Weekend getaways keep me sane. There's something liberating about throwing clothes in a bag and skipping town, saying goodbye to the office, to bushes that need trimming, to the mail pile I've ignored for weeks and, within a few hours, finding myself in a totally different space.

Often that space is west of my Alexandria townhouse. I drive past the D.C. metro's long arm, out where roads get curvy and the land rises up. Brave hills defy Virginia's Piedmont and make way for true mountains, which is where I'm usually going.

I'm no fan of motels. Those land gobbling, cookie-cutter eyesores just rile me, so before heading out, I usually find a good vacation rental. Over the years, I've stayed in cabins, bungalows, converted barns, and farm houses. Some are people's residences, vacated in a rush with little hints about them left behind like family photos, a stray hair bow, clothes, and toiletries. In other houses, every last drawer is empty.

Personal belongings or not, I feel the same—transported, immersed in an actual home where I can make a pot of coffee and pour whiskey into a real glass, where I can admire the landscape from a porch or patio or second story window. At dawn or dusk, I'll stare across rolling blue silhouettes and pretend that I again live among the mountains.
You could add a pleasing look to your house windows for which you have to Buy Blinds Online roller blinds.

Long story short. Everyone knows about windsor westside, but here is the list of some unit places. Enjoy.

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Vining Cabin, Shenandoah National Park

This rustic charmer is both affordable and secluded. Owned by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, it's a third of a mile from the nearest road. Reaching it requires a hike past barns and stone fences through what was once a mountainside farm. By the time you see the cabin itself, you feel decades away from the modern world. Inside, the newest amenities are electricity and hot water. No telephone. No internet. No mobile service. At Vining, you're left to enjoy unspoiled views and imagine the people who plateaued its steep hillside, old timers who downed chestnut trees by hand to construct their home more than a hundred years ago, carving a farm from this wilderness, one you can still enjoy today.

City Bungalow, Asheville, North Carolina

Not all mountain retreats are rural. This charming little bungalow rests on a quiet West Asheville street where cars are infrequent and big porches are the norm. Since North Carolina is a longer haul, I stayed for a week, cooking old family recipes like wild rabbit hash and lounging in the hammock out back. Arts and craft touches like wide posts and vertical-paned windows reflect a period when working class Americans could still buy a quality, thoughtfully designed home, knowing it would bring pleasure for generations.

1880 Farmhouse, Edinburg, Virginia

I wrote this post here, alternating between the house's sunny front porch and a tufted leather sofa. This remodeled farmhouse, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, serves as a beautiful example of Appalachia's sophisticated side. With double parlors decorated in lush patterns, shining floral wallpaper in one and fake fur throws in the other, it reminds visitors that mountain folk can clean up real good. Though it has shimmering touches, including one magnificent gold ceiling, the house remains country at its core. Bailed hay is within sight of every window and wood is still hauled from the paint-chipped shed in a rusty wheelbarrow. High quality painting for home interiors in Central PA assists with getting such houses ready for sale or rental.

The Bed n Biskit, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

Most people like to visit Appalachia in spring, summer, or fall, but I'm also a fan of wintertime mountains. Harpers Ferry is uniquely pretty with a dusting of snow, and you can't get a better view than from the charming Bed n Biskit. This hillside house overlooks tin rooftops and brick storefronts, which stretch to the trestle-crossed Potomac. I suspect its stone patio would be a lovely place to sit on warmer days, but snow kept me inside, sipping whiskey and catching up with friends by the fire.

Big Bend Farm, Warm Springs, Virginia

Some years ago, I spent Thanksgiving at this 1920s cabin. Nestled in one of Virginia's most charming counties, it fronts a wide creek and is surrounded by pastureland. With a stone fireplace large enough to stand inside, it was warm and inviting, the perfect spot for a celebration. In addition to a generous patio and shelves filled with books, it sports an unusual feature. The ceiling fans atop its soaring main room are mounted through long, rustic tree limbs, a design quirk that makes it feel like you've rented not just a cabin but an entire lodge.

