Southern USA Road Trip - Asheville, North Carolina

When planning our road trip to Nashville, we discovered that Asheville, North Carolina was not too far from our route, so we decided to make a little detour to check it out for one night.

Asheville is located in the Blue Ridge Mountains and has been named the best beer city in the USA many times.  There are over a dozen craft breweries and great restaurants in the town so it seemed like the kind of place we'd enjoy.  

We stayed at the Aloft Asheville hotel located right downtown.  We loved this hotel - from the decor to the service to the location.  The rooftop pool even has a nice view of the mountains.  

Our first stop was a quick lunch at White Duck Taco's new location downtown, right across from our hotel.  We tried the Banh Mi Tofu, Bangkok Shrimp, Korean Beef Bulgogi and Fish tacos.  They were all great but the shrimp and fish were our faves.  Every place in town sells local craft beer so we had some here too.  

Then we headed down the street to Wicked Weed Brewing.  They have a great brewery and restaurant right downtown.  Matt tried the Black Angel black sour cherry ale and it was his favourite beer of the whole trip.  He tried a few other kinds of beer in their downstairs tasting room and bought some bottles to bring home.  

We headed back towards our hotel and stopped for a coffee at this coffee bus.  Matt had a "shot in the dark" which is a brewed coffee with an espresso shot in it!  I had a dirty iced chai.  It was just what we needed to keep us going through the evening. 

We visited several other pubs and got some pizza for dinner.  It was a great night and a very fun town.  

When I do research for our trips one place I always look for information is the travel section of the New York Times.  The next morning we headed for breakfast in West Asheville to one of their recommended places, Biscuit Head.  

This meal was insane.  I had fried chicken on a biscuit with sweet potato butter, sriracha slaw and a fried egg on top!  Matt had a country ham biscuit with scrambled eggs, cheese, fried green tomatoes, and red eye gravy which is made with coffee!  We also ordered an extra plain biscuit so we could try the butter & jam bar.  We tried jalapeno butter, orange chocolate butter and banana butter with chunks of banana in it.  We also had cherry Dr. Pepper jam and green chili jam.  Outstanding!

We were sad to leave Asheville and wished we had more time to spend there.  But even the drive out of town and back to Tennessee was gorgeous on the Blue Ridge Parkway through twisting mountain roads.  A fantastic detour.  We will be back!  

Southern USA Road Trip - Sweet P's Barbeque & Soul House

Back to our trip!  

I'm a planner.  Honestly I don't think there's anything I like better than planning a trip.  I've read research that says planning a vacation can make you happier even than taking one!  

When I plan a trip I start with an excel spreadsheet and Google Maps.  I try not to get too crazy with the spreadsheet, but I do like to plan a rough itinerary for each day, including any travel and pre-booked hotels, shows and activities. 

I use Google Maps to plot out locations we may want to visit and any travel routes.  Bars, restaurants, attractions, shopping, hotels.  This way I can see distances and which places are close to each other.  

This helped us make a few discoveries and plan our trip.  Initially we were going to drive straight to Nashville, but I happened to find Benton's Bacon in Tennessee, close to the Tail of the Dragon - a great mountain driving road I knew Matt would love and that was not far from Asheville North Carolina, one of the best beer cities in North America.  It was not hard to convince Matt to add a few days on to our trip to visit these things - they're right up his alley.  

But first, after our great night in Lexington, Kentucky we were spending a night near the airport in Knoxville to be close to our next day's route.  I hadn't planned anything for the area, so I used Yelp to find the best barbecue in Knoxville and luckily there was a place right near our destination.  

Sweet P's Barbeque & Soul House is located south of Knoxville on a country road near a marina.  There are a bunch of smokers outside.   You order at the counter.  The service was so friendly!

We decided to share the sampler platter of 1/4 rack of ribs, brisket, a pulled pork sandwich and three sides.  We chose mac & cheese, green beans and banana pudding.  On the table were three sauces, a thick East Tennessee tomato-based barbecue sauce, a thin North Carolina vinegar-based sauce and a hot thin sauce with chipotle.  I loved the thin sauce.

The meat was outstanding.  This was a late lunch/early dinner for us and it was so fantastic, we decided to get some take-out to have later on back at the hotel.  

We ordered 1/2 a rack of ribs and a dozen wings but somehow we ended up with a full rack of ribs!  

The wings were delicious and the ribs were perfect but it was way, way too much meat!

This was a very lucky discovery and we were so happy to try all these Southern specialties at such a nice, friendly place.   

Southern USA Road Trip - Lexington, Kentucky

We spent the first night of our road trip in Lexington, Kentucky.  Normally when I plan our trips I verge on over planning.  I research hotels and restaurants and make spreadsheets of the best locations and an itinerary of things to see each day.  We can be flexible, but it's nice to have an outline so we don't miss anything we really want to see. 

But on this road trip we wanted to be a little more spontaneous.  We hoped to make it all the way to Lexington on our first day, about a 7-hour drive and we'd read we could get a hotel easily enough without a reservation so we played it by ear. Unfortunately we don't follow horse racing.  Little did we know, two of the biggest horse events of the year were happening in Kentucky the two days we would be travelling through.  In Lexington, it was the Rolex, Kentucky and the city was almost booked to capacity.  A week later we hadn't learned our lesson and had to skip Louisville because it was Kentucky Derby weekend.  So we've learned to check the calendar for horse events when visiting Kentucky in the future.  

But we managed to find a room for the night, and Lexington was good to us.  Everything came together almost magically without planning.  We used the Rate Beer Places app to find a bar with craft beer that was open nearby.  When we arrived we saw a taco truck in front of another bar across the street.  So we went over and ordered some tacos.  

We were shocked and delighted when the taco guy asked whether which bar we wanted our tacos delivered to.  He said he'd bring them to us across the street!  It was a nice change from our home town where they've just voted not to allow food trucks on city streets at all.  

Southern USA Road Trip - Bourbon, Bacon, Biscuits, Beer & Barbecue

We just returned from a seven-day road trip through the US South.  We drove through Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina and we ate and drank everything!

Before we left I made a list of regional specialties I wanted to try.  We managed to hit almost all of them.

#1 Cincinnati Chili

The first regional specialty we came across was Cincinnati Chili.  For this we went to Skyline Chili, a chain with locations all over Ohio.  The chili is a thin meat sauce spiced with cinnamon and cloves, served over spaghetti in a variety of "ways".  Three-way is spaghetti topped with chili and cheese.  Four-way adds onions and five-way adds beans.  It's served with oyster crackers on the side.  I have to say, I wasn't expecting much, but this was really tasty.  I was surprised by the warm spice of the sauce and the amount of cheese on top!  Also, the staff couldn't have been friendlier.  When we told them it was our first time, our whole meal was free!  Unbelievable.  

#2 Kentucky Bourbon

We only spent a short time in Kentucky, but we managed to try a bit of bourbon.  We toured a bourbon distillery and tried some samples and bourbon cocktails.  I even brought a bottle home as a souvenir.