Along The Road

Asheville

Downtown Ashville is, I would say, pretty damn full of itself. Veddy, veddy uppa crust. I looked around for a decent place to hang, and was pretty disappointed until I went out to the neighborhood where Bon Paul and Sharkey's Hostel is located. This area bears the name of "West Asheville," though it is really more south than west of downtown. In addition to the Hostel, there is a really cool bookstore and cafe called Outspoken. The usual good stuff you would find in any decently hip kind of java joint and book store.

 

Pippa Passes

I had another day to kill before my scheduled arrival at Hill and Hollow Farm. I was hanging out at Bon Paul & Sharkeys, looking for another Hostel to stay at somewhere in Kentucky. The only one that came up was in a town with the totally unlikely name of Pippa Passes. Turns out that Pippa Passes is the home of Alice Lloyd College, certainly a unique educational institution if ever there was one.

In addition to being a center of education, Pippa Passes is the home of Ed and Charlotte, who run the Pippa Passes Home Hostel in the basement of their house just up the hill from the college. Ed and Charlotte have been hosting since the 1970s. Their guestbook is filled with page after page of folks who have stayed with them, mostly cyclists on their way up or down the Apalachian Mountains. It is certainly the most funky hostel I've stayed in (two singles and three double bunks, plus a kitchen and small sitting area), and very likely the least expensive at $7.25 for the night.

 

It was still early in the season, and Charlotte still had her plants inside, where she keeps them during the cold season.

Alice Lloyd is an interesting place too, especially as a college town. It brought to mind something more like a summer camp, with the creek running through, a number of rustic buildings (including the original shack where Alice Lloyd began teaching local folks almost 100 years ago) in among the modern. I sat a while with the owner of the cafe that's sited on the college grounds, talking about this and that, being interrupted from time to time when he went out to deliver burgers or a pizza. He came in after one delivery and suggested I go out to take a look at the elk that were standing in the middle of the road, but they had moved on before I got there.

The Apalachians

There is so much history here, tucked away in the hills and hollows, so much stereotype. Driving up the Apalachians feels more like driving in, at least if you avoid the major highways: the further in you go, the deeper you get; the canyon walls get higher, the creeks narrower, the roads windier. Population has traditionally centered along the bottom lands (where the water is), and the further in you go, the less bottom land there is, until it peters out altogether and the one lane road winds up and over some ridge and down into the next watershed, where the process reverses itself.

The Apalachian foothills look about the same on either side, rolling hills dotted with decaying farm steads, and increasing numbers of "country homes," since there is nowhere, anymore, that is outside the pull of a WalMart.