Bele Chere is coming to Asheville soon!

You’ve been thinking about getting away for at least a few days this summer, but the whole gas-thing and the economy have you thinking twice. Hey, we understand. We’re just glad we already live here in Asheville. We don’t have to go too far to have vacation - like just walk to the end of the street!

Anyway, Bele Chere is reported to be the largest free street festival in the South and it’s in Asheville very soon — July 25-27! You don’t want to miss it! You can stay in our economical guest suite and just drive to the nearby mall, where you can get a shuttle to the event downtown for $3 round trip - no parking hassles or expenses.

Then you have all day to play in downtown Asheville! Lots of booths to see, all kinds of food, entertainment , people-watching - it’s a great way to spend a weekend and satisfy your need to get away.

This is Bele Chere’s 30th birthday! Wow, they must be doing something right. Every year it just gets bigger and better. Downtown Asheville will be blocked off for pedestrian use only. All kinds of exhibitors and vendors will line the streets, which will be filled with people from all over. There will be all kinds of events to watch and participate in like the 3-day scavenger hunt. You could win something special!

They have cool ”misting tents” at Bele Chere where you can get misted with some nice, cool water. A great way to cool off on a  hot day. What will they think of next!

So don’t wait another minute. Call Lovers’ Loop Retreat right now to reserve a place to stay for Bele Chere. 828-296-0660. Or email us at sunrisescribes@bellsouth.net .

Bele Chere Festival 2008 | Asheville, NC

Bele Chere is Asheville’s street festival of the year! The 30th annual Bele Chere. It’s the biggest free street festival in the South. From Lover’s Loop Retreat you can drive to a nearby parking lot where you can get a special shuttle that will take you there and back for just $3. No problems parking downtown!

Three days of fun! July 25, 26 and 27th! Days and nights, that is. There will be six stages for a constant flow of live entertainment of all kinds. The schedule is not complete, yet, but you can see the line-up of who’ll be there on the website: Bele Chere Festival 2008 | Asheville, NC. In the evenings, there is a fee to see some of the major performers, but there’s lots to see and do that you don’t have to pay for.

Do you know what “dock diving” is? Come to Bele Chere to see it yourself. The local grocery chain, Ingles, is sponsoring this event. There’s a special pool set up with regular demonstrations of dogs that compete in “splashes” to get “ultimate air” as they run and jump into the water to see who can get the furthest distance. The dogs are all shapes and sizes. And they seem to really enjoy it - and who wouldn’t love getting wet on a July day!

There will be booths of all kinds, some with free samples and demonstrations. There’s a special childrens’ area. Of course, not festival in Asheville is complete without some incredible arts and crafts on display with some fine work for sale.

You’ll see people walking around with various kinds of yummy looking foods. That’s one reason you’ll want to stay for all three days! You can’t try it all in one day. Plus, as long as you’re over 21, you can get a wrist band that will allow you to purchase beer and carry it with you until 10:30 pm.

We hope you’ll call or email us soon to reserve a place to stay at Lovers’ Loop Retreat!

Free Stuff to do in Asheville!

Every day in the newspaper we read about prices going up-up-up on all kinds of things. That’s one reason why it’s great to visit a place like Asheville. There are so many things to do here and many of them are FREE! For more info, please see the schedule of events on our Web site www.loversloopretreat.com.

I’m going to give you a list of free events here, but I’m sure there are things I’m missing. The first thing that comes to mind is the Montford Park Players. This is North Carolina’s oldest Shakespeare troupe and they perform free on summer weekend evenings at a park in Asheville. Our friend Gina was selected to play the queen in “Henry VIII,” which will run July 11-20 on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at 7:30 pm. Come see it with us!

Other entertainment that’s free in Asheville this summer includes Concerts on the Quad, outdoor concerts from June 9 through July 14 at the University of NC campus here. Shindig on the Green is mountain music and dancing at its best near downtown June through August. Downtown After Five is a free concert series located on Lexington Avenue in downtown Asheville.

Asheville is known for the arts of all kinds. Art gallery walks are free and held regularly in and around Asheville. You can do a self-guided tour of galleries and studios. To learn more about some of these, look at the list of events on our Web site at www.loversloopretreat.com. I love to visit the Blue Spiral Gallery in downtown Asheville. It’s huge and full of incredible artwork.

Just walking around downtown Asheville is a free fun thing to do. On Friday nights, listen for the drums – there’s drumming at Pritchard Park in the middle of downtown. It’s a great place to go people-watching. There are occasionally other free events here, too. I once saw an incredible troupe of fire-dancers perform there. Another time there were break dancers. Walking around downtown just about any time you’ll see street performers of all kinds. There are all kinds of interesting shops, galleries and restaurants. You can just buy something to drink and sit at a sidewalk cafe to watch the people walk by or catch up on Asheville news reading a free local paper such as the Mt Xpress or New Life Journal.

