Whoa- this weekend did me in! I still feel like I am recuperating from the whirlwind of travel, projects, cooking/canning, and general life that occurred during the last few days. I have a backlog of projects to share with folks, but I prefer to use today to recap our trip to Asheville, North Carolina for Bele Chere.
If you haven’t heard of or been to this festival before let me give you the low down. It’s basically a 3-day conglomeration of craft, art, and food vendors coupled with musical performances, street performers, and amazing people watching. I read that between
300,000-400,000 people visit the festival annually and, despite the heat, there were probably at least that many this year.
Our weekend started with us packing up the VW Westfalia and heading to the mountains. The VW doesn’t go as fast as our modern cars and it doesn’t have AC. Lucky for us, 65 mph still generates a hefty breeze that is capable of cooling down the core body temperature.
When we made it to Asheville around 7 pm, we headed on over to Homegrown Café which is adamant about using local, seasonal ingredients. Just my type of place! After a delicious and light dinner of fish tacos we headed over to the campsite and were blown away by the views. Can we say stunning?!
We settled in to our site at Campfire Campground and soon called it a day to get some much needed shut eye. In all honesty, the evening was a bit too warm for my tastes. I’m the type of person who likes my sleeping arrangements to feature cold temps, the dark, and quiet. At least I got the dark! We woke up the next morning and headed on down to Downtown Asheville and Bele Chere. Since it was a little early, we stopped in to Mayfel’s for some beignets. Yum!
After our healthy breakfast, we had a full morning of walking around and enjoying the festivities. 
By late afternoon, we were just about exhausted after the festival, visiting French Broad River Park, a flea market, antique stores, and a pit stop at Whole Foods (love that place).
The heat had gotten pretty much unbearable by that point and I realized that no one was going to get a good night’s sleep on such a muggy evening. Aaron and I made an executive decision to pack ourselves up and head on home to our air conditioned room and comfy
bed. While it was a great visit and fun time had by all, I can say with certainty we did not regret our decision! I’ll be back tomorrow with info about my fig shenanigans. Until then, Cheers!
