Inn on Main Street on TV

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Nancy and the film crew

Mark Stroupe, left, and Karin Reed, right, share a moment with Nancy at Inn on Main Street

 

We just got the word that the N.C. Weekend segment featuring Inn on Main Street will be broadcast this Thursday at 9 p.m.. and Friday at 8:30 p.m. over the UNC-TV network. After that, the segment will be available through the UNC-TV web site.

On-air personality Karin Reed  and cameraman Mark Stroupe spent a day with us in April, joining our guests for breakfast and exploring our charming Weaverville. It was a perfect follow-up to the UNC-TV produced Our State segment done during last fall’s Weaverville Art Safari. We’re so glad that public broadcasting is helping put our town on the map.

Just as a reminder, you can see our inn and plenty more in the area during the Spring INN Asheville Tour of B&Bs June 9 and 10. We’re on the Sunday segment, and will feature fantastic goodies provided by Jack of Hearts Pub and Stoney Knob Cafe. Proceeds benefit the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project, of which we are members. Stay with us that weekend and get free tour tickets, a $50 value.

Weaverville Arts Mecca Pilgrimage

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Weaverville Art SafariTwice a year, the world reminds us what a wonderful destination we live in for arts and crafts. The Weaverville Art Safari brings crowds to our tiny town, filling the streets with patrons who want to get the best deal on the latest creation by their favorite artists.

The spring Art Safari is this weekend, May 12 and 13, with the famous preview party from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, May 11, at Reems Creek Golf Course clubhouse. The price for the preview party remains a ridiculously low $10.

Can’t make it this weekend? Two more events are on the Weaverville calendar and well worth the trip. We’ll blog more about them later. But mark your calendar for May 26, 27 and 28, for Weaverville’s first Roots Festival, a celebration of culture, history and all that makes us unique. Everything’s free. Also, consider joining us for the Asheville Bed and Breakfast Association Tour of Inns on June 9 and 10. Inn on Main Street is on the Sunday segment of the tour, and will feature delectibles from Stoney Knob Cafe and Jack of Hearts Pub. Yum. Our two-night guests get free tickets.

Cameras will be rolling at Inn on Main Street

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Everyone’s stoked around here since the movie The Hunger Games was filmed near Navitat Canopy Tours near Asheville in Barnardsville and at DuPont State Forest.

Now the cameras are back to focus on Inn on Main Street in Weaverville. OK, so it’s not a full-length motion picture they’re after. But the plan is to feature us in a popular travel program broadcast throughtout North Carolina. A TV production crew with UNC-TV stayed with us while doing a segment on Weaverville and the Weaverville Art Safari, and were so impressed with their stay that they suggested profiling our B&B.

Our guests this weekend will have a moment of fame as well. The crew plans to interview those willing to talk during breakfast.

Speaking of breakfast, the weather has finally gotten warm enough to eat on the porch most mornings. Ain’t spring wonderful?

Sweet sound of friendship

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Juan, Lisa and Sophia Winans

Another generation of the talented Winans family joins us on the Inn on Main Street porch.

We love it when past guests stop by Inn on Main Street to update us on the evolution of their lives: Marriages, new jobs, new homes, new babies. We were especially honored when the singer/songwriter couple Juan Winans and his beautiful wife, Lisa, took a three-hour detour on a visit to Durham to come visit and introduce us to Sophia, who was born since they last visited our Weaverville bed and breakfast.

Juan, a member of the Grammy-winning gospel music family featured on Oprah, is writing music with various gospel and hip-hop artists in Los Angeles. The couple moved there a year or so ago from Nashville. Despite their fame, Juan and Lisa are among the most humble and down-to-earth guests we’ve had. Juan once called out of the blue to tell us they think of us often and reminisce about their romantic getaway when they were still newlyweds.

‘Hunger Games’ Whets Asheville Appetites

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Jennifer Lawrence in the filming of "Hunger Games" near Asheville

Jennifer Lawrence in the filming of "Hunger Games" near Asheville

Many of our guests returned from day trips in DuPont State Forest last summer to tell us they ran into film crews at the magnificent waterfalls that make that area our favorite hiking spot. Little did we know that the movie in the making would be the biggest cinematic event around here since Baby high-stepped out of her corner in “Dirty Dancing.”
The crew was filming “Hunger Games,” a sci-fi thriller about a life-or-death contest in a post-Apocalytic world.
Jennifer Lawrence plays Katniss Everdeen, one of those chosen to compete. Much of the filming was done in DuPont State Forest, and in Pisgah National Forest near Barnardsville, a short distance from here by the Navitat Canopy Tours attraction. Some of the movie cast rode the ziplines while they were in the neighborhood.
We’re hoping that fans of the Hunger Games book series will make Inn on Main Street their base camp when they make a pilgrimage here. We know the best hiking, biking, rafting and general adventure sites around Asheville and Weaverville. There’s nothing like coming home to bed and breakfast with a hot whirlpool bath and comfy bed after a day of survival in the woods or on a river.

 

If only trees could talk

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Towering oak is gone

Our 200-year-old oak tree is gone, a victim of old age.

When you live in a 110-year-old house, you learn to appreciate elderly and dignified things, and our oak tree in the front lawn was no exception. The stately oak at Inn on Main Street was at least 200 years old, perhaps even a veteran of the Civil War era. But ever since we bought our bed and breakfast on Main Street, Weaverville, in 1998, we’ve watched the tree dying a slow death. Old branches rotted and dropped off, and tiny new sprouts jumped from the trunk in a futile effort to replace them. One or two years, the tree even produced a bumper crop of acorns in an effort to reproduce itself. But more than one guest who knows about such things warned us that the oak was a liability, probably rotten in the middle and likely to fall someday.

