Asheville, N.C.
We have been here in Asheville for a week now, and we both like it here, at least in the spring...Turns out, we just had winter this year, it has been wet and snowey for the whole week. Since we missed winter by being in the Keys in Janurary, it's like a full year of seasons in a couple of weeks...

Asheville is a contempory town...(Little City?) with a strong feeling of who they are and where they are going. Very nice and clean Downtown area, and we enjoyed the Urban Trail which helped us get a feel for the town. They have all the amenities we enjoy, including two natural food stores, a Barnes and Nobel Superstore (As well as an excellent bookstore downtown, called Malaprops).

We both feel comfortable here, but don't get your hopes up about visiting for Christmas. We're not ready to quit traveling yet -- after all, we need to get our money's worth from those new tires we just put on the Motor Home. (Have you ever priced a 235/70R19.5 Tire?)

Tomorrow, we move on to the "Tri-Cities" area of Tennessee (Bristol, Johnston City, Kingsport) to check that out. We visited for a short time a couple of years ago, and had a favorable impression. We'll be there for a week or two, evaluating it as a place to stay.

(Shameless Plug follows...)
By the way, if you know someone who needs a medical alert bracelet, try the link on the right...Our daughter Amanda custom makes them, with interchangable bands. Compared to others we have seen, they are very affordable so you can match lots of different outfits, being stylish and still having the important protection a Medical ID bracelet provides...

March 2006 update

After working for two weeks helping build and learning about building a habitat for Humanity house,in Leyland, MS,  the main thing we learned is there is no way we are going to try to build our own home ourselves...it takes more than two people to do the walls and rafters...especially two amateurs who are not into physical labor...

But we enjoyed working with the local affiliate, and the other caravan-ers, as we took one house from slab foundation to erected, roofed with shingles, and most of the siding installed....as well as finishing work on another house, trim, finish wiring and main panel wiring, etc. 

 

It was also our first visit to the Mississippi Delta, and we made sure to visit the US 61 Blues Museum in Leyland, as well as the Kermit the Frog Birthplace museum...(Jim Henson was from Leyland!).  One of the local affiliate members is from "up North", and has lived and traveled in Europe quiet a bit.  He claimed there was more culture shock moving to Leyland than Moving to Germany....

 

We left Greenville, MS, this morning and stopped in Gadsden, AL, and tonight we have E-mail and Internet for the first time in two weeks!  After the brief showers before we left, the weather just kept getting better and better...but it is following us East!  We hope to get set up tomorrow night in Ashville before the haevy stuff catches up...

 

Jim and Cathy

our plans...

Tomorrow we move on up to Greenville, MS, to start our Habitat housebuilding project. We are looking forward to seeing that happen...

We've been discussing our future plans, and have decided we need to spend some more time in Eastern Tennessee before heading on up the Mississippi river. So after the HFH build in Greenville, it looks like we'll spend a couple of days around Memphis, then back to Bristol/Kingston/Johnston Tennessee....they call that the Tri-Cities area. That way, we can decide if that area should be on our list of places to consider stopping...without having to traipse all the way back east to decide.

After that, we are still talking about continuing up the Mississippi, including spending some time around St Louis (to see the Arch) and other assorted and varied attractions...we still have tentative plans of being in the west at the end of the summer, and going to Alaska the next summer (2007) ...


Jim and Cathy
jimandcathygreen@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~thegeekandhippie/
BLOG: http://thegeekandhippie.blogspot.com/