Coal country

As an example of the hard-hitting journalism for which this blog is known, we decided to visit a different part of Kentucky - the impoverished Appalachian coal country.

A few years ago Beattyville, Kentucky was named statistically the poorest white town in America.  During decades of prosperity its economy was based on coal mining, but those mines have closed .. and now, reportedly, it's been hit hard by opioid addiction.  We wanted to have a look.

But surprisingly, the town looked like any other middle-class community in America.  It didn't seem rich, but there were some nice homes, a pretty bank building, decent stores, a modern gas station.  Honestly, we were happy to find that superficially, at least, their situation wasn't nearly as grim as we had expected.

We had reservations at an RV park in Lynch, Kentucky, which offers tours of an abandoned coal mine.  The drive there took us up and down mountain ranges on narrow roads, most of which had no shoulders, so that if my attention wandered and the outside wheels slipped off the pavement, we would go head over tailpipe down into the holler below.  (A holler in Kentucky is a valley between two hills.)  Some of the houses along the way were of the falling-down variety, much as we had expected to find in Beattyville (but didn't).  We did pass one active mine, and several trucks laden with coal were on the road, so coal mining is not completely shut down in the area.

At one point the highway veered to the left and I went straight - and immediately saw a "No Outlet" sign on what had become a one-lane road.  Trust me, this is not a good situation for a motorhome towing a vehicle.  That's because your ability to back up is severely limited as long as that vehicle is attached, so even turning around is problematical.  Luckily there was an open flat space in front of a ramshackle home, five or six broken-down cars to the side, and we pulled in there.  Nancy saw a woman at a window with a phone to her ear, and we wondered if she was calling Billy Earl and Jebediah to come deal with these interlopers. We disconnected the pickup truck that we tow behind the motorhome, I managed to turn the motorhome around, we reconnected the pickup, and off we drove, no worse for wear.

Finally we arrived in Lynch, Kentucky, built in 1917 by U.S. Steel as a model company town, and parked the motorhome at the minimalist RV park there.

The next day we climbed aboard a rail car that took us on some of the original tracks into a small part of the coal mine that for many years was the economic lifeblood of the town.

Along the way it was black dark until some speaking statues of miners along the way became visible.  First was an Italian miner from the early days.  (European immigrants - recruited from Ellis Island - and African-Americans constituted the great majority of the miners in the beginning; whites did more of the administrative and support work.)

Horses and mules were kept underground to pull the rail cars in the time before mechanical power became practical.  Reportedly some never saw the sun after they went underground.

On this mine tour and at a mine museum in a neighboring town we learned something of the history of coal mining in the area, including the prevalence of black lung disease, unionization, workers' strikes and their suppression by management, what life was like in a company town, and eventually the closing of most of the mines in the area.  Today work is hard to come by in Lynch, and its population has dwindled.  Most of the impressive buildings put up by U.S. Steel have been abandoned.  Still, the countryside is beautiful there, and the people are friendly and helpful.

As we were preparing to leave Lynch, Nancy went to the little cafe adjoining the campground and ordered a latte for her and a cafe mocha and doughnut to bring back for me.  As she waited she heard one gentleman say to another, "Yes, the Lord has annointed me with prosperity."  That's an utterance you don't often hear at Santa Cruz and Ben Lomond coffee shops.

Two factory tours and a day at the races

Here's a tale of two assembly lines.

We secured places in a tour of the Toyota assembly plant in Georgetown, Kentucky - their largest manufacturing facility of engines and Toyota and Lexus automobiles in America.  About 9000 people work there.  After a brief video, we climbed aboard an electrically-powered tram, put on earphones, and off we went. Our tour director drove us all over the 1300 acres of the plant, with running commentary about what goes on there.  We saw the most amazing collection of massive robots, doing all sorts of activities in picking up huge sheets of steel, moving them into position, and pressing them into automobile body parts.  Truly, it was like looking at what I imagine a Transformers movie is like.  Mind-boggling.

