Day 2: We climb the mountain-because we can...

We slept in…much needed (the forty eight hours prior to departure were spent with Vicki, fresh from her retirement party,


purchasing and arranging the most appropriate-for-1920’s-bungalow Christmas decorations, rendering our house, for the first time, exquisitely clad for the holidays 


…no, I mean literally forty out of forty-eight hours!...just in time for our first-ever Beaty/Ferg/Shields/Gembo/Smith/Dewitt caroling party…another blog, another time.)   


Anyway, back to our Ridgecrest story:  Having discovered that all of the restaurant facilities on premises were closed, we embarked on a discovery mission with breakfast as the focal point. 



We landed in Black mountain, a relatively well kept secret of superior culinary, artistic, and craft endeavors.  Just in time for lunch, we dined in the only café that seemed to offer more than sweets:  the Veranda Café.  It was our destiny…

What began as a quest for sustenance morphed quickly into a holiday feeding frenzy of the kind where after tasting one of the soups on the menu, one quickly orders cups of the rest of them to pass around as samplers for the table.  Unexpected delights are so energizing…there we were, surrounded by eclectic  sort of giftie/memorabilia such as signs for your office  that say ‘Due to the failing economy, the light at the end of the tunnel has been disconnected’- trading bites, oohing, and generally feeling quite indulged, when – BAM out of the oven (which was only a few feet from our table) came a tray full of the apple dumplings that exist only in Dave’s dreams. 

Among the highlights, besides, of course, the dumplings, was the spiced spinach crème soup, the squash bisque, and the Hungarian mushroom soup (renamed ‘massive-stacks-of-deeply-layered-flavor-varieties-of-sautéed mushroomness-with-a-rich, stroganoff-type-sauce-ladled-between-the-layers’. It was two days in a row, at first sight.

As Ery and Brad had a business call to attend back at the lodge, Dave and I took to the hill, where I had found my favorite spot next to the brook in the prayer garden early this morning.  My garden experience had been once again in keeping with the old Baptist hymn…’and He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I am His own’.  There was a whole scenario around a rhododendron bud that Dave would later help me interpret, on this hike. 

Today the temperatures seemed to reflect the spiritual atmosphere in this place…not harsh, as we had expected, but temperate and relaxing…no bracing needed for either cold or hot.  So towards the summit we started.

Hiking with Dave is a unique experience in the art and science of fitness…the phrase ‘Be all you can be…’ comes to mind.   One doesn’t notice it until about half way up the mountain, but when it hits, it does so with a pronounced feeling of lack of oxygen, a certain amount of nondescript pain, and an overall sense of vague irritation that eventually escalates to desperation.  At one point I was watching him climb the slope a few yards in front of me, and this scene from Pepe LaPew just popped into my mind.  I was, of course, the lady cat, nearly expired and looking like an asphyxiating carpet with extremely large eyes.  There goes Pepe…how does he do it?

We met the Gembos after their own hike, and managed to get to Biltmore in time to walk around the village, and arrive for the candlelight tour of the Vanderbilt home. 

One of life’s pleasures, in addition to Ery’s curly hair in the morning, is her squeal when she sees really pretty Christmas lights, or any general wonderment of a season such as Christmas.  From the moment we passed the outskirts of the premises, she never ceased to talk in spurts of flowing  superlatives, snapping her new camera at every turn.  Sometimes she and Brad would have so much to shoot that they would tag team.  Dave narrated stories about how Olmstead planted the bamboo, now relaxing along our right along the long entry lane, as if it were napping from a hundred years of activity…..about how he is the father of landscape architecture, and what he was thinking when he made certain of the choices we were seeing in the landscape.  I love hearing him tell these stories…they are forever rooted in my heart because of him…kind of like bamboo fills up the space if you let it go, and makes a lovely carpet of lush green year round.  Deciduous…that means not evergreen, I think.

The home by candle light was as breathtaking as I expected…my favorite part, complete with renaissance musicians in the entry winter garden, a sort of greenhouse foyer where guests and family were welcomed the day George opened the house in 1895.  Zither and guitar, perhaps….it was hard to see them amid the poinsettias. 

More lavish use of greenery, berries, pinecones, lights, everything perfectly appointed….I was even able to snap a secret shot or two in the great hall with the roaring fireplaces at one end, and the 50 foot Christmas tree at the other.  They still celebrate with gifts for their staff every Christmas in this room.  

For one day, more memories than one can absorb. 

After our candlelight tour, we made a spur of the moment decision to head into Asheville, bound for one of the premier chocolatiers in North America:  the French Broad Chocolate Lounge.  As usual, the process of finding it and parking successfully at night was rather like the perilous trek through the deep uncharted woods on the way to the elven paradise of Rivendale.   (We later decided not to go into Asheville at night in future). However, this chocolate paradise was, as always, worth the journey.  The highlights (besides the always endearing hippie chocolatiers and baristas behind the counter), included the perfect pot de creme,

the lavender creme brulee, and the jasmin truffle (had it been a blindfolded fragrance test...                           


I would have said we were in the middle of a jasmin garden). 

 

All truffle flavors literally melted on the tongue.  Incredible.

Satiated and happily fatiqued, we arrived back at our own mountain lodge, where no one had disturbed our own fireplace, which was still burning to welcome us home to bed...