We visited Asheville in November 2024 as part of our two-week Carolinas in November trip. Read alllll of our other Asheville posts here.

We were nervous and excited to return to Asheville for our first post-Helene visit. Our favorite part of town, the River Arts District, was decimated by the flooding, and many of the old warehouses housing art studios, galleries, and breweries were destroyed, including our favorite brewery, New Origin, our favorite coffeeshop, Summit Coffee, our favorite outdoor taco venue, White Duck, and our favorite art market, Marquee.

But we were encouraged by all the activity in the RAD as people worked to clear debris and start the long rebuilding process, and to see that some of the studios and restaurants on higher ground survived. Downtown and West Asheville , our other hangout areas, were generally spared from storm damage. It was inspiring to see how quickly crews were able to get power back on, restore safe drinking water, and rebuild washed-out roads and bridges in Asheville and beyond. The main message we got from talking to locals was that Asheville is open for business and they need your tourist dollars!

It’s an easy 1:15 interstate drive to Asheville from Greenville, and when we arrived it was cold and windy, and it snowed our second morning! We were really missing the beach weather we had less than a week before in South Carolina!

Campground

Over our last several Asheville trips, we’d been torn between Wilson’s Riverfront RV Park, for its awesome location, and Bear Creek RV Park for its peacefulness. This visit the decision about where to stay was moot, because Wilson’s was submerged in the flood and temporarily closed. We stopped by to check on it and despite missing some infrastructure including the bathrooms, we were told they were hoping to reopen soon. Bear Creek is high on a hill and draws water from a well, so they were able to stay open after the storm. It seems like every time we stay at Bear Creek, it’s friendly, quiet, and COLD.

Activities

Our first activity in town was to drive through the RAD to see how things looked. Someone later described it as “disaster tourism” and recommended a specific road to see the worst of it, but we weren’t trying to be nosy gawkers, we legitimately wanted to see how bad the situation was. Does that count as disaster tourism? We hope not. Flattened and shredded buildings, piles of rubble, heavy machinery at work, trash wrapped around the topmost branches of trees… it was awful.

Similarly, we wanted to drive over to neighboring Black Mountain to see how that town was doing post-Helene. Our original trip plan had called for a night there, but our campground there, the East Asheville KOA in Swannanoa, was completely destroyed. We’d heard from a Black Mountain friend that downtown was up and running, and had planned to take Bugsy for a drink in the yard at Foothills Grange, but it was too cold to drink a beer outside and we scrapped the whole plan.

We ventured into downtown Asheville to eat dinner and look at art. Our favorite galleries/shops in downtown are Momentum Gallery, K2 Studio, and Blue Spiral 1.

To get some fresh air with Bugsy, we took the short drive to Bent Creek Experimental Forest, the oldest experimental forest in the East, and walked the 3.5-mile Pine Tree Loop. The hike doesn’t have any big views like some others in the Asheville area, but it’s pretty, easy, and despite having a full parking lot, wasn’t crowded.

Saturday morning, before heading to Burlington for Family Thanksgiving, we got in a workout at MADabolic. Not counting our home gym, we’ve Airstreamed to MADabolics in Asheville, Raleigh, Austin (this visit, but I didn’t mention it), and Scotts Valley (Santa Cruz)!

Eating and drinking

Yes, we go out to eat and drink a lot when we’re in a great eating and drinking town. How could we not?

Food

Chai Pani moved their Indian street food into a bigger location since our last visit, and I was casually interested in checking it out. But then after Helene, they switched to temporarily offering a buffet, and I knew we had to go. It was the best thing ever: four curries to choose from, then okra fries and a salad and crispy cauliflower and naan and desserts… I was in heaven.

Botiwalla is Chai Pani’s little sister, described as an Indian street grill, with a menu that overlaps Chai Pani’s. I picked up lunch for us at the West Asheville location, a super cool space with a nightmare of a parking lot. J was healthy with our usual order of Desi salad, and I tried the paneer tikka roll. SO good.

We had to have dinner at our old favorite restaurant, The Admiral. We love to eat at the bar, and service, drinks, and dinner were fab as always.

At the end of our drive through the RAD, we stopped for a light lunch (that ended up being very filling) at Grey Eagle Taqueria, a randomly delicious taco joint in the Grey Eagle music venue. They were lucky to be far enough uphill from the river to be spared from the floods.

Finally, we took home coffee and breakfast sandwiches from the reliably tasty Ultra Coffeebar, thankfully spared from the flooding in the RAD. Their baked goods always look scrumptious but we always get the Sunrise breakfast bagel!

Beverages

New to us

We only went to one new-to-us drinking establishment this visit: Terra Nova Beer Co, in the old Bhramari Brewing space in the South Slope brewery district. It was crowded on a Thursday evening–their pizza looks great–and the beer was fantastic! They didn’t have a sour for me but J and I both enjoyed their hazy IPA.

Old favorites

We hit two breweries on our favorites list: Burial, while waiting for dinner around the corner at Chai Pani, and Diatribe, a very dog-friendly brewery in West Asheville. J loves Burial’s Surf Wax IPA, and he said my sour was the best sour he’s ever had (J with another superlative!) while I prefered my guava sour at Diatribe and he wasn’t crazy about the IPAs he tasted.

And we got a drink at a few of our favorite bars: Sovereign Remedies and Asheville Club downtown, and The Golden Pineapple in West Asheville. All three were as wonderful as ever, especially Golden Pineapple with their the over-the-top Christmas decor and themed drinks!

To do

• The bartender at The Admiral recommended The Whale, a craft beer bar a block away (there’s one in South Slope too). We stopped by and it looks awesome and they’re dog-friendly inside! You can order food from Haywood Common next door; the menu looks tasty and we’re excited to take Bugsy!
• While in the RAD we spotted a sign for RAD Brewing Co, a new brewery from a former head brewer at Wicked Weed. The taproom sounds cool, and old stonecutter’s workshop, and it’s dog-friendly
• Check out the dog-friendly taproom and beer garden full of games at Whistle Hop Brewing, 15 minutes east of Asheville (their Mango Lassi Imperial Sour on tap at Asheville Club put them on my radar!)
• Give Dssolvr another shot –Sovereign Remedies had an interesting sour from there on tap. Wait, is it possible we haven’t been there? We thought we had, but I can’t find reference to it in the blog!
• Update our Asheville Favorites post!

And that’s it for our Carolinas in November trip! We loved most of it and hope to do something similar in the future! Retrospective post to come…