Graves Street, Charlottesville, Virginia

Situated on Appalachia's eastern edge, Charlottesville tends to eschew the hardscrabble ways of mountaineers for the more aristocratic air of Virginia's Piedmont, but in the Belmont neighborhood, the town's mountain ties are undeniable. Chickens cluck there, and you can eat a meal sourced from mountain farms at The Local, a popular restaurant. You can also stay in a big old house, one that mixes vintage finds and modern furnishings. The space is at once classic and funky, down-home and sophisticated. Whether you're knitting in this house or reading Nietzsche, you're bound to feel right at home.

You can't live in the Appalachians without having a favorite hiking trail...or ten. This Saturday, June 1, 2013 presents the perfect opportunity to celebrate yours. National Trails Day, led by the American Hiking Society, has inspired trail-themed activities all across the region.
In Shenandoah National Park, you'll find ranger-led hikes, demonstrations, and presentations throughout the day as part of the Beyond the Trailhead event at the Byrd Visitor Center, mile 51 on Skyline Drive.
Continuing its seventeen year tradition, Great Smoky Mountain National Park will host Appalachian Trail Work Day, a day of volunteering in the park. You can help clean and replace water bars, rehabilitate steps and turnpikes, and maintain sections of the Appalachian Trail. The work day concludes with a barbecue picnic at Metcalf Bottoms Picnic Area.
State parks across the region will offer all kinds of events, including hiking, birding, historic tours, games, volunteer opportunities ranging from trail repair to building a butterfly habitat, pontoon cruises, cave tours, wildflower watches, and more. Whatever you like to do outdoors, there is bound to be something to fit your interests. Check these park Websites for events near you--West Virginia State Parks, Kentucky State Parks, Georgia State Parks, Virginia State Parks, and Tennessee State Parks--or search the national map of activities on the American Hiking Society Website.
And tell us about your favorite spots. What trails do you think are worth celebrating?

About this time every year, the Southern Environmental Law Centerreleases a list of 10 places in the South that face immediate, potentially irreparable, environmental threats. If ever there's a list you don't want your homeland to make, it's this one.
Unfortunately, precious spots in Appalachia are always included. In fact, this year I was startled to count five of them. That's right, half of the most endangered Southern places are in our mountains. From their farthest reaches in Alabama to their eastern edge in Charlottesville, the Southern Appalachians are under threat. The culprits include fracking, timber sales, roadway development, and mountain top removal mining.
I shouldn't be surprised. Our region has extraordinary natural resources, and for nearly all of our recorded history, they've attracted those who would carelessly exploit them. I'm reminded of the 2008 coal ash spill in Kingstown, Tennessee; the more than 500 mountains that have already been severely impacted or destroyed by mountain top removal mining; and the wholesale destruction of our ancient forests throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Environmental degradation is not new, but neither are environmental successes. The Southern Environmental Law Center has been pursuing and winning environmental cases in the South for more than twenty-five years. Check out this video on their important work and find out how you can help save our most endangered places.
Know any of these places? What do they mean to you? And what do you think of the work of The Southern Environmental Law Center?
Leave a comment below.
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There are many creatures you don't want to cross in Appalachian forests. Boar are vicious. Bear are strong. Bobcats will scratch your face off. But none are as brutal or dogged as the great horned owl. As William Funk explains in the below guest post, these mighty birds can be terrors, killing prey without mercy and in one horrific case, brutalizing an entire Kentucky family.

William should know. He is a nature lover, freelance writer, and documentary filmmaker who focuses on wildlife and land preservation. He lives in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and as you'll see at the end of the piece, he has had his own run-in with the great horned owl.

Have you had one too? If the great-horned has ever scared, startled, or amazed you, be sure to leave a comment and tell us about it.