As it turns out, the middle was not rotten. I started counting the rings on the trunk, pondering on decades when the rings were wide and healthy, then a cycle of tight bands so narrow they seemed to run on top of each other. What did that say about eras of flood, drought, heat and cold? Which years were the brutal ones, and did they correspond with tough times in human history? I gave up counting the rings at a little over 100.

Instead of grinding the stump, we decided to memorialize the tree by making a bench out of it. Two wedges of trunk form the back rest. It’s the perfect natural resting spot for a smoker or someone who wants a private chat after quiet time, several yards from bedroom windows on our Victorian home. We hope to create a little garden around the stump seat, a burst of beauty in tribute to a majestic tree.

We’re already working on replacing the oak. I like the idea of getting one of the newly developed blight-resistant American chestnuts, but I learned there’s a waiting list just to get a seed. Maybe a hickory would do. We welcome suggestions.

On your next visit to the Asheville area, come by our bed and breakfast and see our newly light-filled yard with our memorial oak bench.  Enjoy the feel of history.

Perfect time for a Spring B&B getaway

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Inn on Main Street blooms again

March brings the blooms

We love March.

Asheville and Weaverville are alive with early blooms: daffodils, forsythia, tulips, some fruit blossoms and redbuds. The weather is great, if a bit unpredictable. It’s still early enough in the season that the Biltmore Estate, restaurants and shops are uncrowded, and we normally have last-minute rooms available at Inn on Main Street bed and breakfast.

We love to share March.

That’s why we’re extending our winter special this year until the Biltmore Festival of Flowers begins on April 1. Until then, enjoy half off the cost of your second night in a premium room, the Ayers, Lee, Forest or Garden. Stay more than two nights and we’ll extend that 25 percent savings for the duration. Put that on top of our discounted winter Biltmore tickets, only $45 for a two-day ticket with audio tour, and you have a super savings over the rest of the year. This special is good for weekends as well as weekdays, and you can combine it with our Soaking Soulmates or Girlfriend Getaway package (we’ll deduct the savings from the package price when we confirm your reservation).

Be Our Bed and Breakfast Valentine

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There’s nothing like an icy day to make you appreciate a warming fireplace and a snuggle session with the one you love. Bed and breakfasts were made for Valentine’s Day, and Inn on Main Street is doing its part to help lovers everywhere discover Asheville and each other.

Through the end of March, we are offering our winter Snuggle Up special. If you stay two nights in a premium room, you’ll get the second night half price, or you’ll get a pair of two-day tickets to the Biltmore Estate with a free audio tour, or you’ll get a third night free, a savings of up to $179.

This deal becomes especially good when you consider that many Asheville independent restaurants are offering Valentine dinner specials, and the music and arts calendar is particularly vibrant for this time of year.

Baby, it's cold outside

Baby, it's cold outside

Online reviews guide future guests

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All the pundits tell us we should ask our guests to write online reviews, since so many of us read reviews before we commit to buying something. That seems especially pertinent when you are making plans for a very special event like a romantic getaway or a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the Biltmore Estate. Many of our innkeeping comrades in the Asheville area have clearly taken that to heart, racking up hundreds of reviews on TripAdvisor, bedandbreakfast.com, yelp, iloveinns.com,  bnbfinder.com, findbedandbreakfast.com and other sites. Most folks now realize that the content of the reviews is much more important than the number, but that doesn’t keep businesses from chasing after that No. 1 rating, based mostly on the number of reviews submitted.

Operating a bed and breakfast is a very personal endeavor, which makes fishing for compliments feel a bit unseemly. We appreciate very much when we get a nice review; we just don’t like asking for them. So rather than ask on our own behalf, I suggest that you offer a nice review any time you enjoy a stay anywhere, and write the owner or manager if you didn’t. We have done both, and in both cases I like to think that future travelers benefited from our feedback.

B&B visits get easier this winter

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We’ve just added some specials for the winter at Inn on Main Street, and extended the one we’re offering now through New Year’s Eve. They’re going on the web site, but we want our blog buddies to be the first to know.

Winter Getaway

Stay two nights in a king/twins or cottage room between now and New Year’s Day, and get a third night free. Combine this special with our discounts on Biltmore daytime and Candlelight Christmas tickets.

Snuggle Up

Stay two nights in a king/twins or cottage room during February or March and get a third night free, or two free Biltmore tickets, or half off your second night. Combine this special with any of our packages. Not valid Feb. 11, 12, 18 or 19.

Valentine roses are free

Stay two nights in a king/twins or cottage room on either weekend surrounding Valentine’s Day, and we’ll add a dozen red roses in an arrangement for your sweetie at no cost. Mention this special at the time of booking. Combine this with any of our packages.

Weaverville is a sweet place to be in the winter. Our local cafes may shorten their hours a tad, but they stay open and still offer top-notch food and entertainment. Here, as well as in Asheville, you don’t need restaurant reservations, traffic is mild, the Biltmore Estate tour is a bargain and the club scene stays vibrant. And just a few minutes away, you can be on the slopes at Wolf Laurel. Bring another couple along, and we’ll send you all to the tubs at Hot Springs.