Of course in July there’s Bele Chere, the South’s largest free street festival. People come from all around to enjoy the varous vendors, musical entertainment, exhibitions, food and people! This takes place all over downtown. You’ll want to check the Web site to learn more about it before you come, so you can figure out where to park. 

The Lexington Avenue Arts and Fun Festival (LAAFF) is not nearly as big as Bele Chere, but it’s so much fun. It’s a very funky, artsy festival.

Ready to head out to nature? You can visit the Botanical Gardens at UNC Asheville just north of downtown for free. There’s ten acres of nature to stroll on. The N.C Arboretum is located just south of Asheville, right off the Blue Ridge Parkway and it has free admission, but it costs $6 to park - except on Tuesdays, when it is totally FREE! There are exhibits as well as walking trails to enjoy. 

Speaking of the Blue Ridge Parkway… People ride bikes on it all the time. For hiking, there’s the Mountains to Sea Trail. There are also other places to hike along the parkway. The Destination Center is the parkway’s official visitors’ center and it recently opened just a couple miles from our Lovers’ Loop Retreat guest suite. Just a couple miles farther is the Folk Arts Center, which is also free. There are always special exhibits upstairs and a  shop of local artwork and crafts downstairs. A wonderful place to browse. Very often there are free special events such as craft demonstrations and gee-haw-whimmy-diddle competitions. Ha! You’ll have to Google that one if you want to learn more.

There are more fun, free things you can do around Asheville, but that should get you started. Don’t forget to check our Web site for a more complete list of upcoming events in the Asheville area: www.loversloopretreat.com . And plan to stay with us when you come!

The French Broad Brewing Company’s Tasting Room

Friday night a friend asked us to meet her for a beer at the French Broad Brewing Company’s Tasting Room, which is located at 101 Fairview Road, here in Asheville, NC. So, we headed out and found it near the railroad tracks, very close to Biltmore Village. It’s in a large warehouse-type building with a number of other businesses.

We’d never been there before - another Asheville adventure. So many things here to discover! It was early - about 4:30pm - and we were the first people there. They are open Tuesday through Saturday from 1pm till 8pm. And they have free music every night starting about 6pm.

The beer, of course, is great. They had about six of their beers on tap for $3.50 a pint or $2.50 a half pint. One of the beers was re-session priced at $2.50 a pint and that’s what our friend had. We all loved what we got and sat sipping and snacking on the free pretzles, talking about our latest adventures and plans as the band gradually moved in and unpacked.

I saw a sign that said all pints are $2.50 on Mondays. I think they are open the same hours on Mondays but don’t have music. That wasn’t clear. But check out their website and plan to visit when you’re here. And don’t forget to stay with us at Lovers’ Loop Retreat, the best accommodations option we know of in the area!

Asheville’s Green Laboratory - into the Future!

We’ve had lots of newspaper articles in our local paper lately about Asheville being a leader in Green Business. At least two of the downtown businesses have solar panels for hot water and I’m sure many more are on the way, plus green or living roofs are coming. These special roofs have been around in other parts of the world for years, but are new to the U.S. In cities they are wonderful because they absorb some of the rain runoff and help keep city temperatures down, too, on those hot summer days when the heat is absorbed by and reflects off all the human-made surfaces.

The Green Economy here is booming and will be further encouraged by a couple of new ventures. Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College has recently received a federal grant of $354,240 to create a Clean Energy Business Incubator that will help local small green businesses in many ways. They will be creating a clean energy demonstration center, a testing area and developing educational programming, as well as many other things.

UNC Asheville’s professor John Stevens has just proposed a sustainability institute to the Asheville Hub Alliance and they have approved supporting it. This will be an new organization that will research various green business possibilities such as development, transportation, recycling and alternative energy and then try to create new green-collar jobs. This could bring both high-pay green tech jobs here as well as entry level jobs in green businesses.

What a great place to be! Come visit and please stay with us at Lovers’ Loop Retreat!

Tourist Season in Asheville

When you say “Tourist season in Asheville” it can be taken two ways. Our local minor league baseball team is the Asheville Tourists and they have a season. There’s a game downtown going on right now. The score at this very moment is 4 to zero and the Tourists are winning!

They’ll have eight home games in a row starting tonight. The stadium is right on the edge of downtown and it’s so much fun. There are all kinds of special theme games. Every Thursday game is Thirsty Thursday. All beers and soft drinks are $1. Friday home games are FANtastic Fridays. You can get in for just $5 and women get a glass of wine for $1. This Sunday (May 25th) they’re having fireworks. They’ll also have fireworks on July 4th and 5th. Check out all the special games!

So, what’s the other tourist season? Oh, yeah. It’s when the volume of visitors to Asheville seems to increase. We can tell when that happens here at Lovers’ Loop Retreat. We get to meet lots of interesting people from all over. We’ll soon be hosting people from Michigan, Florida and California. Some people are coming for vacation, some are checking out Asheville as a place to move, and some are visiting relatives.