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Around 8:00 on the night of August 21, 1955, the Sutton farm near the hamlet of Kelly, Kentucky was visited by a mysterious and terrifying phenomenon. An hour after a brilliant streak of light had disappeared behind the brooding treeline surrounding the farmhouse, the family dog alerted Elmer “Lucky” Sutton and a visiting friend to strange goings-on in the backyard. Armed with a shotgun and a .22 rifle, the two men slipped quietly out the door to confront what was later described as a misshapen dwarf enveloped in “a greenish silver glow” lurking on a tree limb, a being possessed of an outsized head, “long arms” and “pointed ears.” Menacing yellow eyes glared down at them through the gloom. The two men opened fire, naturally, spraying the general vicinity with panicked bursts of birdshot and bullets, actions they said caused the apparition to “float” down to the ground, before they fled back into the house.

For the next three hours the family was besieged by a ruthless and unknowable presence. At one point an inhuman, staring face thrust itself before a kitchen window and was fired upon. Poking his head outside the back door, another friend who had been at the house that evening had his scalp torn open by one of the creatures that had positioned itself on the roof. This gentleman, a Billy Ray Taylor, later recalled that the beast had long “spindly” legs as well as fearsome claws. This first physical assault initiated a full-fledged panic and caused the eleven people within the farmhouse—including eight full-grown adults—to pile themselves into several automobiles and hightail it eight miles south to the Hopkinsville police department. Subsequent investigation by city, county and state officials (later joined, allegedly, by agents of the United States Air Force) failed to provide any evidence of the night’s encounter other than the hole in the kitchen window screen produced by a jittery shotgun blast.
What evil presence was behind this sinister visitation? Meteor activity had been widely reported over the region that night which might explain the UFO-like streak of light but what about the yellow-eyed monsters that trapped an entire extended family of taxpayers in their home for three solid hours? Was it cabin fever? Bad whiskey? Mass hysteria? Or perhaps it was something even stranger than the fictional aliens the Sutton family still swears by, creatures every bit as eerie, formidable and bizarre as they were described, but beings decidedly of this planet.
While we will never know exactly what went on that weird moonlit night, it seems probable that the Sutton’s uncanny visitors were specimens of Bubo virginianus, the great horned owl, known as the “flying tiger” for its single-minded savagery when hunting. Not even eagles, not even the peregrine falcon or northern goshawk, can match the horned owl’s pitiless devotion to the slaughter of such a wide variety of prey. Contributing to its diverse larder is the fact that horned owls are sexually dimorphous, with females often significantly larger than males. Males average a little over three pounds, while females can weigh up to five pounds. This trait provides the great horned with a wide array of prey species from which a pair may select on any given night. And when a horned owl goes in for the kill it keeps fighting until either it or its quarry is dead—there is no retreat.
[caption id="attachment_6223" align="alignright" width="222"] Photo provided by Sandy and Chuck Harris.[/caption]
Standing two feet tall and boasting a five-foot wingspan, the great horned owl is a common bird throughout its North American range. While there is a great deal of dissimilarity among even local populations, horned owls in the southern Appalachians generally display a rustier coloration than their gray northern cousins. The great horned owl’s feathers are richly patterned in variations of maple, black and pale gray, with a buff undercoat barred with heavy streaks of chocolate.
This cryptic coloration makes for excellent camouflage when the owl naps in the afternoons, perched on a tree limb near the trunk and elongating its body to blend into the bark. Tufted “horns” (plumicorns) used for both camouflage and non-vocal communication can accentuate the deception. While regurgitated pellets of indigestible hair, teeth and toenails on the forest floor may give away their proximity, hunters and hikers routinely pass unknowingly beneath dozing owls, whose ability to mold their feather conformation and body shape to blend into their environment is without parallel among American birds.
All adult great horned owls have outsize eyes with radiant golden irises, jammed with rods to facilitate a night vision 100 times greater than our own. The eyes deliver 10X sharper vision than ours and are fully the size of an adult human’s, so large that they are immobile within their sockets, a physiological necessity which gave rise to the owl’s fourteen neck vertebrae (twice that of other birds) and 270˚ head rotation. A semi-transparent nictating membrane is used as a third eyelid to regularly clean the lenses and provide protection just before an attack. The pupils are capable of independent dilation, and the great horned owl, like many raptors, can stare unfazed into the noonday sun.
If the horned owl’s vision is supernal, its hearing is even more astonishing. The great horned’s eyes are set within concave partial facial discs that channel the faintest vibration directly to its ear holes, which are placed asymmetrically on the head to facilitate the triangulation of sound emissions and help the owl pinpoint the location of prey in dim light.