Then we spent a good deal of time driving between long assembly lines so we could see workers putting automobiles together.  Each worker had specific tasks to do, each of which took something less than a minute to accomplish.  Some were attaching trim parts, some were fitting the doors, one was supervising the lowering of the engine into its compartment, some were working on the interior, and so forth.  All the workers looked comfortable and unrushed, and some of them waved at us.

I found it fascinating that the speed of the assembly line depended on the number of automobiles that had been ordered by dealers.  If the demand was less that week, the time at each station might increase to seventy seconds, and if it was high, the time allowed for each process would go down to fifty-five seconds.  In other words, the hours spent on the assembly line by each worker would not change, but sometimes they would work faster, sometimes slower.

According to our tour leader, this is a much-desired job, one into which only eight of a hundred applicants is accepted.  And each employee knows upon hiring that a good deal of overtime will be mandatory.  If the number of vehicles ordered is large, each worker may stay on the assembly line an extra hour or more each day, for which of course they are paid time and a half.  So it's very good-paying work, and our leader says that it is essentially a job-for-life.

Each car takes just twenty hours to assemble, half of which is spent in painting it.  About two thousand automobiles are produced daily.  Amazing.

Truly this was a fascinating tour, one you shouldn't miss if you are ever in this area.  Unfortunately but understandably, no photos were allowed.


The second factory tour was of the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky.  Our group learned that legally bourbon must be made in the United States, and that 90% of that bourbon is produced in Kentucky.  Bourbon must be at least 51% corn mash, and rye (usually) or wheat makes up the rest.  Nothing except a limited amout of water may be added.

The distilleries age their bourbon in charred oak barrels.  Our tour group went into rooms containing many of those stacked barrels, and it smelled surprisingly similar to the commercial wine cellars I've visited.  I guess it's an alcohol-soaked oak odor.

Then we moved into the room which served as the assembly line for the Buffalo Trace Distillery.  It was somewhat lower tech than the Toyota plant. The contrast made me chuckle.

And on our last day at the Georgetown, Kentucky RV park, we went to the thoroughbred races at the Keeneland racecourse, a huge and attractive facility.

It was a cloudy day, and it had rained the previous two days, so the track was characterized as "muddy".

I learned the terminology to use when placing bets at the wagering window.  We studied the racing form - the race history of each horse, the record of each jockey, the training times - and felt confident that we had chosen some winners.  However, Maria Rose, Big Bruiser, Full of Joy, and Prom Theme all let us down and finished out of the money.  Life isn't fair.

The Ark

As you may know, according to the Bible God became angry at the wickedness of the world and decided to kill everyone - except for the only righteous family - Noah, his wife, their three sons, and the sons' wives.  Noah was commanded to build a ship and take on board a breeding pair of every kind of land animal and seven pairs of every kind of flying animal.  The family labored on that job for many years, and when the ship was completed and the animals loaded, it rained for forty days and forty nights, the seas rose, and everyone and every land animal not on the ark perished

The Ark Encounter, located in Williamstown, Kentucky, is an attempt to reproduce as closely as possible the original ark and was built to the dimensions specified in the Bible - 300 cubits long by 50 cubits wide by 30 cubits tall.  A cubit is the length of a forearm, or somewhere between 18 and 20 inches.  The designers used the longer length, and therefore this version of the ark is 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet tall.

The ark is a jaw-dropping sight, the wonder of which is not well conveyed by the photo below.

The Ark Encounter is a museum which was built by and is operated by the same creationist organization - Answers in Genesis - as the Creation Museum I wrote about in an earlier blog post.  Answers in Genesis is considered a "young Earth creationist" group, which means that they believe in the literal truth of the Bible, including that the age of the Earth is only 6000 years or so, calculated from the begats listed in the Bible, with the assumption that that perfect document would not have left out any of the generations.  Answers in Genesis partnered with a tourist attraction firm, won concessions from local and state governments, collected massive donations from believers in creationism, and spent six years and over $100M dollars in building this life-sized version of the historical ark.

Upon arrival at the park, you are shuttled to the ark on a bus.  You enter the midsection of the ship and walk up a ramp to reach the second floor.

