Hey all,

Looking for suggestions on places to check out for an upcoming trip this week. My wife and I are flying into Charlotte on Friday and our vague plan is to explore the mountainous border region. We have hotel reservations in Waynesville on Friday night but nothing else planned at this point.

We fly home from Charlotte on Tuesday morning, so we have 3 full days to explore.

The goal is to just explore the area and by see if it is an area we might want to live someday (several years from now) and we’ll be doing similar trips to other regions over the next several years.

Any suggestions??

Just a bit to the west is Maggie Valley, then over to Cherokee for some gambling at the Indian casino and local craft purchases, haven't been to Waynesboro in quite a while, small country mountain town.

https://visitcherokeenc.com/#home

Not far from Ashville where you'll probably find more to do, being the San Fran of the Mountains, lots of craft beer places, fusion restaurants

Roads around there are good to ride/drive take 19 to Maggie Valley then Cherokee and 441 over the mountains to Gatlinburg, the road is twisty, and there are some cool pull offs with good views on the way.

Head southwest to Cashiers and the Highlands, that's were all the folks are moving, big homes, expensive property, good places to eat, good roads to roam.

https://vacationidea.com/north...-in-cashiers-nc.html

https://www.highlandschamber.org/


If you like movie locations, the Fontana Dam out past Robbinsville is where the Fugitive dam dive "He did a peter pan, right here" was based on.

Take the Cherohala Skyway, Link great road to 129, up to Deals Gap and drive the Tail of the Dragon 318 curves, 11 miles...

https://tailofthedragon.com/

Highlands is expensive. A shipmate owns a RV park on the highlands road and she runs a little shop featuring hand crafted jewelry and stained glass.
Franklin, Brevard and other little towns have gem mining, cool something to do with the wife or littles. Usually a lapidary nearby to have something found mounted.

[Shameless plug] If you visit Hendersonville , my SIL owns and runs Postero-normally I wouldn’t suggest eating at fancy fru-fru places where you have no idea what the food is, but you can walk in in jeans and get some of the best food-due to everyone in town liking the place you have to make reservations…also their menu is online [/plug]

The Forge of Pigeons.

check out the gun store in Waynesville... it is awesome for that size town. beautiful part of the world .... only issue is when part of a mountain decides to fall on I-40. personally I don't know why anyone would want to visit the gambling and shopping dens over in Tenn. but that might just be me. yes, Hendersonville, which is south of Asheville is a quaint little town with lots of neat shops on main street.

Asheville usually means a visit to the Vanderbilt estate - Biltmore

If you are interested in motorcycles and such

https://wheelsthroughtime.com/

Biltmore if you have never seen it should be visited to be appreciated.

If you fly fish, there are several nearby options. If you like to walk up and down steep inclines, there are ample hiking trails. If you're more of a sit and look type, check out several of the parkways and mountain passes. There are some good shops if you like retail therapy in Asheville and surrounding towns. There's a website (can't recall specifics) that tells every festival in every town in that area for every weekend of the month, would be worth looking up.

That's all I got.

Do any motorcycling? The roads along the state line of East Tennessee and West North Carolina are incredible. I know Banner Elk, in the north west corner of NC has twisty roads that limit your speed to 35-40 mph. Why? If you drive any faster you can’t stay on the road. Hills, valleys and twists like I have never seen anywhere.

Banner Elk - Boone area is good for skiing, snow boarding, tubing, etc. Don’t know if you are interested in that type stuff.

Thanks everybody, I appreciate your time in responding.

It’s less of a traditional sight-seeing and tourist trip and more of a scouting trip. Like many of my friends we are prepping to relocate. We have several regions that sound good on paper but we want to actually visit them first and see. This is just the first trip in what will be a series of them, I’m sure.

As such I don’t think we’ll even bother with something like the Biltmore or go to Asheville at all. There is zero interest in living in that city.

Some of the smaller towns sound nice though.

Frankly, I’m not sure what we are gonna do honestly. Walk around the towns, go through some grocery stores, maybe talk to a realtor. Not sure… never done anything quite like this.


And no, no motorcycles in my life. I’m afraid I’d fall in love with it so I stay away.

Mom n dad live in Franklin. The nearest “good” hospital is Asheville, an hour away. Scout out the area, lots of good people there. But the entire part of the state gets visited by leaflookers in the fall and many people crowd the roads in the summer.

Although they moved there to basically get away from everything, now they are in their 70s and getting good healthcare is important.

If we win the lotto, our plan is to move back to a mountain near Asheville NOT in it.

It appears the current snowstorm we are getting in MO will skirt that area.

Check the forecasts.

Our morning flight for tomorrow got canceled so we are adjusting plans late in the game.

Now we have an overnight flight tomorrow that puts us in Charlotte at 6am and have a car reserved. I think we will drive to the Gatlinburg area and do some exploring and stay there for the first night, then on Sunday head back into NC to check out Waynesville area and stay there Sunday night.

For Monday, I’m thinking we should head north a bit, maybe the Boone area? Will it be snowy up that way?

Yeah, I’d be checking weather sites for the forecast. No sense heading into precarious conditions.

It looks like the trip is not happening.

Our first flight was canceled by the airline, without reason stated, about 16 hours before departure. The wait time to speak to a representative on the phone was “more than 4 hours”. So we rescheduled for a flight that was to leave at 10pm tonight instead of 8am this morning.

The 10pm flight was canceled, without stated reason, 4 hours before departure.

Not even a phone call to let us know. Just an email that I happened to see as I waited in the car for my wife so we could begin our 2 hour drive to the airport.

Again, the wait time to speak to a representative is “more than 4 hours”. I’m waiting for a call back, going on 5 hours now.

It seems they were kind enough to rebook our first class direct flight for economy seats with at least one layover. I can’t actually see the whole plan. It is supposed to leave at 9am.

We won’t be on it. I’m not flying across the country for 2 days when it was to be 4. I’m not spending 14 hours traveling with layovers and economy seats when I paid for first class direct.

I’m so mad it’s probably a good thing I haven’t been able to talk to anybody.

Perhaps worst of all? I am burning 48 hours of vacation time for this trip that isn’t happening. I used one one seniority based request for time off for all if 2022 for this trip, which can’t happen now.

And I imagine American will do all that it can to NOT refund me but instead offer what seems to be worthless flight credits.

And I’m sure my request that they compensate me for my wasted vacation time will be laughed at and I’ll see nothing.

So very very mad.

6.5 hours since I called and was promised a call back… the system confirmed my place in line remains intact and that I can expect the call in “more than four hours”, still.

What a way to run a business.

13 hours, still no call back.

Guess who is never doing business with AA again?

We sure hate hearing this about your trip. I would be as mad as you are about the way you were treated.