Fun with Friends: Asheville and Raleigh

Our most recent adventures include spoon-playing hippies, ugly brick sculptures, Kevin Costner, and Chinese ghosts.  Over the past three days we finished up our time with the van Achts’ in Asheville, travelled to Raleigh to stayed with a college friend of Bilbo, and continued on our way to the beach and Fayetteville, NC, to visit with Bilbo’s grandparents.
 
Hippies.  Lots of them.  Asheville is a great little town in a mountainous region of western NC, near the Smokey Mountains, where many artisans, artists, and outdoorsy people converge—enjoying an unique way of life.  Quite noticeable in our tour of the downtown were the chaco wearing, dreadlock styling, tattooed individuals that bring color to the city of Asheville.  We enjoyed the atmosphere of the town and had a lovely time walking downtown, scoping out the cute shops that pepper this clean city.  It was also neat to see so many people with kayaks, mountain bikes, and the like, which we guess reflects a fairly active outdoor scene.  The Dutchie took us to see where he will be doing his Family Medicine Residency, the clinic and hospital both being very nice.  The five of us, Bilbo, Minnie, Duchesses, Dutchie, and baby Grey dined on cheeses, crackers, sausages, beer, wine, and breast milk to our stomachs’ delight.  Oh yeah, did we mention that Grey likes to cry?  A lot.  Poor dude has colic and his parents’ treasure every moment of silence, but fortunately he is almost through the worst of it and will be less fussy in the upcoming weeks.  Minnie and Bilbo didn’t mind the crying, especially since we got 8 hours of sleep each night(we were in the basement and the Grey man was upstairs), and spending more time with baby Grey has us excited to have a little Gandalf of our own.  We played about 13 hours of a new favorite game, Le Havre, a resource trading game which we thoroughly enjoyed. 

As the Dutch left to visit family in Texas, we move on to the state capital of North Carolina to stay with Bilbo’s college friend, the Barefoot Physicist (BFP).  This Raleigh resident is working on his PhD at NC State in the field of…make a guess… yep Physics.  BFP went to WVU with us and he is known for his love of black powder “fireworks”, machine guns, and helping Bambi and his furry little friends make their way to the afterlife.  We got to meet his girlfriend who moved all the way from San Diego, CA and got a tour of what he told us was voted to be the “ugliest campus in the US".  However, despite the hideous brick statues –a consequences of an infamous brick endowment given to the university—NC State is a nice campus.  As VIP guests, we got to see BFP’s lab where he does what I refer to as “science stuff”, studying the movement of sound through granular substances. 

 

For lunch we ate genuine North Caroline BBQ, which has a tangy-vinegar flavor, at Mitch’s. BFP told us that portions of the Kevin Costner film Bull Durham were filmed in the restaurant.  While BFP worked, Minnie and I took a trip downtown to see the modest skyline and a couple of nice museums.  Both the NC Museum of Natural Sciences and NC Museum of History were free and certainly worth a visit as they were decent in size and had quite a few nice exhibits, both educational and fun fun fun.  We meet up to make a dinner for our host after visiting the sizeable Farmer’s Market, and we spent a few hours learning Dominion: Intrigue and Ghost Stories.

Dominion: Intrigue is an expansion to the like named Dominion.  It is a turn based card game in which you use the special abilities of your cards to amass victory points.  It is very fast paced and allows opportunity for both strategy and chance.  The expansion adds a lot of variety to the original, which was already on our top ten list.

Ghost Stories is a very difficult, but unique cooperative game.   The story behind the game is that of an evil ghost, Wu-Feng, who has risen from the dead and is sending his ghost minions to destroy the nearby village.  The players are Taoist Monks, each with his or her special power, which we didn’t understand.  The powers included sticky rice, silver bells, incense, coins, and mirrors.  How these items stop an army of evil ghosts, I have no ideas!  The goal of the Monk team is to save the village and send Wu-Feng back to Hell.  Boy is it hard!  We lost, as the ghosts piled into our  village and killed all of us.  Despite the outcome, we all really enjoyed the game! 

On the way to visit Bilbo’s grandparents we took a quick trip to Bailey, NC to see one of Bilbo’s off the beaten path picks, the Country Doctor Museum.  Here we saw the development of medicine from the archaic practice that balanced humors with blood letting and performed surgery with unsterile equipment to the advances we have now in modern medicine.  The museum carries this theme of progress throughout but focuses on the experiences of country doctors who spent only a few hours in the office with the majority of their practice being spent making house calls. 

 

 

From there we high-tailed it to Fayetteville to hang out with Slug Bug, Bilbo’s grandma, and the Cotton Picker, Bilbo’s grandpa.  We enjoyed a relaxing couple of days catching up and playing more Dominion Intrigue.  Cotton Picker decided that the object of the game, gaining victory points, was not interesting enough and insisted on amassing treasure and action cards.  Of course, we teased him quite a bit about the massive number of harem action cards in his deck due to the fact that he is a preacher.  We also enjoyed two nice meal outings with the grandparents, which we GREATLY appreciated!  It had been a few weeks since our bellies had been so full, and the company was lovely! 

So three new board games have been learned, much of NC traversed, and we have arrived on the sandy beaches of Ocracoke Island.  Along the way we have been listening to “Blue Like Jazz” and the Harry Potter series.  We are currently through the first disc in “Blue Like Jazz” and have started “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.”  We are huge Harry Potter fans, but this is the first time either of us have “read” “Blue Like Jazz”.  We are also enjoying the song styling of Adele, who we just recently discovered.  So, until next time, you know what we will be up to.  

PS:  If you look at the top right hand corner of the blog you will notice a “Donate” button. This is attached to our PayPal account and allows you to donate money from your PayPal or credit/bank card to supplement our adventure, especially if you are enjoying the blog.  We don’t want you to feel obligated to give us money, but we do accept handouts of any size and are susceptible to bribery.  Shout-outs and requested tributes will be made.  We can also send you post cards or requested souvenirs  (if reasonable and legal) if you send the dough.  Love, RB’s.