Living in North Carolina Mountains Getaway blog
Ghost Town in Maggie Valley NC opens today. It has been closed for close to 5 years. The news said tickets will be about $29.00. Maggie Valley is about 30 minutes from Asheville. Ghost town is a theme park based on the wild west. There are rides and shows and all kinds of fun. Not all rides are open yet.
In the Asheville Biltmore section of town, they are in the process of building a new hotel. The hotel is on an traffic island where an Exxon station stood last year. Its located directly across from the Biltmore Estate entrance, Starbucks and McDonalds. Considering the space of land where they are building, it appears the new hotel will be several stories high. This lot of land is surrounded by roads and use to only accommodate the gas station so they cant build a very wide building. The only solution is to build up rather than out.
I rode from Fairview to Biltmore today and was surprised at the lack of traffic everywhere. Usually at 12:30pm, the time I went through Biltmore, it is bumper to bumper. Yet, today it was very little traffic. Guess its the high gas prices slowing down the traffic everywhere. I wonder how this summer will be as gas prices soar. And about gas prices, what excuse does the oil companies have now. I heard that before Katrina, the oil companies made a 2 billion dollar profit every quarter. After Katrina, they made a 9 billion dollar profit every quarter. Now, I heard somewhere they are making a 20 billion dollar profit every quarter. Profit means earnings after all expenses are paid out. We should have continued our efforts to make an alternative fuel after the 1972 oil embargo. If they had done so, we would have avoided the oil price crisis that we are in now. To make a correlation between inflation and oil prices, consider this: In 1972, gas prices were .33 cents a gallon and minimum wage was $1.68 an hour. In 1980, gas prices were .99 cents a gallon and minimum wage was around 3.80 an hour. Today, gas prices are $3.33 a gallon and minimum wage is 5.15 an hour.
Its been a nice weekend. It has been a bit cool the last couple of days enough to wear a sweater if you were outside for any length of time. I put together my swing yesterday. I bought it last year on sale and just now getting around to putting it up. It was a chore even though my grandchildren helped and were quite useful I might add. Made the mistake of putting part of the swing up inside (It was hot on the porch in the direct sun) so I had to take some of it apart when I tried to take it out the door. Anyway, I enjoyed sitting in the swing on my deck drinking my coffee with my dogs. I heard a hungry baby bird asking its parents for food, a few crows calling to one another, a mockingbird hollering and somewhere out there is my cardinal that visits my birdfeeder when I remember to put seed in the feeder. Other than that it was real quiet and calm. My backyard is my refuge. Its got a maple tree, pines and cypress blocking the view of the neighborhood road above and its like being far away but I am in fact less than 10 minutes away from downtown Asheville.
The nice thing about Asheville’s roads is the interstate highways that disect the city so you can go virtually anywhere within the city via interstate making it quick to get from here to there. Many of the roads about town are now 4 lanes too. Although it was a pain when they were widening the roads, its so much better driving now. Main roads in Asheville area: I-40, I-26, Hwy. 25 and the Blue Ridge Parkway.