Red, White and Blue Bed and Breakfast in Weaverville

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We’re fired up.

The Fourth of July is back in Weaverville. Gone are the days of dragging the porch furniture from Inn on Main Street into the street to watch the fireworks. The town has moved the show to Lake Louise, four blocks away. But this year the show is bigger and better than ever. Four bands will play music down by the lake all day, followed by a spectacular fireworks display.

Here’s how our town events calendar describes it:

“The Town of Weaverville will be hosting the Fire on the Lake Music Festival at Lake Louise.  The festivities will begin at 5 PM at the Lake.  Remote parking is available at AB Emblem, OTS, and in Downtown Weaverville.  A shuttle bus will be provided to transport festival goers from the parking lots to the Lake.  Handicapped parking will be available at the Lake.

“The Festival will feature peformances by Cripps Puppets, Moses Atwood, Glory on the Floor, and will feature a performance by David Holt and the Lightening Bolts!

“The event will conclude with the Town’s fireworks show!”

We still have openings for the Fourth and beyond, and hope some of this record 90-degree sizzle will cool down by then. Bring your lawn chair and enjoy the show.

Asheville Bed and Breakfast Tour Filled the Inn

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Our docents, Anita Walling, Jennifer McGaha and Cindy Tedesco, with Stoney Knob goodies. Jack of Hearts food filled another table. Nobody left Inn on Main Street hungry.

Nancy and I lucked out with the best helpers and best food sponsors anyone could ever wish for during the Asheville Bed and Breakfast Association Spring Inn Tour this past weekend. We had more than 100 guests, most local but a few from out of state, and couldn’t have accommodated them without help from three great volunteers. Jennifer McGaha, Anita Walling and Cindy Tedesco were so cool, so informative, so organized and so friendly you’d think they do this for a living. They made it possible for us to schmooze and sing the praises of Inn on Main Street and Weaverville.

Speaking of Weaverville, we were very proud that our two food sponsors, Stoney Knob Cafe and Jack of Hearts Pub and Restaurant, showed our visitors that it’s worth the drive out from Asheville to enjoy some world-class eating. Jack of Hearts supplied Reuben sandwiches and mini carrot cupcakes that brought rave reviews. Stoney Knob went over the top, providing about 10 platters of everything from roast pepper hummus to pesto olives to spanakopita to petit fours to prosciutto to mountains of fruit … you get the idea.

Their generous contributions should pay off for Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project, which will receive some of the proceeds from the tour.

The payoff for an innkeeper is meeting new people, and learning about what makes us all the same, yet unique. It was fun connecting with so many in one day and finding we had  gone to the same school with one, worked in Florida with another, shared pottery interests with a few others, and generally all fell in love with the warmth and comfort of our old house. It was exhausting, but we’d love to do it all again.

Please keep a watch at the Asheville Bed and Breakfast Association tour page for next year’s tour dates.

Asheville B&B Spring Tour of Inns

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ABBA logo

We’re excited at Inn on Main Street to be participating in the Asheville Bed and Breakfast Association Spring Inn Tour this weekend. We’re among the seven inns on the Sunday segment of the two-day tour, and will feature appetizers from Stoney Knob Cafe and Jack of Hearts Pub and Restaurant, both in Weaverville. On Saturday, eight other B&Bs will be featured.

Best of all, our guests who stay two nights or longer get free tickets for the two-day tour, a value of $50 per couple.

Locally grown food will be a theme, since our tour this year benefits Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project, a non-profit dedicated to promoting locally grown food and other goods. ASAP’s philosophy is embraced by many of our B&Bs and restaurant sponsors. Our own organic gardens will be on display as well as our rooms.

If you book with Inn on Main Street online, just let us know in the notes field that you want the free tickets.

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).