Asheville

I spent this weekend in the south at my new home-for-a-year. I love the south. I ate chicken fried chicken, I ate grits (which Miss Bobbie said are just an excuse to eat butter), I went swimming in a crick with my clothes on, and I talked about bears for what seemed like hours.

Aunt Miss Bobbie was kind enough to pick me up at Greenville/Spartanburg, then on Friday we drove up to Asheville. My mom called us Jethrine and Cousin Pearl all weekend (from the Beverly Hillbillies, in case you're my age).

The rental house and the view are great. AND there was BEAR POOP in the yard. It was there on Thursday and I'm sure it's still there now. Robert kept trying to get me to fling it into the woods. So then the saying became "Does a bear shit in your yard?" As in, "Would you like another glass of wine?" "Does a bear shit in your yard?"

On Friday we had lunch and wine in downtown Asheville. There are a lot of hippies in Asheville. If I moved there I'd have to get dreadlocks, a nose ring, and a hippie baby with dreadlocks and a nose ring. And that sounds like a lot of work.

Saturday was the best day I've had in a while. I went hiking at Whitewater Falls with Amy and Cheri. First we ate a picnic lunch, which was pretty much fried chicken and hard lemonade. We laughed a lot. By the end of the day we had all at some point said our faces hurt from laughing. After lunch we hiked down to the water and my legs shook like crazy, maybe because I had just had hard lemonade. At the bottom we ditched our shoes on a rock in the middle of the water and climbed the rocks upstream. So fun. Then we came to a large tree that had fallen across the stream. All of a sudden Amy was ON the tree, scooting across to the other side. So I followed, less gracefully and a lot less quickly. I felt like I was on Survivor. We stopped at the swimmin' pool and went swimming in our clothes. Cheri took some convincing. The water was freezing. Afterwards, and after the grueling hike back up that liked to have kilt me, we went back to the rental house for a barbeque.

So, I didn't want to leave—the people or the mountains.









Elly May and Cousin Pearl