Possessed of uncanny sight and hearing, enormously powerful, relentless, insatiable, and utterly without fear, the great horned owl exerts dominion over all other creatures of the American night. While rabbits are generally preferred, prey species run the taxonomic scale: crayfish, snakes, shrews, hares, squirrels, sandpipers, bats, rats, mice, fish, hawks, owls, pigeons, possums, herons, groundhogs, weasels, woodpeckers, geese, crows, porcupines, skunks, housecats—in short, anything the owl can physically overcome.
Great horned owls hunt by perching on limbs and waiting in silence for their extraordinary senses to betray the presence of prey on the ground. Once detected by a healthy adult, the victim stands little chance of escape.
Like many raptors (Latin for “one who seizes by force”), horned owls employ what is best described as fury when subduing large prey, maximizing the damage they inflict so as to ensure a quick kill and little or no dangerous resistance. The great horned owl is, after all, only a bird, and birds are delicate, hollow-boned creatures, half air themselves, and cannot withstand the concussive blows that solid-boned mammals may shrug off. The legendary ornithologist Arthur Cleveland Bent, in his Life Histories of North American Birds of Prey (1937), recorded the horned owl’s killing rage:
“A few feet in front of me was a large Horned Owl in a sort of sitting posture. His back and head were against an old log. His feet were thrust forward, and firmly grasped a full-grown skunk. One foot had hold of the skunk’s head and the other clutched it tightly by the middle f the back. The animal seemed to be nearly dead, but still had strength enough to leap occasionally into the air in its endeavors to shake off its captor. During the struggle, the Owls’ eyes would fairly blaze, and he would snap his beak with a noise like the clapping of your hands.”
Yet this killing machine, ferocious without peer, is also a devoted parent; in fact much of the hunting by a mated pair is done for that most elemental and noble of motives—perpetuation of the species. Horned owls are savagely protective of their offspring, and the murderous strength unsheathed in combat is easily turned on interlopers who dare to approach an occupied nest. Bent recollects one incautious egg collector’s description of a typical two-pronged attack:
“Swiftly the old bird came straight as an arrow from behind and drove her sharp claws into my side, causing a deep dull pain and unnerving me, and no sooner had she done this than the other attacked from the front and sank his talons deep in my right arm causing blood to flow freely, and a third attack and my shirtsleeve was torn to shreds for they had struck me a third terrible blow on my right arm tearing three long, deep gashes, four inches long; also one claw went through the sinew of my arm, which about paralyzed the whole arm.”
The horned owl’s drive to satisfy the hunger of its young is such that it kills more, sometimes much more, than even gluttonous owlets can eat. Young great horned owls are fierce competitors for meat and will sometimes kill one another when provender is insufficient, but the parents’ hunting prowess is such that in most years this is rarely a concern. According to Bent, one nest contained “a mouse, a young muskrat, two eels, four bullheads [catfish of the genus Ameiurus], a woodcock, four ruffed grouse, one rabbit, and eleven rats. The food taken out of the nest weighed almost eighteen pounds.”
Great horned owls mate for life but live separately for about a quarter of each year. After spending the fall and early winter hunting apart from one another a mated pair is eager to renew their bond, with hooting courtship serenades beginning in the frigid depths of January, earlier than any other North American avian species. The courtship ritual is purposefully seductive and even touching: after gentle hooting has lured her within range the male softly approaches the larger female, strokes her with his bill, lowers his wings and makes a series of solemn bows to her before renewing his tender caresses.
Eventually the pair flies off together to mate and find a home to rear their young, usually the abandoned nest of a hawk, crow, heron or squirrel situated 30-70 feet above the ground. If they are unable to find a suitable empty nest before the female is ready to lay eggs, the mated pair will simply appropriate an occupied one, driving away or killing the residents. Attacked during the night when they are at their most vulnerable, even the largest hawks are unable to withstand the great horned owl.
A few years ago, having finally talked my girlfriend at the time into a camping trip, we were comfortably ensconced at the campground of Pilot Mountain State Park in North Carolina, a mountainous island of southern Appalachia set in the undulating western Piedmont. It was late November (an initial source of friction) and we were hunkered down by the side of the dying campfire, preparing to turn in, when turning to say something to me she suddenly stared wildly over my shoulder and screamed. I whirled around but saw nothing. “Someone was in that tree,” she whispered, seizing my arm. “I saw his eyes in the firelight, looking down right at us!”
Assurances of safety were useless; nothing would do but that I make a dutiful patrol around the perimeter with my flashlight, my mind on other things, and scan the star-rimmed pines for arboreal rapists. Finally she calmed down enough for us to retire, still insisting she’d seen someone staring at her with great yellow eyes from midway up the pitch pine on the edge of our campsite.

