Historic Carson House

Sunday (June 14):

This morning Connie and I got up and took a walk along the Catawba River that is runs along the campground here. One of the "locals" told us there has been some talk about the county/city taking over the property and making it into a nice walking trail and having it tie into another trail that already exists close to this area.

View down the Catawba River

Most of the trail looks like this

This is the river that runs into Lake James that we visited yesterday.

We said our good-byes to Walt and Tina who we had met at the RV-Dreams Reunion Rally before they left this morning. They had also stayed in this campground for a couple of weeks after the rally had ended and are moving on to a different campground than us in Tennessee.

Walt and Tina had told us about their visit yesterday to the Carson House which sits on property next to the campground and how they had enjoyed the visit. We decided that we would go to the house in the afternoon (it is only open from 2-5 PM on Sunday). The original part of the Carson House consisted of a two story house built out of maple logs that was finished in 1793. A matching two story addition was added later with a dog trot between the two, then a third story was added along with the first & second story porches to finish off the house as it looks today.

View of the front of the Carson House.

The property was owned by Colonel (honorary title) John Carson and his son Jonathan Logan Carson before being sold several times over the years. It was acquired by the McDowell Historical Society in the 1960's and renovations began a few years later. The house has quite a history: it was the place that McDowell County was formed, served as the courthouse for a few years, hosted famous guests such as Davy Crockett and Andrew Jackson, and also spend some time as a boarding house. The Carson family became quite wealthy through land purchases, raising tobacco and flax along with owning a number of slaves. One of Col. John Carson's sons, Jonathan, fathered a number of children with his wife and another set of children with one of the slaves. Both sides of the Carson family (black and white) have joint family reunions on the site every few years. The house was ransacked by Union raiders at the end of the Civil War so all of the current furniture is period pieces that have been donated.

One of the downstairs bedrooms

This was a multi-use rocker. The nanny could rock the baby to
sleep while sewing.

Master bedroom on the 2nd floor.

The dining room - also was used as a meeting room.

The parlor where guests were entertained.

There is a Texas connection with the house as well: Sam R. Carson, one of the sons of Col. John Carson, moved to Texas in the 1830's, was an individual who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico and later served as the first Secretary of State of the Republic of Texas.We had an interesting time viewing the house and hearing about its history along with finding out about the Texas connection. 

We began the process of getting The Duchess ready to travel tomorrow when we will relocate to a campground in Tennessee.

Visit to Lake James State Park

 Friday-Saturday (June 12-13):

Friday was a day we stayed around the campground. Connie slept in while I took a walk around the campground before going over to the Camping World store to see they had some replacement parts for the motor home. They are in the process of remodeling the store and did not have any of the parts I needed, so we will look for them on Amazon or at another store down the road. I ended up doing some maintenance items on The Duchess along with working on our bikes. All in all in was a pretty laid back day.

Saturday morning we found a spider web between the windshield and passenger side mirror this morning and took it as a sign that we have been here too long and it's time to move along. We are headed to Tennessee to a campground west of Knoxville on Monday morning.

You can barely make out the spider web on the photo.

We decided to visit Lake James State Park to do some hiking and to put the inflatable kayak in the lake. We drove over to the state park which is on the other side of Marion from the campground. It was about 30 minutes from our campground (the joke here is that everywhere you want to go is a 30 minute drive) to one of the two hiking areas in the park called Catawba River.

Entrance to park

We parked the Jeep and walked down to the picnic area that overlooked a dock and swimming area. The dock was open but the swimming area had been closed down. It did not look like there was any easy place to launch the kayak, so we decided to walk and then look for a different area of the park to put the kayak in the water. We ended up hiking for about 2 hours and then we ate lunch in the picnic area.

One of the fishing piers in the park

Hiking along the edge of the lake.

The signs warned us of possible death if we went off the side
of the trail.

Some of the trail was up & down

We traveled a couple of miles down the park road before finding a boat launch area. It was very busy and there was not a good way to launch the kayak. Connie asked a couple of guys waiting to launch their boat for a recommendation and they told us to go back up the road to Hidden Cove boat launch on the other side of the dam. We went there and it was not crowded along with being a much easier place to put in. We aired up the kayak, put it in the lake, and paddled around the lake for about an hour. We went across the lake (it is not very wide) into a cove on the other side and then back again. This is the first time we have had the kayak in the water this year, so we did not want to over do it.

