bugsy running on lone rock beach with the airstream and f-150 in the background

Trip planning: Asheville NC and Fayetteville WV

This planning post was for a trip to Asheville and Fayetteville in September 2019.

hiking lookout mountain

…but our ultimate destination isn’t either of those places. It’s our Airstream’s old home Misty Mountain Camp Resort in Crozet, VA, for the Misty Mountain Music Festival, a weekend of Virginia performers and local food, beer, and crafts. This will be our second music festival with the Airstream; Lockn’ in 2016 was a wild experience.

[SPOILER: we went to Asheville and Fayetteville, but you should still read the rest of this post!]

So we figured we’d dust off our Airstreaming skills with a short trip before the festival. We considered a few options within several hours’ drive of Central VA:

We wanted hiking and mountains, so no Raleigh. That left:

The Smokies

  • Stay at a park near Bryson City, like Big Bears, about a 5.5 hour drive away. To get us to Misty Mountain earlier, we could spend a night in AVL on the way home
  • Campground location: three minutes from downtown Bryson City
  • Breweries: two breweries in BC, Nantahala and Mountain Layers
  • Tons of hiking nearby, in the National Park (but those trails are not Bugsy-friendly) and in Nantahala National Forest

Fayetteville

Where would you choose? Well, neither place is going anywhere, and it seems we’d need fewer nights in Fayetteville, so here’s a solution that will shock nobody who reads this blog: We’re combining a few days in Fayetteville with a few days in Asheville.

Trip To-Do List

We’ve had an Asheville to-do list since we started taking the Airstream there in 2016, and it has morphed over the years, but here’s its current state. We cheated on the Airstream earlier this year and drove down to meet J’s cousin from Atlanta for a weekend–and stayed in an actual hotel in downtown Asheville–so there are some new items on this list from that trip.

Asheville

Drinking

Eating

  • Try tacos at The Grey Eagle Taqueria: the music venue is also a taco joint, and the menu looked awesome.
  • More tacos? Is it possible to eat too many tacos? Our friends liked Taco Billy, and breakfast tacos are always a good idea
  • And of course, we already have dinner reservations at our favorite, Limones!

Exploring

  • Hike the trail we tried and failed to hike last year, and hit some farther afield breweries (including the Bryson City breweries mentioned above) on the way home. [It’s a long drive, and we’ll be driving a good bit overall on this trip, so we’ll probably choose a closer hike instead.]
  • Hiking Looking Glass Rock (on a weekday to avoid the crowds) seems more likely this time
  • We want to get out into different areas of Asheville than our usual haunts, so tootle around North Asheville, recommended by a local. Then I can have my Grove Park Inn cocktail.

Fayetteville

For a small town in West Virginia, Fayetteville has a lot going on food- and drink-wise. In addition to the breweries listed above, these establishments are on our radar:

What are we missing???

(and yes, I have a couple more locations to write about from our Maine trip…)

Comments

2 responses to “Trip planning: Asheville NC and Fayetteville WV”

  1. […] Asheville, the next stop on our way to the Misty Mountain Music Festival was Fayetteville, WV. Fayetteville is a fun little town, […]

  2. […] final destination of our week-long Airstream jaunt was the Misty Mountain Music Festival, at our old home campground, Misty Mountain Camp Resort in […]

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