You then come across cages containing realistic models of some of the animals that were supposed to have been kept on board for the length of the flood.

Some of the animals we saw were familiar and some, like dinosaurs, are now extinct.  These creationists get around the issue of what seems like the impossibility of fitting every animal species on board by interpreting the Bible's instruction that Noah take on board every kind of creature that walked, flew, or slithered to mean that only each general category of animal would be included.  The idea was that natural selection - which they believe in, though not evolution - would have resulted in the wide variety of animals we see today.

The makers of this museum admit that the Bible's description of the ark's construction is sketchy, so they make their best guesses as to the details.  For example, they believe that waste removal may well have been accomplished by rigging up an animal-powered vertical pulley system which would raise collected animal waste to the surface in buckets, which then could be emptied overboard.  Even so, poop detail would not be a job I'd sign up for.

Many attractive tableaux depict life aboard the ark.  Here are Noah and his wife at work.

Signage throughout the ark instructs us as to the literal truth of every word in the Bible, the debauchery of the world that made the construction of the ark necessary, how they believe it was built, and speculation as to what things were like in everyday life on board.  For example, they conclude that Noah and his family were vegetarians.

A good deal of effort is spent in attempting to counter the conclusions of scientists who believe that the Earth is billions of years old, not 6000.  Some of the arguments are clever .. but not convincing in the least, I suspect, to an unbiased observer.  It is amazing to me that a number of individuals intelligent enough to design such an impressive museum and to come up with alternative explanations of scientific evidence have devoted large parts of their lives to such a belief system.  The variety of human psychology is quite spectacular.

I certainly recommend that anyone who finds himself in this area make the effort to visit the Ark Experience.  Both it and the Creation Museum are magnificent accomplishments and worth exploring even if you, like us, find the concepts behind them impossible to credit.

Kentucky horse country

We're in the middle of Kentucky's famous horse country.  Most of the thoroughbred horse farms are nearby, including Calumet Farm, the most iconic of them all.  Churchill Downs, the site of the Kentucky Derby, is 70 miles away from our RV park, and Keeneland, the second most prominent racetrack in Kentucky, is only 16 miles away.

The Kentucky Horse Park, a fabulous 1200 acre theme park dedicated to our equine friends, is just down the road in Lexington.  It contains the International Museum of the Horse, an impressive depiction of the history of the horse's interaction with humans through the centuries.  It reminded us that until the industrial revolution, pretty much all long-distance powered human travel was horse-based.  Horses were used in warfare, in farm work, and as beasts of burden and pullers of wagons and sleds.  Thus they have been extremely important in human endeavors - although nowadays they aren't needed nearly as critically as before, especially in developed countries, and serve today mostly for our entertainment and aesthetic pleasures.

The horse park also is a working farm in some respects.  There are various demonstrations and shows throughout the day.  A number of rather famous horses reside at the park, and the Hall of Champions displays some of them to the paying customers.  Here is Nancy with her new best friend, Point Given, the winner of the Preakness and Belmont Stakes in 2001, the year he was named American Horse of the Year.  And he's a nice horse - not stuck up at all.

Another event is the Parade of Breeds, where we were shown some of the rich variations that have resulted from selective breeding.  This one is called a Gypsy Vanner, and it gets its name because this was the horse that pulled Gypsy wagons across Europe.

The following day we signed up for an afternoon with Unique Horse Farm Tours.  Our tour guide and driver was Shawn, a long-timer in the industry who has worked for and knows many of the horse farm owners.  We stopped at a field containing mares and their beautiful and impossibly long-legged young colts.

Then we dropped by a gorgeous farm where Seattle Slew, the triple crown winner in 1977 and one of the greatest studs in history, was buried whole, a great honor, with his favorite blanket and a bag of peppermints (which he loved to eat).  A statue was erected on the site.

At another beautiful farm its billionaire owner, who according to Shawn came from nothing, and his wife dropped by to welcome us.  Inside the barn we got up close and personal with a son (not yet named) of the last triple crown winner, in 2015, American Pharaoh.