Lake James looking back to Pisgah National Forest. Lake James was formed by
a dam built between 1916 and 1922 on the Catawba River and two of the creeks
that empty into the river.

Looking back up the Catawba River

Heading out from Hidden Cove

Bringing the kayak back to shore

After the hike and kayaking, we were both tired upon our return to The Duchess. When I was putting the kayak and gear out to dry I met our neighbors, Gene & JoAnne, who are from Sunrise Beach on Lake Buchanan near Austin. Gene was born in this area and they are here to deal with some health issues of his mom and his brother. Two Texans side by side in Marion NC.

We both took a short nap after which Connie cooked us dinner. It is getting quite warm here in North Carolina with temperatures near 90 today. The locals say it already feels like summer here.

Another week in Marion

Monday-Thursday (Jun 8-11):

This was a slow week for us here at the campground. We were waiting on the replacement awning to arrive and be installed before we could make plans to leave for Tennessee. On Tuesday we decided we would do some hiking around Old Fort which is about 10 miles from the campground. We found a trail that said it was moderate, but we when started up the trail it was very steep going up and down. So after a very short distance we decided to stop and see if we could find a different trail. We found another one located in the area, but after we had gone several miles down the road we that the road to this trail was closed. So we ended up seeing some nice country, but no hikes.

Although we did not get to hike, we took these pictures along the way

Our new awning arrived on Tuesday and was scheduled to be installed on Wednesday. They told us we were a "work-in" job, so we figured that the motor home would be in the shop all day. Early Wednesday morning we dropped The Duchess off at the service center, ate breakfast in the restaurant and then headed towards Asheville. One of Connie's crowns had come off on Tuesday and she had located an urgent care dental center in Asheville that could see she her Wednesday morning. After completing the paperwork (several pages), she went back to have an x-ray performed and the crown was cemented back into place. We did some shopping in Asheville, walked for a while in the local mall, ate lunch at McAlister's Deli before returning back to our campground. The motor home was still in the shop, so we went up to the local Lowe's to see if we could find a small piece of metal to put on the roof for our cell phone booster antenna. Since our coach is made of fiberglass and the cell phone booster needs a metal base, we will have to install the plate on our roof and then place the antenna on top of it. We came back to the service center and killed time by: Connie listening to an audio book and Mike reading his Kindle. The awning installation was finished around 5:00 PM and we were able to get back into the coach. We tested the awning and it worked fine.

New awning installed on The Duchess

On Thursday we were meeting with Mike Witt, a mobile RV Tech, to go over all of the systems in The Duchess and the maintenance schedules for the areas that need this. He arrived around 12:00 Noon and we were with him for around 4 hours. He also took a look at our refrigerator and it looks like it is on the way "out" and will have to either have a new cooling unit installed or be replaced with a residential refrigerator. We will deal with this issue later this summer. After spending 4 hours with Mike, we know a lot more about our coach and if we ever have any issues we can give him a call no matter where we are. Mike has owned several motor homes over the years and is currently looking for a "new to him" motor home for their winter stay in Florida.

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.

12 Year Anniversary

Saturday:

Connie and I were married 12 years ago in Vancouver, British Columbia. Yes, that is correct, two Texans went to Canada to get hitched. We decided if we left the country we could plan our wedding without having to worry about any "guests" and we were correct. Our witnesses were two concierges from the hotel we stayed at.

Today we took it easy around the campground before heading over to Black Mountain for dinner. Connie bought me two very "cute" cards with traveling themes for our anniversary, while I had been so busy (or that is my excuse) I completely forgot about a card. We had decided once we had started this full-timing adventure that we would not get each other gifts since we don't have any room to carry stuff around, but I still should have remember the card.

We picked a restaurant, La Guinguette, with a mix of Argentine and French cuisine which we thought would make for an interesting meal.  

La Guinguette restaurant located in an old house that has
been renovated. They are adding an area in the back for
summer time music.

We ordered a pate, salami and assorted cheese appetizer and empanadas for our meal. We also had some local beers with our meal.

The food was good and after having the appetizer and meal we did not have room for the crepes available for desert. We returned back to the duchess where it rained again during the night. The rain that was in Texas must have moved east.

Mike & Connie 12 years together and haven't age a day (LOL).

