Weekend Trip to Black Mountain, NC

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North Carolina has been experiencing a glorious little heat wave these past few days and my family and I have been spending so much time outdoors. It's definitely a nice change of pace, especially after the pretty big snowstorm that swept our Triad region about a month ago. This weekend, we decided it was too pretty out there to not take advantage of it. Staying indoors would have been a shame! So, we called up my brother and his girlfriend and decided to head about an hour and a half away to beautiful Black Mountain, NC.

We always travel right past Black Mountain on our way to the family cabin at Lake Junaluska, NC, but a few years ago my brother was going to the mountains with us and suggested that we get off at the exit and see what the little mountain town was all about. As an aside about him, he's a software engineer. In a nutshell, he works on cloud computing models, which is a pretty complicated topic that you can read more about if you're interested. He had worked with a company called Appalachian Technical Services a few years ago, and spent a day near Black Mountain. He remembered eating at a little diner called Louise's Kitchen, and suggested we head there first for lunch.

We got there before the major lunch crowd hit, and to my delight, it wasn't crowded at all! I got sweet tea, chicken and dumplings, and mashed potatoes (one of my favorite meals in general). My husband got meatloaf, green beans, and cornbread. My brother and his girlfriend both split a heaping portion of chicken pie. Then, we had a few more hours before sunset, so we decided to walk around the sweet and quaint downtown area a little bit.

I ducked into a few vintage and antique shops with my brother's girlfriend while my husband and brother went into a hunting gear shop. We didn't get too much, but I did manage to walk away with a 1950s-era children's book for my kids back home, and my husband got a Tilley fishing hat that he's been wanting. All in all, it was a successful shopping adventure!

Then, before we headed home we decided to take a little drive around to find where Black Mountain College was located. For the unfamiliar, Black Mountain College was a small arts college founded in 1933 by a man named Andrew Rice and a few others. It was designed to be an experimental facility, to see how much interest and funding it could garner. As opposed to a rigorous textbook-oriented educational system, it emphasized holistic learning and a more natural approach to education. Several notable liberal arts thinkers emerged from the school including Josef and Anni Albers, who established the first design school at Yale University. Yet, the school closed in 1957 due to a deficit in funding.

The campus opened at the YMCA Blue Ridge Assembly and operated there for eight years. Then, it opened its very own campus at nearby Lake Eden, NC where it remained until its closing. Now, the location is used as the space for a boy's camp, called Camp Rockmont, and is also home to the Black Mountain Festival and Lake Eden Arts Festival. We drove by the location as the sun was setting and to see the sunset on the lake, where so many memories were held in years past, was definitely special.

We went back home to our babies and had a nice dinner together before calling it a night. What a wonderful and memorable day trip!

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Photos

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Louise's Kitchen!

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Driving to Black Mountain, NC!