We're really enjoying this area, with its rolling green hills, massive horse farms, the unique and beautiful architecture of their barns and stables, and those magnificent animals.  And we have tickets for the thoroughbred races at Keeneland next Wednesday.

Creation Museum

The Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky was irresistible to a couple of old skeptics like Nancy and me.  It turned out to be fascinating.  The exhibits were beautiful and presented their point of view very well.

Here is Nancy checking out the skeleton of a wooly mammoth.  Scientists say that the species evolved 400,000 years ago, but the museum sign claims that it was created about 6000 years ago, as was everything in the universe, including man and the Earth, according to the Bible.

A series of displays highlighted the differences between man's word and God's word.

A depiction of the Garden of Eden showed Adam interacting peacefully with various animal species.

I was rather looking forward to seeing Eve in her natural state .. but alas!  Apparently she was created with long hair that covered her good parts.

The museum's point of view is that at the time of creation 6000 years ago, the world was perfect.  No person and no animal died, and everyone lived in harmony.  And everything bad in the world today, including the immorality of young people, all disease, all wars, and all hatred, is the result of Adam and Eve's eating of the forbidden fruit.  What a faux pas that was!

I found it interesting that whoever was in charge of the design of this museum had a rather advanced view of evolution as compared with the more extreme versions of creationism.  Signs told us that they believe that natural selection does occur, and in fact can result in changes within species.  But the distinction, they write, is that the theory of evolution insists that all life developed from a single-celled ancestor (although I know that was not a part of Darwin's original theory), and they don't accept that.  I suspect that the museum's view is that evolution from one species to another does not occur, but that wasn't spelled out specifically.

Quite a few dinosaur skeletons and dinosaur sculptures were displayed.

So they accept that many species have gone extinct but do not believe that new species have sprung up.

Down the road is the Ark Museum (a sister to this Creation Museum), which we will be visiting in a few days, to complete our study of biblical history.  There a replica of the historical ark has been constructed, supposedly the exact size of the original, according to the dimensions specified in the Bible.  And that should be exciting to see.  But there was also a small section here concerning the building of the ark by Noah and his family.  I had always wondered how all the animals in the world, including elephants and dinosaurs, were supposed to fit on the ark, and their explanation is that Noah selected young animals, which were of course smaller.  I was also curious how Noah and his family dealt with the waste products of the menagerie aboard, but that answer will have to wait until we climb aboard the ark at the other museum.

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Nineteen years ago Nancy took a cross-country trip with her sister Diane from Pennsylvania to Arizona, and one of their favorite experiences was visiting Kentucky.  So we're taking a side trip there.

On the way to our next RV park, driving on I-75, traffic on our side of the divided highway came to a complete stop.  There was massive smoke up ahead, filling the sky, less than a mile away.  And we sat there, unmoving, for over an hour, with emergency vehicles screaming by periodically on the right.  On our cell phones the internet reported that it was a tractor-trailer cargo fire.  When we finally got underway again, from the one lane they had opened this is what we saw.

Our RV park is Cummins Ferry Resort Campground and Marina in Salvisa, Kentucky.  As we approached the area, we were called by the campground staff, asking when we would arrive, and telling us which road to take from the highway.  And even that road was a narrow two-lane, which promptly diminished to one lane, prompting the question of what we'd do if a vehicle, especially a big RV, happened to be approaching from the other direction.  Nancy was loudly questioning my compground-picking skills.  We arrived safely, then realized that the real reason for that phone call asking our arrival time was to make sure they wouldn't allow a motorhome to leave the park and meet us on the one-lane road.

The RV park is in an attractive location on the banks of the Kentucky River, the far bank of which provides evidence that a glacier in the distant past carved out the riverbed.

The area outside the park has vivid green rolling hills reminiscent of Ireland.  I've always thought of Kentucky as a poor state economically, and it's near the bottom in per capita income, but driving along, it looks prosperous around here, with mostly good-looking houses set way back on huge grassy lots.