Repairs to Duchess have begun

Tuesday:

The Duchess all by herself in the Rally Park

On Tuesday morning we prepared The Duchess for her move to the body shop to have the fiberglass tear repaired and repainted. Connie ended up going over to Black Mountain NC with Linda Cross who we had met at the RV-Dreams Reunion Rally to visit the town and do some shopping. We ended up moving the motor home to the body shop which is located 4 miles away from the campground/service center in the early afternoon. The body shop has done all of this type of work for the Tom Johnson RV Service Center for the last 10 years, but with the sale of Tom Johnson RV to Camping World there is some questions as to the future of this relationship.

The body shop began the repairs to the fiberglass on the motor home. I had a nice visit with one of the owners of the shop who was born in this area and had spent all of his life here except for 3 years

Where we spent several nights inside the body shop
with The Duchess

in the military in the early 1970's.

We had a strong thunderstorm move through the area in the late afternoon which Connie & Linda got caught in on their return trip from Black Mountain. Connie said the rain was coming down so hard she had trouble seeing the road and had to travel at at very slow speed.

We went to dinner at a local restaurant and took advantage of their Tuesday evening specials. We dropped by the campground and visited with a few of the remaining campers from the Reunion Rally before returning to the body shop to spend the night. The Duchess is in one of the service bays but we are able to put our slides out at night. We close everything up when we leave in the morning so that the workers will have plenty of work space and to give them more  area to work on the repairs. It is somewhat strange staying "in-side" of a building in the motor home with the doors all closed and the lights out in the building, but we can manage for a few nights this way. Since we are inside the building, we have no satellite service for our TV's so we rented a DVD at a local Redbox for our evening's entertainment. It was Interstellar and we both fell asleep during the movie.

Wednesday:

We got up early in the morning, put everything away inside The Duchess, and then put the slides back in. We waited around the body shop for a while until the first employee had arrived to make sure we gave them the color code numbers from a list inside the coach. We went over the Tom Johnson Camping Center and ate breakfast. They serve a nice breakfast there for $5 a person. We were joined for breakfast by Mike and Linda Cross and after breakfast we stayed around and visited for a couple of hours. We discussed several issues that us full-timers have to deal with: retirement income, health insurance and internet access were among a number of topics that came up in the conversation.

There was a light rain in Marion so we decided to go over to Asheville. Bob from the body shop had told me that if it is raining in Marion, then it is usually not in Asheville and vice versa. We traveled over to the North Carolina Arboretum to see the gardens and do some walking. We walked through the small gardens surrounding the Visitor/Information Center and then went hiking on several trails located on the property. We ended up walking for about 2 hours along a creek that runs through the park.

Connie in front of the Visitor/Info center at the NC Arboretum

Notice the plants growing the roof of this storage shed

The trees grow tall here in North Carolina

Entry gardens at the NC Arboretum

We returned back to the body shop to see that the fiberglass repairs had been finished and the first coat of paint had been applied. On to dinner at Nopales Mexican Grill here in Marion. The dinner was good but everything was very mild (Connie prefers her Mexican food to be spicy). After finishing our large portion dinner, we returned for another night in The Duchess inside the building.

Thursday:

We spent another night in the Duchess inside the body shop. We go up early and went again this morning to the Tom Johnson Camping Center to have breakfast and visit with Mike & Linda Cross. After breakfast and the visit, we decided to travel over to Asheville to visit a couple of breweries and have some lunch. There are about 30 breweries in the Ashville area although most of them are not open during the mid-hours on week-days. We were able to locate two that were open with-in a few blocks of each other: the Asheville Brewing Company and the Wicked Weed Brewery.

We visited the Asheville Brewing Company first and had their beer sampling along with a three hummus appetizer. The beer were an interest mix and the appetizer was excellent.

Tasting beer from the Asheville Brewery

We then walked a few blocks to the Wicked Weed Brewing Company. The Wicked Weed refers to a quote by King Henry VIII of England who did not like hops in his beer. He referred to hops as the wicked weed and issued a decree that all beer made in England during his reign was to be made without hops. There were a few beer masters who continued to make beer with the "wicked weed" using hops. The Wicked Weed Brewing Company specializes in making IPA beers in which you can usually taste the hops.

