Xenophilia

Having vacation days you have to use can be a good thing. Ready to escape the cold and snowcovered Rockville area, I checked the weather forecast within a 600-mile radius and settled on Asheville, North Carolina as my primary destination, thinking it would at least be warmer than in Rockville. Technically, I was right, but I still did not avoid snow. More on that later.

Logistical delays put me on the road just before 11 am on Thursday, February 15th. It was sunny but very cold. It took me nearly an hour to get to Gainesville, Virginia. A too-early turn put me on a road that went through the middle of the Manassas Battlefield Park, which was very pretty covered in snow. By the time I made it to the Roanoke area, all the roadside snow was gone save a few tiny patches in the median. I was booking it fairly quickly, but still managed to make a few stops on back roads, such as in Hurt, Virginia. I pulled into Greensboro while it was still light out. My first stop was a motel I had seen a sign to, but it turned out to be quite creepy. I think there was a drug deal occurring in the room next to the one I asked to see and the lights didn’t turn on, so I clandestinely called Red Roof Inn and found out they were cheaper anyway, so I went there, stopping a couple times for price checks that were slightly more expensive anyway. I got a ground floor room and met one of the friendliest front desk clerks I’ve ever encountered.

I soon headed downtown, attempting to meet up with a Beer Advocate group scheduled to meet at a bar that I drove around for 25 minutes trying to find. I ended up at the Natty Greene Brewery, which was the endall destination anyway. The beer was good and the food was too, but neither were spectacular. I did some barhopping on a particularly dead Thursday night and called it a night around midnight. At one point I was the only patron in an “Irish” bar (quoted because there wasn’t much Irish about it other than the name and the standard beer taps). At least they did have some good beers on tap. I had a good conversation about travel with some guy from eastern NC who encouraged me to keep on traveling and write about it. Well, I guess I’m trying to do that.

The next morning I headed back downtown after checking out. I had seen the Green Bean coffeehouse the night before and made a note to check it out. They had wi-fi and for the first time I wanted to try out my computer’s wireless capabilities there. Perfect! Note that it’s almost a month later, but that’s beside the point. Anyway, I enjoyed my coffee and a pastry and hit the road. At the hotel lobby I found a brochure for an interesting home in Kernersville, so I thought I’d check it out.

Körner’s Folly is a structural wonder just off the city center of Kernersville, NC. The house was built by an eccentric designer as a horse stable and showcase for his architectural designs. When he got married, his wife wanted to live there but not with the horses, so began an endeavor to build a house layer by layer. There are about 22 rooms in the house, which is big but it does not appear to be big enough for that many rooms. Well, some of the rooms are small or hidden but the place was fascinating. Because it was not on my itinerary it made for a particularly fun discovery. The house had a huge ballroom with “kissing corners” for couples to have some privacy and a repertory theater in the attic that is still used occasionally. The family was well-off, but very community-minded and they had children come over where they learned languages, music and other literary and artistic subjects. The stories are really impressive, for example how the maid who raised Mr. Körner and his siblings ended up living in a house on the property and when she died and the Methodist church wouldn’t bury her in the cemetery because she was black, he bought land next to the cemetery and buried her there! He also wanted access to a large tree for the wood, so he bought the entire farm the tree was on just to get it. I bought a lot of stuff at the gift shop, including the booklet on the house.

My drive to Asheville then took on a longer journey than I had intended. I had lunch in Hickory at the Olde Hickory Brewery, which was fairly good. I even tried to stop at the Catawba Valley Brewery but it was a winery/antique barn with the actual brewing facilities in the lower level. They said a new brewpub will open up in Morganton soon, but I was glad I stopped in Glen Alpine for the wine. It turned out to be quite good and I’ll have to get Lake James wine again.

Asheville was a cool place. It’s very artsy and reminded me a lot of Boulder, CO. I stayed in the Sharky & Bon Paul’s Hostel in West Asheville, which was an old house actually. Lots of barhopping and breweryhopping, but I missed several of them because I couldn’t find them or they were closed.

Saturday was a long day but good. I had breakfast in Weaverville at a little diner/cafe. What prompted me to drive to Weaverville isn’t clear but I’m glad I did! It’s a cute tiny town, but my continuing drive in a loop up to Mars Hill and Marshall back to Asheville was a beautiful drive. The highlight…and exhaustion…for the day was the Biltmore Mansion. Despite being off-season, the lines were incredibly long. After waiting 30 minutes to get tickets, 20 minutes to drive to and park at the mansion, and another hour waiting outside in the cold, I finally made it inside the actual mansion. The pace was like a shuffling penguin and the place was huge, so it took about two hours to go through the whole mansion. It was quite amazing, with an entire floor for the servants, a room for the architectural model of the mansion and a basement bowling alley and swimming pool. The views, even in winter, from the courtyard next to the grape arbor were exquisite over the rolling hills of North Carolina. It had just started to snow, too, so it was peaceful and breathtaking.

