Welcome to part 4 of my 2023 July series, The Best Way to Spend an Asheville Summer Sunday, where I’ll share my four top picks for a relaxing summer Sunday, as the series title suggests.
This week’s entry will be short and sweet but nonetheless important: hanging out at the creek behind Turgua Brewing in Fairview.
While I technically live in Asheville, my apartment complex is the last city address before things switch over to Fairview, NC. I’ve written about Fairview before. I think it’s a very charming little town and underrated by both Asheville tourists and locals alike. Due to proximity, I spend a lot of time in Fairview and am always trying to get more friends to come out and give it a go.
Fairview is home to two excellent breweries—Whistle Hop and Turgua—and while Whistle Hop is one of my favorite places in the area to go (it helps that it shares a parking lot with Hilltop Ice Cream and serves beer out of a refurbished caboose), Turgua, for my money, actually has better beer, and a much better summertime attraction: the creek out back.
Cane Creek borders the back of Turgua’s property, and it took me two years of going to Turgua to realize that during the warmer months, lots of people pack chairs and picnic blankets and park at or in the creek for most of the day. I’ve taken advantage of this twice this year thus far.
One was a Saturday, and after a small hike and being chased out of my apartment complex pool by hoards of children whose parents allowed them to run amuck, I relocated to Turgua. I popped my camping chair in the middle of the very shallow creek, where I proceeded to read for two hours. The second time was a Sunday: I was dog-sitting my friend Lou (whom you may remember from my nude hiking encounter at Laurel River Trail) and figured she’d enjoy frolicking in the stream, which she very much did.
Turgua has food trucks most days and almost always has music on Sunday afternoons. They also have a decent selection of non-alcoholic seltzers and Devil’s Foot beverages if you want to hang without imbibing (which I did the last two times I visited).
AshevilleExplorer 