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Published: November 11th 2009
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Grace on the Water
Grace was a little weary of the water at first, but the lake was glassy, so she soon got comfortable. Kayaking in Hickory Lake
We woke up Saturday morning and took Alan up on his offer to let us go kayaking on Lake Hickory. Alan had teamed up with his neighbor to buy two kayaks. Instead of each of them buying two kayaks or one of them having a lone kayak, they each bought one and shared them together. That way, they could each spend less money and be able to go kayaking with a friend. A win-win situation.
It won for us anyway. Some of you may know that Grace didn’t grow up swimming like I did, so she’s not very comfortable in water. Vickie told us the kayaks were very stable and the lake would be glassy still. She was right and pretty soon, Grace was relaxed and paddling like a duck.
We worked our way over to the RV park that was about a mile away from their home. The RV park is on a little peninsula and many of the residents have converted RVs into weekend cabins and have boats and docks. Grace asked around and it only costs $2,400/year to rent a slot by the water for your RV. Not bad at $200/month.
Hamming it up
It's a good picture when you hold the paddle over your head like this. When we were in the cove next to the RV park, we came across a blue heron and followed him a ways back. At this farthest point, Grace said, let’s race back to the dock. I’m like, no problem. I’ll give you a head start of about 100 yards.
Kayaking is pretty fast actually and you can go 5 mph pretty easily. We paddled pretty steady for 10 minutes and I gained ground on Grace, but she was motivated and I couldn’t get very close to her until we were within 100 yards to the finish. I trailed her by about 10 yards, but couldn’t gain any more ground as she was paddling very hard. When we were 20 yards away from the finish, I gave up and pulled the camera out for some quick video. In the video, you can see the whirlpools she left behind in the water and how quickly she pulled away as I drifted. I didn’t expect Grace to pick up kayaking that fast, but she showed me how she didn’t let her fear of the water get in the way of a good race and a good time.
We went back
The RV Park and Boat Dock
We paddled from Alan's neighborhood back to our RV park. Many of the residents had a boat. to Alan and Vickie’s for a quick thank you. Alan has only worked for Corning for 18 years, while Vickie had recently retired after 25 years. Doug leads the group with 30 years of labor and is affectionately known as Doug Corning in the standards groups we work in. Vickie is day-trading now. We want to talk to her about some of the tricks of the trade. We thanked them and headed back to the trailer park.
Practice Makes Better
We had a nice place to practice backing up in the RV park, so we backed up into a few spots. We’re trying to learn a little bit at a time and it is difficult to back our house up - just the size of it is hard to grasp.
We have clipped extension mirrors onto our standard truck mirrors and they let us see down the side of the RV when we’re driving forward, but when we’re backing up at a sharp angle, the 38’8”length is hard to see around and comprehend.
Grace was backing in on the practice and she noticed that the RV was almost hitting the cab of our crew cab truck -
Heron in the Water
I got pretty close to this heron, but it kept flying farther into the cove everytime I got closer. another disaster averted. The truck can’t back in at 90 degrees to the RV, but we can get to probably 80 degrees and it is much easier to back in than the u-haul trailer. Grace and I are getting better at hand signals, but it’s still very stressful communication between the two of us when we're parking. We didn’t know what kind of RV parking spot we’d have in the next site and we still haven’t backed into any tight spots - but we're getting better.
At the new RV park near Asheville, they couldn’t find our reservation where we’d paid $200 for the week for a back-in site. They wanted to charge us $9/night ($63 more ) to get into a pull through site, so we took the back-in site with no additional charge. We went to the site and it looked pretty difficult to back into, but we noticed that if we moved a picnic table out of the way, we could pull right through from the adjoining site. With a little picnic table dragging -problem solved and we saved over $60. We’re still going to have to back up into a small site sometime soon.
Kayaking Map
Here's an overview of where we kayaked. It was about a mile each way on the water to the RV park. The water was glassy smooth and beautifully relaxing Asheville
We’ve heard a lot about Asheville for being a small town in NC. My dad played his rookie year of minor league baseball here in 1953 for the Asheville Tourists - it might have been touristy back then because this is where the Vanderbilts, Fords and other turn of the century aristocrats spent their summers away from the heat. Maybe some of them went and saw my father pitch his best season at 15-5 with a 2.24 ERA. At 21, he pitched well on this Brooklyn Dodger farm team against the Spartanburg Peaches and the Gastonia Rockets. He batted .343 with a .582 slugging percentage. See more stats on the Tri-State League and his professional career here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/team.cgi?id=11004
Asheville is a quintessential college, mountain town and their food is exceptional. Asheville is nestled in the Appalachian mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway goes right by the town. Grace and I rode our bikes on the parkway and got to see the changing of the last 10%!o(MISSING)f the leaves. We mostly missed it this time, but we’ll try and make it back another year and take the whole 355 miles of the parkway along the crest of
Our favorite spot
The booth in the RV is working out really nicely. It has a big window and this is our best view so far. You usually see some RVs from the window, but we could look out over the water as well. the Appalachia in peak color. We’ve eaten at a couple of great restaurants so far that exceed the quality and variety you’d expect in a small town. Definitely put this vibrant town on your travel itinerary if you get the chance.
Asheville is mainly known for the Biltmore Estate - America’s largest home and most visited winery. We’ll tell you more about that in the next post.
Have a great one,
Scott
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Vickie
non-member comment
Kayaking Location
This really puts in perspective what beauty we live right in the middle of. We forget about that and don't take advantage of it nearly enough. I see that heron from time to time when I'm walking the dogs down near the lake. It always makes the beginning of my day much brighter. It looks like you guys had a great time. Thanks for the reminder! We can't wait to see you guys again!