Cousin's Weekend in Asheville
When my sister and I talked about our 2019 siblings weekend in Oklahoma, my cousin Becky (who is an only child) asked to get in on the next one. Kind of a lot has happened in the intervening six years - like M and I getting married, my daughter and two nephews being born, and most critically for this entry, Becky moving cross-country from San Diego to North Carolina. With that in mind, I proposed that our three families meet in Asheville, North Carolina for Labor Day Weekend. M found us a very nice AirBNB in Canton, NC, on the outskirts of Asheville, and our three families (5 adults and 4 kids) converged for cousins weekend on the Friday before Labor Day.
My family had by far the longest distance to travel. We stopped midway through Kentucky on the first night at a Holiday Inn with the most confusing parking lot entrance ever. Thankfully, it also had a pool that was adequate for the needs of a 3 year old, so the next morning Birdie and I swam for a bit before we hit the road again.
Our crew had kids aged 11, 4, 3 and 2. As you'd expect, most of our activities leveraged the AirBNB's extensive yard, complete with swings, playhouse and a small shallow creek to wander around in. Birdie and H (age 11) had a good wade down the creek one day while Becky and I watched from the banks.
Inside our AirBNB was another indoor playhouse built under the stairs and some bunk beds that entertained Birdie no end as she climbed up them. She couldn't handle down initially, but H taught her how to go back down the ladder and she had to be physically dragged away from the bunk bed to do other activities.
The owners of the AirBNB lived on the other side of the creek with a little farm of essentially petting zoo animals - goats, alpacas, a pig, some ponies, a horse, two donkeys and some chickens. They invited us to come over one afternoon to feed the baby goats and to pet and feed various other animals. The kids had a good time with that one.
Our major off-the-property activity was taking the crew to the Western North Carolina Nature Center, which is a zoo not dissimilar in size and scope from some of the ones we saw in New Mexico in 2022. The younger kids got nicely tired out wandering around the hilly park. Most of the animals weren't particularly unusual, but they did have hellbenders, which seem too large to be a real thing. We also had breakfast out one day, but mostly we just cooked at the house or got takeout.
M and I took Birdie into Asheville so M could check out some cute shops in their downtown area. We got some ice cream in a food hall, and that was the some total of our actual time inside Asheville proper, less than 90 minutes.
The three families parted ways on Labor Day. On the way home M and I drove through Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Due to the holiday it was very crowded, but had a nice visit at one of the visitor's centers and drove the long windy road from one end of the park to another. We stopped at a very beautiful overlook. I didn't get my picture with the national park sign, but for a casual drive through it was a nice enough visit.
We made it all the way to Newport, Kentucky, where our room was upgraded to a suite because the A/C didn't work in the first room they gave us. The next morning we took Birdie to the Newport Aquarium (M and I had been before over New Year's Eve 2017-2018), then we drove home with a brief stop in Columbus to visit with M's family for a bit.
That was our long weekend in Asheville. Our timing was fortuitous. Hurricane Helene rolled through western North Carolina in late September, and the Asheville area got hit hard. Many places flooded and roads were washed out, not to mention all the other things that come along with absurd amounts of rain falling in a short period of time. M reached out to the AirBNB host, and it sounds like the basement of the house we stayed in flooded. It's unclear if the neighboring creek went nuts, or the rains just overwhelmed the hill that the house was on, but nobody will be staying in that AirBNB any time soon, and compared to some parts of western NC, it appears Canton and Asheville got off relatively unscathed.
The kids in particular had a great time, so I'm already throwing out some ideas for next year's cousin's weekend!
My family had by far the longest distance to travel. We stopped midway through Kentucky on the first night at a Holiday Inn with the most confusing parking lot entrance ever. Thankfully, it also had a pool that was adequate for the needs of a 3 year old, so the next morning Birdie and I swam for a bit before we hit the road again.
Our crew had kids aged 11, 4, 3 and 2. As you'd expect, most of our activities leveraged the AirBNB's extensive yard, complete with swings, playhouse and a small shallow creek to wander around in. Birdie and H (age 11) had a good wade down the creek one day while Becky and I watched from the banks.
Inside our AirBNB was another indoor playhouse built under the stairs and some bunk beds that entertained Birdie no end as she climbed up them. She couldn't handle down initially, but H taught her how to go back down the ladder and she had to be physically dragged away from the bunk bed to do other activities.
The owners of the AirBNB lived on the other side of the creek with a little farm of essentially petting zoo animals - goats, alpacas, a pig, some ponies, a horse, two donkeys and some chickens. They invited us to come over one afternoon to feed the baby goats and to pet and feed various other animals. The kids had a good time with that one.
Our major off-the-property activity was taking the crew to the Western North Carolina Nature Center, which is a zoo not dissimilar in size and scope from some of the ones we saw in New Mexico in 2022. The younger kids got nicely tired out wandering around the hilly park. Most of the animals weren't particularly unusual, but they did have hellbenders, which seem too large to be a real thing. We also had breakfast out one day, but mostly we just cooked at the house or got takeout.
M and I took Birdie into Asheville so M could check out some cute shops in their downtown area. We got some ice cream in a food hall, and that was the some total of our actual time inside Asheville proper, less than 90 minutes.
The three families parted ways on Labor Day. On the way home M and I drove through Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Due to the holiday it was very crowded, but had a nice visit at one of the visitor's centers and drove the long windy road from one end of the park to another. We stopped at a very beautiful overlook. I didn't get my picture with the national park sign, but for a casual drive through it was a nice enough visit.
We made it all the way to Newport, Kentucky, where our room was upgraded to a suite because the A/C didn't work in the first room they gave us. The next morning we took Birdie to the Newport Aquarium (M and I had been before over New Year's Eve 2017-2018), then we drove home with a brief stop in Columbus to visit with M's family for a bit.
That was our long weekend in Asheville. Our timing was fortuitous. Hurricane Helene rolled through western North Carolina in late September, and the Asheville area got hit hard. Many places flooded and roads were washed out, not to mention all the other things that come along with absurd amounts of rain falling in a short period of time. M reached out to the AirBNB host, and it sounds like the basement of the house we stayed in flooded. It's unclear if the neighboring creek went nuts, or the rains just overwhelmed the hill that the house was on, but nobody will be staying in that AirBNB any time soon, and compared to some parts of western NC, it appears Canton and Asheville got off relatively unscathed.
The kids in particular had a great time, so I'm already throwing out some ideas for next year's cousin's weekend!