According to forestry and travel sites, this is the peak week for fall leaves in the southern Appalachians. If you're not already perched on a mountainside, run, do not walk, to your car. Now is the perfect time to cruise along a ridge line, peering over the guard rail to a swaying orange and red canopy that climbs the mountains like it's trying to reach the sky.
The only thing that can make your fall mountain ride any better is not having a guard rail block your view and not worrying with roads at all. That's possible with the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad. In an antique car with giant windows or even open air views, you can cruise through the most remote parts of the Smoky Mountains National Park. These are areas that can only be accessed by rail or on one very, very, long hike.
This week, Sarah Conley, the railroad's marketing manager, took some time to tell us what you'll see there.
TR: Sarah, thanks for getting together. What can riders expect to see during your Fall Foliage trip?
SC: The fall foliage trip is one of a kind, the best thing about it is every day is something different. A new color, new wildlife, and new faces of on-board staff. We really sit in a key area for fall leaf season, our elevation sits just below the highest point in North Carolina and allows our fall to change a bit more slowly. We can almost bet that each season we will have at least 2 weeks of vibrant leaf foliage.
I always describe the Smoky Mountains during the fall as one large canvas and each day it’s just being added to by different colors different shades…rich auburns and buttery yellows. It has a way of enveloping you when you arrive, the season is embracing you. It’s one big masterpiece of natural beauty.
People can expect relaxation and peace of mind. We do the driving for you.
Ride in first class and you really get the extra special treatment. Your meals and drinks are taken care of and you even have a wait staff there to assist you with anything. This year we have the brand new Open Air First Class car. It really is fantastic--panoramic views, open air, the scents and sounds all with first class style. For a true train enthusiast, open air is the way to go. You’re up close and personal with the train. You feel the grit of the railroad.
TR: The Great Pumpkin is one of my favorite cartoons. What awaits fans on the Peanuts Pumpkin Patch Express?
SC: The Pumpkin Patch Express is one of my favorite events! If you have ever read the book “It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” that will give you a feel for what we do.
Its family fun at the heart, and we like to throw in some history. Younger kids are growing up in a society where railroading is not a mode of transportation, and we are losing that history. Our founder Al Harper, is intent on giving kids these opportunities to mix fun with learning.
Once you board the train to the pumpkin patch you are on about a 25 minute ride, and as you pull into the pumpkin patch The PEANUTS Gang is there to greet you! There are bouncy houses and a giant slide, temporary tattoos, wagon rides, music, games, snacks, coloring and of course trick-or-treating in our Trick or Treat street. And before you leave don’t forget to pick out you pumpkin from the patch. Kids are encouraged to wear their costumes; that’s the only way to trick or treat.
TR: Ever see anything spooky on a train ride?
SC: I am sure if you ask one of our engineers or conductors they will tell you plenty, but I do know of the legend the Cowee Tunnel on the Tuckasegee River Route. They say it is haunted by the spirits of the convicts who worked by hand to dig the tunnel out. They were camping across the river at night and hide to ride a man made ferry across the river to get to the tunnel. These were convicts sentenced to do manual labor, and they were all shackled together. One morning they were all crossing the river on this ferry, and it tipped over spilling the convicts and two guards into the rushing river. Their shackles did their job; they kept them together, even until death by drowning. Legend has it that the convicts' bodies are buried right above the tunnel, and the reason the tunnel drips water year round is because they are weeping at their fate. Inside the tunnel, you can still hear their pic axes digging away.
TR: The Revivalist has a lot of Blue Ridge Parkway fans. Tell us why riding the train through the mountains beats driving through the mountains?
SC: There are some spots where you can access the same views the train provides by car, but most spots are only accessible by train. Its true you can take a car and drive through Western North Carolina and see some fantastic things, but actually stepping foot on a vintage train and letting us show you around, that beats the heck out of being cramped in a car. Trains are a symbol of a pioneer spirit. The Murphy Branch line was dug out, carved out, and formed by thousands of men who were committed to moving West North Carolina forward in time. How amazing that this symbol of longevity is still alive and is accessible to anyone who wants it.
The train ride really sets your mind to a pace of steady comfort. Nothing to worry about, no seatbelt, no gas gage, GPS, speed limit….it’s just...ride.
TR: What's the best part of riding the train for you?
SC: I really enjoy seeing my guys (engineers, brakemen, conductors) work. These are true train fans. They love their job and they love to be able to provide this experience for others. There is nothing more uplifting for me than to see a engineer in overhauls covered head to toe in grease and sweat, hot as fire, putting in countless hours on the line, but smiling from ear to ear, and taking the time for a photo with a little boy or helping a lady off the train. That’s railroading, that’s the spirit of Great Smoky Mountains Railroad!