Entry to Wicked Weed Brewing Company

Mike at the bar inside the Wicked Weed

Tasting at the Wicked Weed Brewing Company

On the return trip back to Marion, we stopped in Black Mountain and visited the Swannanoa Valley Museum which give you a history of the region. The area was originally inhabited by the Cherokee tribe and settled in the early 18th century by the Europeans who had started out east of the area. The
area had mining and lumbering as industries in the 19th century. By the first half of the 20th century several fabric/clothing manufacturers had moved into the area. Most of these closed by the mid 1970's as production moved further south or overseas. The town of Black Mountain and the surrounding areas have become a magnet for tourists due to the nice summer weather and the beauty of the mountains in the region. The museum is located in what was the original fire house for the town.

We return back to Marion and went to dinner with Mike & Linda before retiring for another night inside the body shop. The area had strong thunderstorms with hard rain around sundown, so we were glad to be inside the building.

Friday:

This morning we went up once again to the Tom Johnson Camping Center to eat breakfast with Mike & Linda. They are leaving this morning for the trip to their hometown in upstate New York. So we finished breakfast and said our good-byes to them. We were told to be back at the body shop to pick up The Duchess at 1:00 PM, so we had several hours to wait. We ended up walking around the campground, visiting with a few of the campers remaining from the Reunion Rally and then going back to the Camping Center to eat lunch. The Camping Center has a large lunch plate for $6 which we split.

Frank on the right and his employee who worked
on The Duchess

At 1:00 PM we went back to the body shop to bring The Duchess back to the campground to await the arrival of the awning replacement (hopefully one day next week). It was a short drive back to the campground after which we got the motor home set up again for the next several days. It is good to have The Duchess back outside again and be able to stay inside the motor home during the day.

We did some grocery shopping, ate a pizza for dinner and then visited with other campers here at the park. We met a couple from Canada who are staying overnight on their way back to Windsor, Ontario after spending the winter and spring in Florida. Their 5th wheel had blown a tire earlier in the day and they were lucky that no damage was done to the RV. You never know what will happen to you as your travel along the road.

Linville Falls - Little Switzerland

Monday:

I got up early this morning and did some computer work for my previous employer. Once Connie had gotten up, we decided to go over to Linville Falls and do a hike today. Our friends, Fred & Bonnie, had done this walk last week and told the views of the fall were nice. Before we left, Connie received a phone call from one of her high school classmates that her husband (who had also gone to high school with Connie) had passed away recently of liver failure. It is always sad when someone you know dies, but when they are the same age as you it makes your realize our time is limited.

It took about 30 minutes for us to drive over to the parking area for the Linville Falls trail. From the parking lot we walked up the road 0.6 miles to the information center (which was closed) to use the restrooms and then walked back to the trailhead. We started down the trail and commented that it would be the uphill on our way back.

Connie being swallowed up by tree roots along the trail

There was three different areas to view the falls along the trail. The first was call the Upper Overlook where you saw a small falls up stream and then could look over the larger falls.

View of the smaller falls up stream

Here is a view overlooking the larger falls.

From there we walked further along the trail to the Chimney View Overlook. The steps down to this overlook were very steep and you have to be careful not to fall. We took our time going down and coming up since part of the steps were still wet from the rain last night.

View down the canyon below the falls

The trail continued down to the last stop, the Erwin Overlook. While we were there we talked to a couple of gentlemen from Georgia (their wives had decided not to walk the trail) who agreed to take our picture.

Erwin Overlook at the end of the trail

We then made the trek back to the parking area where we had parked the Jeep.

Connie taking a break on the uphill trail back to the parking lot

We calculated that the entire walk including the trek up to the information center was about 3 miles. It was slow walking with all of the tree roots along the trail and with certain parts of the route being wet from the rain.

Leaving the Linville Falls trail, we headed up the Blue Ridge Parkway towards Little Switzerland. There are a number of overlook pull off spots along the highway.

View of the Blue Ridge Mountains

Once we reached Little Switzerland we stopped Switzerland Cafe where Connie had the Pulled Pork BBQ lunch while I had a Spinach & Feta Cheese Quiche with a cup of soup. There is not much to Little Switzerland: some Inns and restaurants, some with a view and some without. It was not what we were expecting which was a quaint little town on the side of a mountain.

Switzerland Cafe

We came back to the campground along the Blue Ridge Parkway to US Hwy 80. We had thought the the parkway was a road with a lot of curves, but it was nothing compared to US Hwy 80. It is one road that does not have a straight section anywhere along this part of the highway.

I did some more work for the office and then we visited with a few campers from the Reunion Rally who had moved across the street to the regular campground (we are still camped at the Rally Section of the campground with two other RV's). It started to rain again and we retired to The Duchess.