We'd been mostly lucky on our trip as to precipitation, but here we had two days of constant gentle rain, followed yesterday by snow flurries - in Kentucky, in April!  The snow melted as soon as it hit the ground, but last night the temperature dropped down to 32 degrees.

Today it's a cool, clear, beautiful day.  We drove over to Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, which Nancy had visited all those years ago with her sister.  It is today a museum on the site of a previously vibrant Shaker community.  Some of the many buildings there are currently being restored.

The "United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing" was a Christian sect established in England in the 18th century.  Because of their habit of dancing ecstatically during services, they became known as the Shakers.  At their height, there were 6000 believers in multiple communities in the United States, but today there is only one remaining active village - and that's in Maine.

The most intriguing belief of the Shakers was that God demanded that they remain celibate.  Carnal relations were forbidden.  I'm no expert, but that may have interfered with their ability to maintain population numbers.  The Bible tells us that spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, so moral failings resulting in pregnancies must have occurred, though clearly not often enough to replace those who left the village or died.  Still, impressively, the sect has remained active for more than 200 years, by adopting children and attracting converts.

The Shakers were admirable in many ways.  Reportedly, they believed that God was genderless, and therefore they did not practice sexual discrimination in leadership - although work roles remained traditionally gender-based.  We're told that during the 19th century they bought the freedom of some slaves who wanted to join their religion and later became prominent in the governance of the congregation.

The Shakers felt that hard work was service to the Lord.  They were known for orderly farms and villages.  They were creative in developing machines, powered by horses or water, to help with repetitive tasks - woodworking, laundry, and so on.  They invented a distinctive style of furniture which is well known today, and they were sophisticated in their architecture.  In one of the buildings in the village, there are circular staircases on opposite sides of a hallway - one for each sex.  This is the view of one of them from above.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee

Six years ago, on our first circumnavigation of these American states, we enjoyed the best shrimp po-boys ever in, of all places, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  For those unfamiliar with this traditional New Orleans specialty, po-boys are sandwichs consisting of meat or fried seafood, usually with tomatoes, lettuce, and mayonnaise, within sliced New Orleans French bread.  This casual restaurant, the New Orleans Sandwich Shop, is owned by a family from New Orleans which has contracted with a local bakery to produce amazing baguettes as good as or better than those available back home, and that's the most critical component of good po-boys.

Believe it or not, that was our primary reason for returning to Gatlinburg, which does lie on the path to our next destination, the horse farm areas of Kentucky.

Actually, Gatlinburg is a fascinating place - almost unique.  You'd be hard-pressed to find a cornier tourist trap, although nearby Pigeon Forge (home of Dollywood) gives it competition.  The main drag has block after block of shops, restaurants, and carnival-type attractions.

Getting into the spirit of the place, we decided to visit The World of Illusions.  We bought our tickets and stepped inside.  This turned out to be literally the lamest waste of money we've ever experienced, and we've thrown away cash on some doozies through the years.  There were mannikins behind glass that faded in and out, and that was about the extent of it.  A few minutes later, we exited into an alley, making it difficult to complain to the ticket-seller.

We did enjoy visiting the Ole Smoky Moonshine Distillery there.  For five bucks you get about eight or so tiny tastes of the various flavors of their moonshine whiskey, including our favorite, Apple Pie.  Before serving, though, they require that you provide a driver's license to prove that you are over twenty-one.  Unfortunately, Nancy has misplaced hers and has yet to request a replacement from the California DMV.  For a time it seemed that she would be denied the pleasures of sampling their product.  But I swear to you, a supervisor was called over.  Nancy showed her Medicare card, her Costco photo-ID card, and other documentation, and reluctantly that lady gave Nancy her approval.  They sure take age-checking seriously in Gatlinburg.

Outside the distillery a bluegrass band was playing.  Surprisingly, they were awfully good.  The banjo player in particular was spectacular.  It sounded very much like the music from O Brother, Where Art Thou, a wonderful 2000 movie starring George Clooney.

We returned to that New Orleans Sandwich Shop on the main street.   I enjoyed an excellent crawfish etouffee, and we both ordered, once again, the shrimp po-boys.  They were excellent, and the sandwich bread was crusty and amazing - but the magic from six years ago was missing.  Sometimes it's a mistake trying to recreate favorite experiences from the past.

