Fall Road Trip 2016: To Asheville

We generally try to squeeze in a fall trip every year, and Asheville, NC has been on my list for years now.  I've heard the fall scenery there was gorgeous, and I've been stalking the leaf report for weeks. The weather and leaf report were looking good last weekend, so we decided to work a half-day on Friday and drive out there. We stopped for some Fazoli's before spending most of the afternoon on the road driving through Kentucky, Tennessee, and apparently we were even in Virginia for a tiny bit.

Friday was mostly overcast, which worked out well for driving, although we did hit a few rain showers along the way.

We stopped at the Cumberland Gap National Park.

And I saw one of the brightest rainbows I've ever seen!

While my hotel standards have increased a little bit, a top priority of mine is still price. We had scoped out the market and everything near Asheville was $150+. Autumn is a really popular time of year for tourism there. We decided to stop around Newport, TN and stay at an Econo Lodge. At that point, we had knocked out over 4 hours of driving, we paid half of what we would have paid to stay closer to Asheville, and it only left us with about an hour and a half worth of driving in the morning.

Food options for vegetarians in Tennessee...well, they ain't plentiful. We went across the street for potatoes and a Frosty lol.

Cuz' we fancy

Stay tuned for Day 2 - the views and the food get much better lol!