Next on the Biltmore tour was the winery, so I drove 4 miles there (still all within the estate grounds) and waited for about 45 minutes to get into the wine tasting room, but it was neat. Apparently though they did not have a winery during the time Vanderbilts lived there. Oh well. I got to try 9 wines, which I thought was pretty generous considering. I bought three bottles and some other gifts and, famished, was on my way downtown for dinner. I ate at Boudreaux’s Cajun Cafe and had some excellent gumbo and a Cuban sandwich, with some local microbrews. My favorite spot was The Barley’s Taproom, the “Brickskeller” of Asheville, with probably 75 beers on tap. I tried some of the local area beers from breweries I couldn’t get to. That night it snowed about an inch, which made driving a little treacherous while it was actually snowing but not that bad.

On Sunday I had to drive back to Rockville, but not before a filling strawberry and pecan pancake breakfast downtown. The scenery driving north was beautiful and I stopped to take some pictures of the snow-covered landscape north of Asheville. I made a few stops on my way home. The first was downtown Johnson City, TN. It was very forlorn–a ghost town and the only thing open was the billard hall. So much for that place. Then I went to Kingsport where I discovered a bevy of antique malls. I stopped at Nooks & Crannies and found some blue glasses for Mark before heading off on the long drive back to Rockville. I ran into a snowstorm around Marion, VA and then a freak blizzard somewhere near Harrisonburg that really scared me. For a little bit, I couldn’t even see the snow itself but just a complete wall of white outside my windshield: no road, no taillights, nothing. Luckily it didn’t last too long and it was just as abrupt ending as it was beginning. The strangest part was that no more than 5 minutes later I looked up and saw a starry sky. The experience was pure adrenaline but at the same time I felt very cozy and safe in my car.

Although I wished I had taken another day off work to extend the vacation, I was very pleased with the choice and destination. Without the stops, it would be about an 8-hour drive so that’s doable on a 3-day weekend for sure but ideal for 4 or more. I hope to make it back to Asheville sometime soon.

Imagine one of the most perfect weather weekends possible. That’s what was in store for Mark and I as we embarked on a visit to the Eastern Shore of Maryland–a visit long overdue for me in my nearly six years of living in the Washington, DC. Despite a late start on Saturday morning, August 12th, we crawled through the Bay Bridge traffic congestion and at Route 662, detoured south at Wye Mills. While free of traffic, this little back road crisscrossed Route 50 three times, requiring us to wait for a break in the fast-moving traffic to get across. I’m not sure if it saved time, but eventually it lead us into the town of Easton. We took a minimal detour west of Easton towards Saint Michael’s and Tilghman Island, but stopped at Newcomb where a bridge crossed one of the many inlets of the Chesapeake. A side road piqued our curiosity, so we ventured past saltbox houses and long tree-lined driveways to bayside mansions. The path led us to a tiny hamlet called Royal Oak, just one mile from Newcomb yet both had post offices.

Without further ado, we returned to the main road and continued south towards Cambridge. We crossed a long bridge approaching the city. To our right was an unusual structure that looked like large sails of a ship suspended with steel poles. The Cambridge Visitor’s Center was complete with a little park, impressive playground equipment, a boardwalk of sorts, the sail structure and another monument and the actual tourist office packed with endless brochures of Maryland attractions. That day happened to be the annual Seafood Feast-I-Val, but because of the timing and cost, we didn’t attend. We did, however, drive through the city in an attempt to find the downtown. We ended up deep in residential neighborhoods that turned out to be quite far from the city center that was really right off the highway. We stopped in at the Cambridge Grill for a late breakfast, then browsed through the main street antique shops before continuing south. At this point we wanted to get to Crisfield and decided rather than going east to Salisbury and then back southwest, we would cut through back roads in a more direct southerly direction. At Hebron, we turned on Route 162 which took us to the pleasantly surprising hamlet of Whitehaven. As we drove around the corner at the entrance to the town, I glimpsed a sign that said something about a ferry. The road curved again and suddenly there was a stop sign followed immediately by the road leading directly into a large creek. To the left was a large bed and breakfast in one of the most romantic hideaways I’d seen in Maryland. I turned right at the stop sign along the waterfront street, although boats and outbuildings blocked the river view. On the other side, quaint houses lined the street in perfectly orderly fashion. There must have been about 10 houses in the whole town, and other than the inn there was a church with the steeple being repaired on the ground, and a community building/museum with a historical sign. When we rounded the single block of the town and reached the stop sign again, the ferry had arrived and we waited while the operator returned from his tiny stationhouse. The short crossing was free, and I took several photos of the little town and the other side, as a truck waited for us to cross so he could cross the other direction.

A few more crossroads and villages later, we arrived at the town of Princess Anne, county seat of Somerset County. A town I’d read about in a sociology course in college, it was an historical but tiny place with a few Victorian homes and historical buildings. As we stopped to take a few pictures, a woman in a van pulled up and asked for money. Another car pulled in behind her and I wasn’t sure if the driver wanted money also or just wanted to warn us about her (or curse her for beating him to us). Either way they left and so did we.