Gatlinburg adjoins the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  We spent a little while driving through it, but it wasn't at its best, because almost all the trees lost their leaves last fall, and the unusually cold weather this year has postponed their return.

Gatlinburg is less than 100 miles from Asheville, but the differences in the populations of the two towns are significant.  Most of the folks in Asheville we encountered didn't have much of a southern accent - they sounded much as people in California do, except friendlier.  The individuals we talked with in Gatlinburg are also extremely friendly, but they tend to have a decided country twang.  We didn't see too many fat people in Asheville, but as I sat on a bench while Nancy shopped, it seemed that half the folks that walked by, young and old, were obese, many of them morbidly so.  Of course those were mostly tourists from all over the south and elsewhere.  I'm probably slandering the fine citizens of Gatlinburg.

Neighborhood hunt in and around Asheville

Asheville leads the field in our year-long search for a possible alternative to Santa Cruz.  We like the scenery, the weather, the food, and the people.  Therefore our real estate work got more serious than the half-hearted efforts in previous locations.

There is only one possible fly in the ointment.  Admittedly, our search has been hit-and-miss, but we were unable to find within the city limits the kind of neighborhood we are hoping for.  And the more we talk about it and fantasize about it, we more we realize that neighborhood is as important to us as the house itself.  We want to live where it's a pleasure to drive down the street as we approach our new home, in an area with well-maintained houses and landscaping and a friendly neighborhood feel, so that there are opportunities for meeting people.

First of all, we decided that the condos that are available in downtown Asheville just wouldn't work for us as our primary home.  Most of them are in tall buildings, and the needs of our dogs make it impractical, silly as that may sound.  Maybe if we also had a conventional home elsewhere, but that's an unlikely situation.

One possible option would be to live in or just outside a nearby town, as long as we like the town, it has shops, restaurants, and services we consider adequate, and it's an easy drive into Asheville.  We began with Cheshire Village, just outside the town of Black Mountain, about twenty minutes from Asheville.  (Apparently there is a growth industry in planned developments in the entire area around Asheville.)

The homes offered in Cheshire Village are gorgeous, and it's pretty much what we're looking for in a neighborhood.  It even has a coffee shop in the village.  Unfortunately, even though Black Mountain has wonderful mountain views, the town itself doesn't meet our needs, so that may not work for us.

Next we drove to Hendersonville, which is about twenty-five minutes from Asheville.  It's an extremely attractive community, with a beautiful downtown reminiscent of Santa Cruz, and some good restaurants and other amenities.  It wouldn't be a hardship living there.

Nearby was a spectacular planned community called The Boulders, which is in a fairly early stage of development.  Most of the homesites are on steep hillsides, with incredible mountain views.  Even though the homes there are expensive, we might consider one if still available when and if we return - except that the current streets are so steep and narrow that Nancy thinks she wouldn't be comfortable driving them, especially at night.

Of course any conclusions we draw as to housing at this point are very preliminary.  We don't know whether Asheville will truly be our choice.  But it sure is an appealing place.

For example, Asheville is very dog-friendly.  We had cocktails and snacks one night at a bar in the Aloft Asheville Hotel.  We went there because the bar has a dog adoption program we wanted to support.  There was an enclosure inside the bar in which a small dog, currently available, was sleeping.  We resisted the temptation to take him home.

And it's important to Nancy that she finds opportunities for volunteerism wherever we end up.  Asheville has several dog shelters and soup kitchens which would likely welcome her help.

On our last night in Asheville we returned to the Grove Park Inn, which was built by Dr E.W. Grove, he of Grove's Chill Tonic, as described in the previous blog article.  It's a huge and beautiful hotel, almost like a less rustic Awanhee Hotel in Yosemite.  There are four restaurants and several bars, all on the ground floor.

We enjoyed wandering around, looking at the pictures on the wall of the famous people who have stayed there - Harry Houdini, Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower, and many more.  We had dinner in one of their restaurants, and it was a lovely way to end our visit.

