It was a weekend of reopenings in Asheville this past weekend.
On Saturday, I made my way over to the reopening of Zillicoah Beer Company, one of my favorite places to hang out on the French Broad, which had been closed for 11 months following Hurricane Helene.
My friend Dani and I arrived a little after 4:00 PM, and got parking, which we were nervous about not being able to find, but the place was packed, which was really nice to see. We also both remarked how nice it was to feel like it was nothing monumental, us parking on a nice summer night and walking up to the outdoor tap room; it didn’t feel like almost a year had passed, and it didn’t feel like the place had been nearly destroyed. Although this Citizen Times piece does a really great job of breaking down exactly what’s new and improved at Zillicoah, to my civilian eye, it looked the same as it always did, and felt comfortably familiar. We stayed for a few drinks, listened to music, and left in an all-around great mood.
Sunday morning, after Zillicoah—and a deep West Asheville nightcap or two at…the Brew Pump—I participated in another newly reopened Asheville staple: driving the Blue Ridge Parkway all the way from my apartment to the Art Loeb Trailhead at Black Balsam.
The section of the Blue Ridge Parkway from the French Broad Overlook just by the Asheville Arboretum and the NC-151 Access Point also reopened after being closed for 11 months due to landslides taking away part of the road. While Black Balsam and the Shining Rock Wilderness Area (two of my favorite places in WNC to hike) had been accessible via 151, that route had added a good twenty minutes to a drive that I could normally complete in under an hour. Now, I can leave my apartment, access the parkway two minutes away, and get to those locales in a decent amount of time.
I caught a truly gorgeous sunrise from the Graveyard Ridge Trail and spent some time at Graveyard Falls just after sunrise, which was a lovely way to spend the morning and transition out of the weekend.
AshevilleExplorer 