We love having the opportunity to meet people from all over. Hopefully, we’ll get to meet you! Just let us know if you have any questions about Asheville and what’s going on here. And be sure to check the Lovers’ Loop Retreat Web site to see the calendar of events. We’ve just added a lot of new events and all kinds of festivals. What a fun place to visit!

Greening up, getting out

It’s so green now at Lovers’ Loop Retreat! This time of year, we live as if in a treehouse.  And in fact, we have a treehouse on our property, so the image is complete. We are charmed each day by the various blooming plants in the yard. They bloom kind of sequentially, so a rhododendron plant will start waning at about the time the rose bush is springing forth.

Speaking of springing forth, downtown Asheville and the surrounding area are really gearing up for the wonderful outdoor music and theater offerings, many of them free events, that take place between now and the end of the year. The annual and very popular Shindig on the Green, a free outdoor music concert downtown, starts soon with a focus on old-time and folk music and dancing . And the Downtown After Five concert series had its first concert of the season last Friday. 

Lovers’ Loop Retreat is an easy 10-minute drive from these events. 

And the Blue Ridge Parkway beckons big-time just around the corner from our guest suite — biking, hiking, cruising in your car.

We want to be mindful of making more time to play and indulge our curiosity because that’s living!  

    We hope to meet you sometime at Lovers’ Loop Retreat.

Cheers.  

Walks in our Asheville Neighborhood

We love to take a walk every morning. If you stay at Lovers’ Loop Retreat, you may want to take an early morning walk, too. It’s such a pleasant neighborhood. But, I have to warn you - there are lots of hills! You can take the less hilly route. But it’s still a bit hilly.

I like to check out the neighborhood yards at this time of year. Even the natural green places between yards offer a lot. Something smells really good in a few places - honeysuckle? The flowers this spring have been incredible. We’ve even seen bunny rabbits scampering off with their little white cotton tails.

This morning I saw something that really got me excited! No, it wasn’t some new and wonderful flower. It was a Smart ForTwo car! Have you heard of them? One the neighbors recently got one. It’s a tiny, funky-looking car that just seats two. I suspected it must get great milage and couldn’t wait to get home and check it out. I’ve been hearing about them for several years. I think they came out in Europe first and are just now getting to the U.S

Well, I was disappointed to discover they don’t get as good milage as the Toyota Prius, which seats five. The Prius gets 45 mph on the highway and 48 mph in the city. The Smart ForTwo gets 41 on the highway and 33 in the city. Too bad.

Well, I guess I’d better get back to checking out the flowers and not let ehe cars distract me! I hope we see you at Lovers’ Loop Retreat soon!

Asheville’s Transforming Landscape

Wow! We’ve had some incredible days! I know we need rain, but I still have to say I love it when the forecast is for clouds and rain all day and we get some great sunshine. Everywhere you look there’s that light, yellow-green of spring. Trees are either proudly displaying their flowers - pink, white, yellow - or they’re pushing out new baby leaves - spring green, yellow, orange. We have more than ten dogwoods on our property in bloom right now. Most are white but one is red. And the redbud trees are peaking, too. The serviceberry trees are about done with their blossoms and the little leaves are taking over.

And the flowers! You should see the Lovers’ Loop Retreat neighborhood. In and around our yard we have every spring flower imaginable. The daffodils and forsythia are fading away, but our azaleas are out in various colors and shades. And our rhododendrons have just begun to burst open their pink buds. There are tulips of all colors and a whole variety of little purple flowers that include violets and flox.

But one thing that really transforms our outdoor environment at this time of year is going from the bare trees to the filled out jungle of green. We love our winter mountain view, but soon we’ll be enclosed in green, which isn’t a bad thing either!

We hope you’ll come visit Asheville soon to get in on the spring transformation and stay with us at Lovers’ Loop Retreat! Be sure to check our Web site to find out what’s happening in Asheville.

Asheville’s Bread Festival

Yesterday I went to Greenlife Grocery, one of my favorite stores, for the Fourth Annual Asheville Artisan Bread Festival. I’ve been a bread baker for a very long time and grew up in a family of bread bakers, so being able to attend a unique festival like this is such a treat!

Asheville is an area of high creative energy and one way it’s expressed is with the culinary arts, such as bread baking. As usual, Greenlife was buzzing with activity Saturday afternoon when I got there. It was hard to find a place to park. Everyone seems to love bread!

Tables were set up in the area people ususally use as a cafe to showcase the many local bakeries. You could walk by the tables and taste samples. Much of the bread was cut into bite size pieces and some of it had toppings such as one booth that offered cheese with a thin slice of ginger. Yum!

There was every kind of loaf you can imagine. After making the rounds and sampling, I chose to go home with a loaf of 100 percent spelt made with a sourdough-type starter insetad of yeast. It’s a dark, course-textured loaf of just organic, stone-ground spelt, spelt starter, filtered water and celtic sea salt. It’s moist and chewy and simply wonderful!

Next year you’ll have to check it out! I hope you’ll stay with us at Lovers’ Loop Retreat on your visit to Asheville!