Adventures in Asheville and Brevard

I haven't been at PARI for most of the last two days. I say most: I was here last night after about 8 and most of the morning. I'm at PARI now. I don't really intend to leave again today unless somebody has a really great suggestion, I get a sudden desire to cook something I don't have the ingredients for (read: most things excepting pasta, chicken, grilled cheese, or tomato soup), or I fancy hiking off campus. The last isn't terribly likely: I haven't really explored most of the stuff on campus.

But yesterday I was gone from 7am-8pm. For a good reason, I wasn't just skipping work because I'm sick of museology books! The particularly bad corporate-ese book aside, the books are mostly good, informative, and I like interacting with visitors and seeing what the other interns are up to. No, I had orientation at UNCA.

That's right: It's official, I'm official, they aren't going to throw me out without creating a heck of a lot of work for themselves. (I think that caveat was only in my acceptance letter on the off chance that they had some kind of obscene number of applications and had to cut people somewhere.) I have a student ID, t-shirt, car magnet, and I saw my dorm and met some of my potential building-mates. Woo!

I blurred out my student ID. And not a *great* photo of me. Ah well. C'est la vie.

The dorm looks fine. It's close to the dining hall, there are only 19 other people (including the RA), everyone in a single-sex suite of 4 has their own room, there's a little kitchenette and the washer and dryer do not demand a steady diet of quarters. (The last totally blew everyone's mind.) However, it's a good thing I'm average height. (5'4" or so. It's the average height of an american woman. I'm not short, you're all tall. So there.) Why? Because the dorm was designed to be eco-friendly, which means it retains heat well in the winter. What does that mean? Low ceilings. I can comfortably reach up and touch the ceiling from standing without jumping or high heels or anything. They said a basketball player was once assigned there by mistake and he promptly swapped rooms with somebody in a different dorm.

The dining hall is fine. It was crowded, because that's where they shuttled everyone attending orientation at noon, and that's why I ended up in the indian food line. Not because of any special fondness for indian food--I mean, it's pretty good, and I certainly don't object to a nice curry--but because that was the first line I came to. While it may seem slightly bizarre to find a nice chicken curry with naan and basmati rice in western North Carolina, it wasn't bad and I won't mind eating there during the year; I'm required to purchase a meal plan since I'll be living on campus, and I'm inclined towards the 2 meals/day 7 days/week one, so I don't have to worry about cooking unless I want to eat at a dining hall for breakfast, or whatever. (14 meals/week, unused meals roll over to the next week, they do not roll over between semesters or at the end of the year. Parents, if you have questions, let me know so I can go climb up on the ridge and call you, or I'll see you next weekend. I have more information in my sack-o-orientation papers.) 

There's a taekwondo group. I mentioned I used to do taekwondo and they got all excited. Could be fun. There's also a hiking group, and on campus activities are free. 

HOWEVER. 

I set off yesterday morning figuring I'd program my directions in when I got to Brevard, because when I've driven through before, they have 5 bars cell service and LTE data for T-mobile. I have every time I've been there before or since, after all. 

Imagine my chagrin: I got there and had 5 bars of service...but no data of any kind. I didn't have data for the whole trip, even in Asheville. Which was fine going Brevard-->UNCA. There are signposts galore, it's an easy drive. You take NC Hwy 280 out of town (it's the main road, Broad Street, and the road you turn onto once you get off the winding road that will eventually lead up to PARI), drive until you reach the Asheville Airport, and follow the signs until you get there. It's not bad at all. Takes a little over an hour, but not much over, depending on traffic. Brevard has enough of a population to brew a slight rush hour, kind of like Tuscaloosa. 

Coming *back*...

Let's put it this way.

I now own a compass from OP Taylor's Toy Emporium in Brevard.

I bought this today.

Yesterday, I bought a lovely road map of North Carolina... 

Because it's also really easy to end up on the wrong interstate out of Asheville. I-40 and I-26 both go through--well, it's I-240 when it loops around Asheville, but you get the idea--and they're right near each other. I should have taken I-26 East (it mostly goes south, really) until I found the airport.

I ended up on I-40. I only really started to figure out something was wrong when my ears started to pop: Asheville and Brevard sit at approximately the same elevation. PARI's higher, my ears typically pop twice driving up or down to the observatory. So that's how I ended up sitting outside a Stuckey's  about half an hour down I-40 in The Middle Of Freaking Nowhere with my map, trying to figure out if I should take I-26 east or west--I got lucky. Also I still have no clue how to get on to the western variation from Asheville, I didn't see that exit at all. Surely it exists, but I cannot conclusively prove this fact. 

So a slightly-more-than-one-hour drive took over two hours...because I'm an idiot who didn't plot the route on a map *before* I ended up in some obscure Stuckey's gas station and Dairy Queen. 

