since last year) and shared our experiences on the road.

On the way back to the campground, we decided to visit Andrew's Geyser near Old Fort NC which is a town we had passed through several times going back and forth in the area. We headed down a side road that had some bicyclists on it along with a railroad underpass with one lane traffic and no warning signs. We finally reached the small park where the man-made geyser is located and we were surprised. The geyser is much larger that any of us expected and the park it is located in is quite nice. Andrew's Geyser was built in 1885 to honor the people who died building the local railroad and then restored in 1912 to honor Colonel Alexander Andrew of Raleigh NC for his service to the state of North Carolina. The geyser was restored again in the 1970's before being taken over by the city of Old Fort.

Mike taking a siesta in stone chair located in the park

Andrew's Geyser - it is a continuous geyser

We returned back to the campground to drop off Tina & Walt before doing some quick grocery shopping and then cooking dinner. We used the replacement heating element for our NuWave Oven to cook the flounder we had purchased and it seemed to do OK  after messing with it for a few minutes. We met one of our neighbors who bought a Newmar Canyon Star last year and was having some warranty work done here at the service center. They are from Asheville but spend the winters in Arizona. They asked us where we were from and when we said Texas, they told us they had relatives in both Austin and Fort Worth. Small world sometimes.