Asheville, NC
The surviving home of Asheville's most famous barbecue, ten minutes from the field by the restaurant's own count, in a big Arden smokehouse with 12 Bones Brewing pouring under the same roof and an Anthony Bourdain mural presiding. The blueberry chipotle ribs are the order that made the reputation; Barack Obama came for them in October 2008 and again with Michelle in May 2010, and in 2013 the Secret Service picked up to-go for Air Force One. The original River Arts District room was lost to Hurricane Helene's flooding; the Kings, owners since 2012, carry it on here with sides like corn pudding and a slaw from a founder's grandmother's early-1900s recipe. Open seven days, 11 to 8, restaurant and taproom alike. The Blue Ridge surrounds the field; the approach is the appetizer.
The approach through the Blue Ridge Mountains is one of the most scenic commercial airport approaches in the eastern US. Asheville was the home of Thomas Wolfe, and the Biltmore Estate (largest private residence in America) is visible from the air.
The largest private residence in America — 178,926 square feet, 250 rooms — built by George Vanderbilt between 1889 and 1895. The French Renaissance château and its formal gardens are clearly visible from the air south of Asheville. The 8,000-acre estate includes farms, forests, and the Biltmore Winery. The sheer scale is difficult to comprehend until you see it from above and realize the building itself covers 4 acres.
The most-visited unit of the entire National Park System: 469 miles of motor road tracing the crest of the southern Appalachians from Shenandoah down to the Smokies, 252 of them in North Carolina. Begun as a Depression-era public-works project in 1935 and not fully finished until 1987 (the soaring Linn Cove Viaduct around Grandfather Mountain was the final piece), it was engineered for slowness — no commercial traffic, gentle grades, 45 mph, the views unfolding through 26 tunnels and hundreds of overlooks. Around Asheville it climbs past Craggy Gardens, where rhododendron blankets the balds, and on to Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi at 6,684 feet.
One of the wildest, most rugged places in the eastern United States — a 12-mile-long, 2,000-foot-deep chasm where the Linville River saws down through quartzite into the Pisgah National Forest. It's one of only a few federally designated wilderness areas in the East, so rugged it was never logged; the gorge walls are cliffs and crags (Table Rock, Hawksbill, the Chimneys) prized by climbers, and the terrain is steep enough that hikers regularly need rescue. At the head of the gorge, Linville Falls drops in tiered cascades about 90 feet into the canyon mouth. The surrounding Pisgah forest hides waterfalls in nearly every hollow.
The most-visited national park in the United States — by a wide margin, drawing more than twice the visitors of the Grand Canyon — straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina line along the crest of the southern Appalachians. The "smoke" is real: the dense forest exhales so much water vapor and organic compounds that a blue-grey haze hangs permanently over the ridges. It's one of the most biodiverse temperate places on Earth — over 19,000 documented species, with estimates of many times more, and the salamander capital of the world. The park has no entrance fee (a condition of the land transfer from Tennessee and North Carolina). Cades Cove, a broad valley ringed by peaks with preserved pioneer cabins, and Clingmans Dome, the highest point in Tennessee, are the signatures; the Appalachian Trail runs the crest for 71 miles.