Drove with Mercedes from Rocky Mount, VA, to Greensboro, NC. Put her on a Greyhound bus back toward DC. Continued on alone to far western NC, including Marshall, NC. Staying overnight at Days Inn north of Asheville.
Marshall is historic and charming two-block main street. French Broad River, along which runs the road to town is indeed broad and powerful-looking and impressive. Immediate area is too vertical - all buildings are perched. Town, surprisingly, has two or three cute-chic restaurants and a cafe. But probably is too small. Population 840.
Buncombe County, center of the Asheville Valley, seems ruined with commercial sprawl along main throughways, and residential sprawl. It's pretty densely populated.
Asheville valley in general is naturally beautiful. It's a large, shallow valley, high in the high hills of the Appalachians. It feels open, not confined by mountains.
Transition seen so far is from sprawl, straight to wilderness forest. Had assumed farmland would be between the two. Not so far. But, based on Google satellite map, want to look a bit west in the valley, west of the French Broad River, where it looks like there might be farmland.
This is my bit of a blog. Rambling words about rambling days. No focus and nothing ambitious. I seem to write most about local color, nature, and animals, and there is an incomplete chunk about my road trips of 2011.
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