What I didn't initially realize from the lovely old bookstore/coffee bar that I was blogging from, is that Asheville is like the hippy haven for the south. I think the south might actually have a yearly purge where they round up all the hippies and send them to Asheville. It's like the hippie surplus store was running a going out of business sale and Asheville bought the entire inventory. Needless to say, the city is long hippies...big time. And not just the granola eating, whole foods shopping, well-to-do, self-conscious guilt-laden hippies from San Francisco either...these are the waste of life, patchouli oil coated, nappy headed, hemp necklace wearing homeless hippies that play kitschy instruments like Accordions and Djembes and Kazoos.
It wasn't bad enough to ruin a good city, but you could be sure that the madras shorts/pink polo wearing New Yorker driving the BMW turned a few heads. It's like they sense an evil force or something. They start stuttering and shaking as I walk into their stores...I'm like hippy cryptonyte.
After getting some lunch at the Lexington Ave Brewery, I made my way over to the summit of Mt. Mitchell...the highest mountain east of the Mississippi. This one sort of felt like cheating. It was only a 1,000 foot walk to the summit from the parking lot...hence I'm wearing a pink polo shirt in the pictures. I'll go back some day and climb it using the Appalachian trail segment. I was running behind schedule though and I felt like driving some more of the Blue Ridge Parkway...it really is a pretty spectacular drive (It's also possible some of the laziness rubbed off on me from all those damn hippies in Asheville). I didn't expect that I would get another one of those really scenic drives in this trip but the Blue Ridge Parkway put up some vistas that were just as spectacular as some of those along the Pacific Coast and Great Lakes. Nobody was on the road either so I had the whole thing practically to myself for about 70 miles.
Next stop was Black Mountain, Kentucky. If I was going to get the trifecta, I'd have to bag this one in the dark because I didn't leave Mitchell until 5:30pm.
This one was a bit tricky.
For starters the mountain is made of coal and hence owned by the Penn-Virginia Coal company.
It was also a very dark night and my head lamp batteries are a tad low.
So I got the grounds of the mining company and started looking for the access road to the summit. However, the FAA North American Communications tower and broadcast center is on the summit, so the Kentucky state police were dispatched to arrest me for trespassing.
Officer Wilson was rather shocked when I produced a waiver from the Penn-Virginia Coal company granting me access to their property in order to tag the highpoint. He was also impressed with the tales of my travels so he led me up the access road and helped me recruit one of the FAA security guards to scour the summit of this mountain looking for the plaque and a 4" USGS Marker.
Finally, after hiking up yet another access road by foot (it was too dicey for my car at this point) I found what I was looking for right before midnight.
Success...oh it was so sweet.
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