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Asheville

Photo: Asheville Photography (SevenOhTwoWeb) / CC BY-SA 4.0

🎡 Attractions

Asheville

Asheville, NC · Western North Carolina

About

Tucked into a valley where the Blue Ridge ranges fold in from every side, Asheville pairs a walkable downtown of art-deco towers and a copper-domed City Hall with the highest peaks east of the Rockies right out the back door. Spend a morning on the galleries and biscuit counters of the historic core, then drive ten minutes to the Blue Ridge Parkway for the layered, blue-hazed ridgelines that gave the mountains their name. The 250-room Biltmore Estate, the kilns and studios of the River Arts District, and one of the South's deepest benches of breweries fill the days between hikes.

Highlights

Blue Ridge Parkway accessHistoric art-deco downtownBiltmore EstateRiver Arts DistrictRenowned brewery scene

Getting there

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Biltmore Estate Attractions

Biltmore Estate

Asheville, NC · Western North Carolina

George Vanderbilt's 250-room French Renaissance château sits on 8,000 acres just south of Asheville, the largest privately owned home in America and still owned by his descendants. You can wander the limestone halls past the banquet hall's pipe organ and the indoor pool, then spend the afternoon in Frederick Law Olmsted's gardens, the conservatory, and the working winery. Time a visit for spring tulips or the Christmas candlelight tours, and the Blue Ridge ridgelines frame the whole estate from the front lawn.

Expedition: Bigfoot, The Sasquatch Museum Attractions

Expedition: Bigfoot, The Sasquatch Museum

Cherry Log, GA · North Georgia Mountains

Tucked along Highway 515 between Blue Ridge and Ellijay, this 4,000-square-foot shrine to Sasquatch claims the largest permanent collection of Bigfoot artifacts anywhere, and it does not pretend to be neutral about whether the big guy is real. Founded in 2016 by Navy veteran and Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization member David Bakara and his wife Malinda, it packs in wall after wall of footprint and handprint casts, sighting maps, hair samples, and listening stations piping out genuine recorded grunts and howls. You can settle into the Sasquatch Theater for looping eyewitness footage, gawk at the world's only Bigfoot research and tech ATV the Bakaras once drove on Florida investigations, and find a cast of a rare Bigfoot butt-print laid out on red velvet. Cap it with the gift shop, where David sells footprint casting kits he assembles himself.

Babyland General Hospital Attractions

Babyland General Hospital

Cleveland, GA · North Georgia Mountains

This columned white mansion is the official "birthplace" of the Cabbage Patch Kids, the soft-sculpture dolls Xavier Roberts dreamed up in these North Georgia hills. Time your visit for the hourly "delivery," when a Licensed Patch Nurse tends the Magic Crystal Tree, announces that a Mother Cabbage is in labor, doses her with "Imagicillin," and pulls a freshly born baby from the leaves while pink and blue BunnyBees decide the gender. You wander rooms full of dolls in incubators and adoption cribs, and yes, you can take one home with its own birth certificate. Admission is free, the staff play it gloriously straight, and the whole thing lands somewhere between sweet and wonderfully surreal.

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Curated guides that feature Asheville.

The Blue Ridge Mountains26 places

The Blue Ridge Mountains

The ancient, blue-hazed peaks of the southern Appalachians, threaded by the Blue Ridge Parkway from Shenandoah to the Smokies. Mile-high summits and the highest peak east of the Mississippi, waterfalls you can walk behind, long-range overlooks, and mountain towns like Asheville with the Biltmore at their heart. Go in October for the color, but the haze is blue year-round.