In October my husband and I traveled to Chimney Rock, North Carolina to go rock climbing. We decided to extend our stay for a few days and make it an early anniversary trip. Neither of us had ever been and so we spent a few days exploring Chimney Rock and Asheville. I thought I’d share our favorite places to visit and eat, so here are some of our favorite things to do in Chimney Rock, North Carolina!
We stayed at The Esmerelda Inn, which I can not recommend enough. When I was booking the trip I had a hard time finding a room for our time frame, everything in the area was nearly full for the second to last weekend of October. I ended up booking The Esmerelda because they had one room available, it had fantastic reviews, it was really close to where we had planned on hiking and climbing and also because I’m kind of a sucker for historical places.
Let me just tell you about how the floor of the inn is the one where Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze danced in Dirty Dancing. I mean, there are a ton of other actual events of historical significance that have taken place at the inn but I was all “I AM STANDING ON THE DIRTY DANCING FLOOR.” Then I went and put myself in the corner, obviously.
Plus, it offered an incredible view. And it had a hot tub, where I spent a lot of time enjoying said view and reading Mindy Kaling’s “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me.” I recommend all of these things.
Our room included a full, plated breakfast every morning which J and I agreed was quite possibly the best breakfasts that we have ever eaten. We only ate dinner there one night because it was a bit out of our budget but it was worth the splurge. Even if you don’t stay there I highly recommend budgeting for dinner there at least one night because it was definitely the best meal of our entire stay.
We visited in the fall and so autumnal activities were in full swing. We wanted to go apple picking and everyone recommended that we go to Granddad’s. Which is an actual orchard, not just someone’s grandad’s house. I mean, I guess the guy who owns it is probably someone’s grandad on account of how it is a family owned orchard and all.
The whole place was very family friendly and had such a great atmosphere. First of all, how amazing is that vintage phone booth? I want it to live in my house. Second of all, almost every single kid who walked past that phone booth asked what it was. That made me feel a bit old. You could also pick your own apples by the bushel or the peck, which was another thing that all of the children kept inquiring about. Does no one sing nursery rhymes anymore? I mean, bushels and pecks are pretty much the basic means of measurement among nursery rhymes. Forget sexy, I feel like we need to bring bushels and pecks back.
We brought home several bushels of apples – our favorites were the Cameos, Arkansas Black, Candy Crisp and Gold Rush. We also wish we had bought more jugs of their homemade cider because it was fantastic. I am pining for it as I write this. We might have played rock, paper, scissors for the last mug.
We spent one day rock climbing and hiking at Chimney Rock State Park (you can read all about that here.) We took a picnic packed for us by the owners at The Esmerelda Inn as part of their picnic & park package, which I recommend doing if you plan to go to the park for the day. The tickets were discounted through them and the turkey cranberry ciabatta sandwich was so good. The only tiny issue was that the bees also thought it was delicious and so I ate my sandwich overlooking the valley while J swatted bees away from me with his hat. It was just as romantic as it sounds.
After lunch we hiked down Chimney Rock to the bottom of the waterfall. It was a bit harder of a hike than I had anticipated after spending half the day climbing but the view was totally worth it.
Then we stopped to watch John Mason play the dulcimer. It was such a beautiful thing to watch and listen to and he was so kind to talk with us about what he does.
We spent the evening wandering around all of the shops on Main Street. There was a great, eclectic little shop called Unique Expressions owned by the sweetest husband and wife team. We stopped in to get some fudge (which was fantastic) and ended up toasting a couple in their wedding attire who had come in to buy a knife to celebrate getting married about ten minutes before! It was so fun.
In Chimney Rock we ate at the Riverwatch Bar & Grill. It was good, fairly typical grill food but mostly we enjoyed sitting on the deck overlooking the river while listening to the live music. It had a great atmosphere.
We really loved Chimney Rock, there were so many things to do and if you enjoy hiking, climbing or biking then it’s a great place to visit. The trip up was beautiful, the scenery was gorgeous and I’m hoping that we can make another trip to do the bike trail because we love biking and we really enjoyed our stay.
Tomorrow I’ll write about our day trip to Asheville, North Carolina- which was incredibly interesting, had amazing food and was the source of one of the most awkward experiences I have ever had. OF COURSE IT WAS.
Disclosure: A portion of our accommodations and meals were provided by Southeast Toyota, who generously let us test drive the new 2015 Camry (more about that soon!) and we paid for part of the trip ourselves to celebrate our eighth wedding anniversary. Legally I have to tell you all that 😉