Asheville, North Carolina

Our dogs have been accumulating dirt and dust since their last baths, and before we came to Asheville, Nancy made appointments at a groomer here in Asheville to have them washed and trimmed.  That's always traumatic for them, but they usually come away looking clean and beautiful.  Unfortunately, the grooming technician went overboard with his shaver, leaving Tammy Faye with a hell of a bad hair day.

On the positive side, I am no longer the homeliest member of our traveling circus.  Oh, well, it'll grow out.

On our first full day in Asheville we repeated something we had done six years ago - we took a trolley ride through the city in order to see the sights and hear again the fascinating history of Asheville.  Below is Dr. Carroll's sanitorium, where Zelda Fitzgerald received treatment for her psychiatric disorders.  Zelda was the brilliant but erratic wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was the famous author of The Great Gatsby and other classics.

Later, Zelda's mental status worsened and she lived for years a bit further down the road in Highland Hospital, which cared for patients with addiction and psychiatric disorders.  In 1948 there was a fire in the hospital which resulted in the deaths of Zelda and eight other women.

The trolley stopped at the Grove Park Inn, established by Edwin Grove, the "father of modern Asheville", known as Dr. Grove, who made his fortune by selling Grove's Chill Tonic, which contained quinine and according to Wikipedia and our tour guide sold more bottles than Coca-Cola.  Grove Park Inn is a truly magnificent structure which has hosted famous guests from Thomas Edison and Henry Ford to Barrack Obama.  We plan to visit it for cocktails before we leave Asheville.

Our tour took us through many of the neighborhoods of Asheville, some of which we will explore during our time here as potential homesites for us in the future.  Of course any houses available for sale at this time will be long gone by the time our motorhome trip ends eight months or so from now, and the prices here will undoubtedly go up.  So what we will do is get ideas as to which neighborhoods might work for us and what the relative price points are for those areas.

One arena in which Asheville can hold its head high is its ranking as a foodie destination.  I am amazed at the number of upscale restaurants here, the concentration of which must be up there with New York and San Francisco.  We plan dinner tomorrow night at one of them, but we did have a couple of lunches which we will, honest to God, be talking about for a while.  Roman's Deli has a reputation as the top hamburger joint in Asheville, and we were served literally the best restaurant burgers we've ever enjoyed - right up there with Nancy's best.  And Asheville is known for its barbeque restaurants.  We both had the ribs at Moe's Original Bar B Que, and it was a transcendent experience.  From the first bites we were making groaning noises of pleasure and wonder.  We've never had thick, meaty, full-flavored ribs of such amazing tenderness.   Don't miss Moe's or Roman's if you ever make it to Asheville.

There are similarities between the Santa Cruz area and Asheville.  Both have wonderful weather, Santa Cruz's a bit more temperate, but neither having a season with extremes of temperature that chase some of its residents out of town.  And that's unusual.  Both have beautiful scenery, Santa Cruz with both beaches and modest mountains, Ashville with grander mountain views and four seasons.  Both voted for Clinton in the last election.  Both are college towns and have intelligent, sophisticated citizens.  Both have a good restaurant scene, but Asheville is way ahead in that respect.  The downtown areas of both are nice, although Santa Cruz is more picturesque.  Santa Cruz has a population of 65,000; Asheville 90,000.

Santa Cruz is the "second happiest city in America", according to Forbes, and Asheville is the "coolest city in America you've never been to", according to Gentlemen's Quarterly.  We could be happy in either.  We probably couldn't be cool in either.

Colulmbia, South Carolina

Columbia is the capital of South Carolina.  We stayed there for a couple of days at Sesquicentennial State Park.  This is the kind of facility where families spend a week or a few days enjoying the outdoors in a woodsy setting by a lake.  Kids running around, campfires in fire pits, meat being burned on grills - it was a different vibe from most of the RV parks we've visited.

We asked a couple of campers who live in Columbia what there is to do in the city.  They both answered, "Nothing". We were pretty sure this wouldn't be a visit full of thrills and chills.

