Day Off...A Little History of the area

After we got the place cleaned up yesterday and Steve met with the electrician, we decided it was time to really get away from the campgrounds for a few hours. We decided to look for a geocache in an area I was wanting to visit. It's a local resort/country club called the Grove Park Inn. Very swank and uppity kinda place. We felt extremely conspicuous as we parked the car and tried to discreetly hike up a little hill to figure out where our GPS was indicating the cache was hidden. We found the cache with no problem. We had some travel bugs we had picked up in Indiana that we wanted to "release" and this cache happened to be a "Travel Bug Hotel" so we sent them on their merry way!

After that we visited a few interesting shops on the grounds of the resort. First stop was the Homespun Museum. The buildings of this complex once housed the famous weaving and woodworking complex of Biltmore Industries. Edith Vanderbilt (wife of George, who built the famous Biltmore mansion) took a particular interest in locally homespun fabrics. This led her to establish a craft education program eventually called Biltmore Indsutries. In 1917 it came under new ownership and was moved to its current location.

The architecture was very interesting and I loved the wood-work and the smell of the old buildings. There were some old looms and samples of the fabric that was made back then. Also, we could see in the windows of a huge old warehouse-like structure that housed huge vats for dying the wool and other equipment. I know some weavers who would have loved visiting this place!

Our tour continued at the Grovewood Gallery. This was a wonderful shop/gallery featuring all kinds of hand-made arts and crafts and beautifully crafted furniture. Many of the artists were local, but they also feature work from all over the US. It was interesting to see how many products they carried that we also featured at Bear's Mill. (Julie Clark has good taste!) The Gardens in front of the Gallery had beautiful garden sculptures and lovely landscaping.

I recognized the work of many potters, some from the Asheville area and others from elsewhere. I was excited to see work by a potter who had taught a class I took in Yellowsprings (OH), Marty Fielding. The furniture we saw was fabulous (and way out of our price range!!) Still, it's fun to look and get ideas. And it was so enjoyable touring another beautiful old building covered with ivy that had gorgeous views out the windows!

Our last stop was the Antique Car Museum. There were many old cars in here. There was an old Eldorado that reminded me of the De Soto we owned when I was a kid. The smell of this place immediately brought back memories of the old filling station where my dad worked, M.F. & D in Troy, Ohio. We didn't spend much time here because they were getting ready to close, but it was a nice end to a very enjoyable afternoon spent learning about some of the local Asheville history.