Starting in Princess Anne, I noticed a trend in this part of Maryland with funeral homes being located in the largest, most elaborate houses in town. Princess Anne’s funeral home was an unusual building with several levels and a roof that remembled bubbles, but with normal roofing. I observed this in at least two other towns, if not more.

We pulled into Crisfield just before 4 pm. It was somewhat anticlimactic, although I don’t know what I expected would await me there. The downtown, which was seemingly located on a spoke off the main entrance road, looked as if it had seen better days. The portion of the main road that ended at the water was more “active,” if that word could describe it. There were a few restaurants and businesses, and several high-rise condominiums were plunked at the end of the town and looked ridiculously out of place. The tide was slightly high, so water flooded the marina parking lot and part of the entrance to one of the condo’s parking garage entrances. We drove around the town, making a couple loops of the main road, and then discovered the tourist office on a side road, where we picked up even more brochures and made our decision to have dinner here since it was the place to have crab. By the time we finished browsing, it was 5 o’clock and we were hungry enough to have a meal, yet didn’t really feel like the 2-hour messy crab feast. We settled on crabcakes, sweet corn and hush puppies (and coleslaw and potato salad) and a couple Coronas.

Towards the conclusion of our meal, we pondered what to do next. We’d obviously missed the ferry to Smith Island and with the next day being Sunday it didn’t seem possible to include that in this weekend’s itinerary. We could have stayed in Crisfield, but it was pretty early and there wasn’t much left to do, so Mark suggested going to Rehoboth. Beach weekend. Summertime. Party atmosphere. I’d never experienced that, so it seemed like a good idea to me. I was concerned with our not having motel reservations, but we both thought that we would get there in about an hour and a half, find a room, maybe shower up and then be ready to go out. So we headed northeast through Pocomoke City and Snow Hill. I had a craving for an ice cream product, so we stopped in Berlin and promptly discovered an ice cream shop right in the center of town. The town was very picturesque and enticing for a return trip. Rayne’s Reef Luncheonette turned out to be the site of filming for portions of the movie Runaway Bride. Signed photographs of Julia Roberts and Richard Gere and other photos graced the walls, and a director’s chair sat in the corner. Our milkshakes arrived and tasted like the heaven that they were. A few sips later, we were back in the car heading north to Delaware as dusk was setting in.

We arrived at Rehoboth probably around 9, and discovered at the first hotel we stopped at that everything was sold out and we should head north. Just outside of town we pulled into a motel that turned out to be sold out from the couple who had just gotten there ahead of us. We continued north where there were no hotels at all until Milford, and the same thing happened: just sold out and so is all of Milford. Next we headed to Dover and the first hotel was sold out. We decided to head south on Route 13 and if we couldn’t find a place to stay by the time we got to Denton, MD that we would just head back to Rockville. Luckily a couple miles south of the city we found the Shamrock Inn and got one of the last rooms for $75. Since we were way too far from Rehoboth to venture back to it, we decided to experience what Dover had to offer.

It took awhile to get our bearing, as the road marking and map didn’t seem to correspond, but we eventually made it to the quiet downtown, where all was deserted except for the few bars. Our first stop was an Irish pub, discernible from the wail of a young woman attempting karaoke which was audible from at least two blocks away where we parked. Once inside, it was impossible to see the end of the bar with the clouds of smoke billowing about. A pool table crowded the entrance and as we dodged poolsticks and air force guys trying to buy beer, we noticed that the karaoke attendant and the current singer were wearing bathrobes. A glance around revealed a few others in bedroom attire and few woman had stuffed animals. Since there was no place to sit or really even stand, and the smoke was just too much, we exited with a stumbling drunk woman, who vehemently denied her inebriation to friends begging to call her a cab. The bar across the street was quiet and through the window we could see only a handful of people. A young buff man was at the door organizing some things and as we tried to enter he told us that a collared shirt was required to enter. Upon seeing our faces in disbelief, he reiterated “yeah, collared shirts” as if he also thought the notion was a little preposterous for a town the size of Dover. We begged to learn of another place we could spend a Saturday night, and he pointed us in the direction of Smithers and mentioned another bar. We entered the back of Smithers through an outdoor patio that resembled someone’s private house party. The bar, it turns out, is located in an old Victorian mansion that must daylight as a restaurant judging from the tables with place settings and flowery wallpaper. In one of the rooms a live cover band was belting out tunes as tipsy patrons sang along, cuddling their partners for the evening. The crowd included a lot of attractive men, several with buzz cuts, some with baseball or farm implement hats and some with long straggly hair, and a few unattractive overweight and/or stuck-up women.

The band turned out to be pretty good for a cover band and with the intimate quarters in the old house it was akin to a house party. So, all in all the detour to Dover was pretty cool.

The next day we stopped at Rehoboth for a bit, ending up in Ocean City at the Crab Shack, which was nestled in amongst several beach apartment buildings. The dining room was a picnic table on a patch of sand in front of the building, which was literally a shack. We had delicious seafood as the evening sun inched its way to its western slumber. After a dessert stop in Salisbury, we were back home by 11.

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