But we like state capitols (Spelled with an "o", it's the building) and visited the one in Columbia.  The external architecture was not exceptional but the interior was quite beautiful.  Sitting in the balcony overlooking the House of Representatives, we were impressed with how boring the day-to-day work of state politics can be.

There were a large number of gentlemen and ladies, all beautifully dressed, in the rooms outside the legislative chambers.  We asked at the information desk and it turned out that these were all lobbyists.  Depressing.  What a way to run a state (and country, for that matter).

We pulled into our next destination, Asheville, North Carolina, yesterday.  On our maiden motorhome voyage around the country six years ago Asheville was one of our very favorite cities - one that we would seriously consider moving to.  So we intend to spend a week here investigating its charms and ferreting out its shortcomings.  It's at an elevation of just over 2000 feet, which isn't a lot, but it's cooler than the rest of the South all year round,  It was certainly chilly last night - getting down almost to freezing - and was a definite change from the hot, muggy weather we've experienced the past month in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.  And this is mountain scenery, which we love.  The landscapes speak to us, although this is not the prettiest time of the year, since its deciduous trees have lost their leaves.  I'm sure it will be even lovelier later this spring, when all the trees are green, and magnificent in the autumn, when the leaves show their best fall colors.

Charleston

A popular way to tour Charleston is by horse-drawn carriage.  Along with a dozen or so others, we climbed aboard one being pulled by Buddy, a Belgian draft horse who looked big and strong enough to pull a railway car.  (The horse below is smaller than Buddy.)  Our driver took us through some of the Charleston neighborhoods and gave us a brief history of the city.  It was a very cool and relaxing way to get a preliminary feel for Charleston's layout, architecture, and society.

Charleston was founded in 1670 by English colonists and became a prosperous seaport.  The American Civil War began when Confederate soldiers fired upon Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, and our driver said that the action was heard and seen from homes along the waterfront in Charleston.

Charleston, like New Orleans and some other cities, has very strict rules about alterations to the buildings in their historic districts, in an attempt to preserve the look and feel of the place.  We passed large houses in one block that our driver said were worth between ten and twenty million dollars each.  So while homes outside the historic district may be reasonably priced, the choice properties are not for mere mortals.  Like Savannah, Charleston has block after block of impressive homes that I find beautiful.

Six months ago Hurrican Irma hit Charleston hard, cresting at ten feet.  That overwhelmed the sea wall, and there was heavy flooding and damage to low-lying homes, including all those mansions near the sea.

Charleston is known as a food lover's destination, especially for a style of cooking called "lowcountry".  The lowcountry region includes the low-lying areas of Georgia and South Carolina near the ocean, especially those containing salt-water marshes that are rich with seafood.  This genre includes a number of dishes you won't find elsewhere.  We had a lowcountry lunch in Charleston, but our best meal in this style was a week ago on Hilton Head Island at the Lucky Rooster, as mentioned earlier.

But our fantastic dining experience in Charleston was not lowcountry at all.  It was a prix fixe dinner at a restaurant called Zero George (so named because that is its address on George Street), and it was in the style of the French Laundry and Saison (the restaurant in San Francisco owned in part by the man who bought our house in Ben Lomond).  That is, every course is imaginative and beautifully plated almost as a work of art.  And expensive.  Yes, expensive, at least to little fish such as ourselves.  But we laugh at expense.  (Maybe we're losing it.)

The wine pairings included one great Tempranillo red, but overall were only good and not transcendent.  However, the food was sublime.

After the meal, we asked to photograph the kitchen, and our waitress took us back and took a photo of us with the chef.  A great evening.

However, Nancy forgot to pee before we left, and it was touch and go whether we would make it back to the motorhome in time.  We did.

What to make of Charleston?  A great and beautiful city.  Wonderful food.  Traffic seems awfully heavy, and the summers would be tough for us.  We heard that it's hard to make friends here, but who knows?  Perhaps there are suburbs like Mount Pleasant that would work for us.  Overall, we think it just missed our cutoff, but further investigation might change our minds.