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.
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