It was a sweltering day in North Carolina, unusually hot for May. We decided to take a break from Asheville's buzzing downtown and look for somewhere cooler. We headed south on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
I'd never driven this stretch. In fact, I'd never driven the Parkway beyond Floyd, Virginia, where I always stopped to visit my grandmother or listen to old time music at the town's famed Friday Night Jamboree.
It being Memorial Day Weekend, I thought we'd be stuck in a string of slow moving cars, like ants climbing the mountainsides. Instead, we cruised along at a pleasant 45 mph the whole way, through the scrubby pines on Grandfather Mountain; through a half dozen stone tunnels; and high along the ridge line, well above 4000 feet.
We counted down until we spotted mile marker 417--the landmark for our destination. It appeared on the right, but we didn't need it. Two dozen cars parked on the roadside told us that we'd arrived. We left the Jeep by the overlook for Looking Glass Rock, a granite dome that formed when a magma bubble became trapped underground. As erosion filed the Appalachians, it also exposed this enormous rock.
At the overlook, you could pick out the tourists. They whipped out their cameras and gaped at Looking Glass. Who can blame them. It's impressive, but they were missing the treat across the road.
[caption id="attachment_3707" align="alignright" width="171"] Deer/Bunny Head Tree[/caption]
Locals ignored the view altogether and ducked between two trees. They knew about an unmarked path, and thanks to a little internet research, we did too.
I took us a mile back into the thick, cool woods, where I exerted unusual self control. I only stopped for one photo. There was a strange tree that had bent itself into the shape of a deer's head (said Ryan) or a bunny's head (said me). Whatever the animal, it was irresistible. I snapped a picture of it, but kept moving, past the bright orange mushrooms and the rotting wood stairs. I could shoot them on the way back out.
The path sloped down, gently given our altitude, until we could hear water. It wasn't the light trickle of a meandering stream but the pounding of falls, which was exactly what we wanted.
Turning a bend, we faced the rushing water. There was a series of drops, each about ten feet in height. The closest plunged into a six foot pool, which fed into a deep rock channel, which then dumped into another pool, and everywhere there were smiling, soaking wet people. We'd found Skinny Dip Falls. The local Pool Cleaning Company ensures that the pool remains clean, energy efficient and prevents costly repairs.
In spite of the name, everyone had on clothes. They dove from cliffs wearing trunks and tanks and cut-offs and bikinis. When they emerged from the pool, they held the fabric tight and shivered until returning to sun-warmed rocks.
[caption id="attachment_3709" align="alignleft" width="171"] Skinny Dip Falls[/caption]
I have to admit that I did not dive. Trees grew right up to the edge of the water, so everyone squeezed onto boulders. People had claimed their spots. Rather than edge in on strangers, we hiked upstream, through the underbrush, along a path that is eroding and steep. It was infrequently used, but that was just what we wanted. In a few dozen yards, we found a secluded stretch.
The water was only waist deep, which was fine. We weren't looking to swim. We waded and rock hopped. We laughed at people downstream as they splashed and flopped in the water. We marveled over riverside trees that seemed to be giant rhododendrons and swore that we'd look them up when we got home. (We haven't yet.) We fished around for neat rocks below our toes and craned our necks to see cliffs a half mile up the mountainside. We sat for a long time. The people downstream left, and the forest grew gray. In the dusk, we talked low to one another, the way you do when there are only two of you in the woods. The topic was our future, and the question we kept asking was why we lived so far from this beautiful place.
What watery destination leaves you reflective? Where do you go to belly flop from a high cliff or soak at the base of a falls?
Tell us all about your favorite swimming hole.
 