Be afraid when coming back from Asheville to Brevard. It's not hard either, but you need to drive along following signs very carefully to 26 until you find the 26 E exit from what I can only assume was 240. You then get off at the Brevard/Airport/NC 280 exit  and drive until you escape Buncombe county, Henderson county, and reach Transylvania county. At that point, keep driving until you hit an obvious town: Brevard. If you're going to Pari, drive through Brevard (still on Broad Street/280) until you pass the boiled peanuts stand. Turn right at the next vegetable stand (there's also a kayaking place/tap room at the turn, sometimes a food truck) and keep going until you see a big sign that says "PARI" and has a left arrow. If you manage to still get lost after that sign, there's probably no hope for you. You still do have to drive after the big sign, but only until you see the Pari driveway. Can't miss it. 

When I got back, it was evening at PARI: The monthly evening educational session and star party held on the second friday of every month. If my helpful directions didn't give you the hint, you're invited to the July session. Come see us!! We like visitors. Well, we like any excuse to head up the hill and get out the telescopes and look at stuff. You can look too! We looked at Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, the moon, the ring nebula, and some globular clusters. I sketched Saturn and Mars for you:

Mark swears he saw the polar cap. I said I didn't remember it.
Drawn from my memory of several nights ago. 

Image inverted and tinted to look more like what we saw in the telescope

If I'm going to do much more of this sketching, I need a more powerful red flashlight, tho... you use red so that you don't bleach out your night vision. It's important to have that night vision so you can see the fainter stars you can use to star hop to something like M82 or the ring nebula. They're not that hard to see, but you do need to have night adjusted eyes. 

Today, I decided to explore Brevard. It's close, and they make exploring downtown really easy. There's public parking on the streets if you can parallel park, most of it with no meter. You're welcome to leave your car there all day. There are also several lots off the street if, like me, you never learned how to parallel park because the state of North Carolina no longer requires it to get a driver's license. For what it's worth, I can do a great 2-point road turn. Heck, with my car, I barely need to, but I can. So that's the important part. (Hah.) They put a helpful map online, and direct one-way streets so you can't get lost finding the public parking unless you try.

I like Brevard.

For multiple reasons. It's a nice town, decent size, pretty location, friendly people, and an appreciation for the arts. There are multiple easy-to-access grocery stores, banks, a public library, and a post office. Fairly standard stuff, most of it off Broad Street/NC 280. 

The shops, some on Broad street, some on side streets or Main street, are delightful. I wandered into a spice and tea shop that rivals any I've seen--including that one in Asheville, Mom knows the one I mean. Actually, I think it might be better in terms of tea selection. The back of the store is dominated by black teas on one side, herbal on the other, sold by the ounce or in sampler packs. I'm pretty conservative in my tea-preferences. I prefer green tea, breakfast tea (Irish if you have it) or Darjeeling. I'm not partial to adding fruity bits or whatever. There were several teas even I would have liked to try (had I not forgotten my tea strainer at home, a grievous oversight for sure): some kind of Frisian/germanic black tea, similar to but not quite a breakfast tea, some kind of fancy russian blend, a mint-gunpowder green tea that seemed rather nice, and a few others as well as the aforementioned breakfast teas, green teas, and darjeeling. I mostly took note of these for a certain tea-crazed younger sibling. One of the sampler packs contained a few you'd like, kid. I'm not saying it's your birthday present, but... 

There's also the most astounding toy store I've ever seen--where I found my new compass. In addition to the compass, it had two floors and many rooms of toys varying from a stuffed dodo to Hello-Kitty to Barbie to LEGO to locally made chess boards and matryoshka dolls. Not to mention the model trains, cars, dinosaur section, Fisher Price section, dress-up room, board game section, Star Wars stuff, classic books, a series of "Adventurer's Pocket Gear" along the lines of the compass, kites, marbles...

Scraw?

It's possible I'm still actually 8. I wandered around in there for way too long. It's also possible I simply couldn't find the door again. It kind of blended in to the wall... 

I had lunch at a soda shop counter that's been open for business since 1942. The drug store it was part of has since converted into an outdoor shop/gift store, but they apparently still serve the same recipes, have the same neon signage, and probably the same juke box (with those little records). I highly recommend Rocky's Soda Shop.

I didn't get any ice cream. I should've. 

It's across the street from a gem mining/rock shop/froyo venue. Which is an odd combination, but they had a nice (albeit small) selection of rocks and were wise enough to put the chocolate and cherry froyo in the same machine. Maybe I'll get some next time. It's certainly hot enough, but I didn't want anything melting all over me while I walked around.

The soda shop is also down the street from several diners and next to a bakery. Down the street from the spice shop is a record store that my dad and I visited the first time we came up to PARI. Wayward Sibling needs to visit there as well if she ever manages to get back from Spain. 

At any rate, good couple of days when I wasn't lost, explored a lot, had a generally good time. Back to the regularly scheduled museology on Monday, where hopefully I won't have any more books and can get started on my next task: figuring out which museums I can visit to pump for information, what information I still need, what questions I should be asking (out of all the ones I've written and/or listed), and how I should ask them. Fun! Hopefully. Or at least different.