Remember Budget Travel's coolest small towns contest?
Good news! Brevard, North Carolina won the title for the Southeast and emerged as the third coolest town in the entire nation.
Your votes helped, and here's your chance to celebrate. The White Squirrel Festivalstarts this Saturday. For two days, the heart of Brevard will be small-town party-central complete with a box car derby and nearly twenty bands.
The lineup includes jazz guitarist Marc Yaxley, award winning singer-songwriter Tom Fisch, and Woody Pines, an Asheville quintet that has channeled early 20th century Mississippi Delta music right into my iTunes playlist.
In fact, why not get a jump on the festivities?
Grab a hot pretzel and crank up this sample:

Budget Travel wants to know the coolest small towns in America, and our mountain brethren in Brevard, North Carolina have made the short list. Competing against twenty other towns, Brevard is currently in second place. Only Ely, Minnesota has more votes.
[caption id="attachment_775" align="alignright" width="240"] Rocky’s Grill and Soda Shop[/caption]
Never been to Brevard?
Me neither, but thanks to Google Maps and Carolina" href="http://brevardnc.org/" target="_blank">Heart of Brevard, I feel like I have. The adorable downtown is chock full of quirky establishments--an old theater called the Co-Ed, an arts cooperative, a gallery in a fire station.
Its town maskot is even a little odd. The locally celebrated white squirrel has inspired a store full of chachkies and an annual festival.
Budget Travel says that it wants to highlight edgy towns--"think avant-garde galleries, not country stores." Brevard's got that covered and then some. In addition to its burgeoning arts scene, it also abuts the Pisgah National Forest. Just minutes from the town center, the park boasts 250 waterfalls and some of the largest swaths of old growth forest in the South. Take that Ely, Minnesota!
It's time we show the nation that mountain people actually do know how to use computers and that we stick together. Vote now!

Asheville's Grove Park Inn might be a ninety-seven year old bastion of civility and leisure, but it gets a little naughty next weekend. It's offering a getaway for older ladies who still know how to growl.
The Sadie Hawkins Cougar City Weekend is custom designed for sexy seniors and their boy toys. The package includes...

• Two nights of accommodations
• Dinner for two
• $100 Grove Park Inn gift card
• Coupon for 20% off Spa
• Coupon for $65 golf round
• Fuzzy handcuffs
• A bottle of Stoli
• Complimentary Poli-Grip

Fine. Yes. I added a few of those. Still, you won't find a better way to enjoy your adult sex toys and woo your favorite farm hand, office intern, or paper boy. The inn just asks that you don't scratch the furniture.