Our anti-Bele Chere weekend

This weekend the city of Asheville blocked off it’s downtown to celebrate our annual Bele Chere street festival, which brings in live music, local artists, lots of fried, carnival food and tens of thousands of mountain tourists eager to stroll around our eclectic city and marvel at all the culture and wierdness we possess. It’s three days of southern rock, tasty, sinful food and the best people-watching on this side of the Mississippi – Which is pretty much my Mother’s Disney World.

And you would think that all of these wonderful things would result in a fabulous, fun-loving weekend, but did I mention that Asheville annually throws this giant Bele Chere party on the hottest, muggiest weekend of the summer? Yep. The most uncomfortable weekend of the year, with the heat-index reaching numbers where people are generally encouraged to stay inside in the AC and out of the sun. So while the majority of the cards are dealt for you to have a fantastic time, the ending hand is just a bunch of sweaty, drunk rednecks eating meat on a stick and rubbing up against each other. Which is both my and my Mother’s vision of Hell.

And because this is now the seventh Bele Chere we’ve experienced as southerners, we pretty much planned our weekend around avoiding the downtown and all of the hot-mess it was offering. Well, except for my obligatory corndog luncheon I attend every year with my old Kimmel-crew. The festival officially begins Friday at noon, and my old colleagues and I are the first one’s in line and already have our fried food devoured by 12.15. As much trash as I talk about Bele Chere, nothing beats a hot corndog, fried potato chips and a freshly-squeezed lemonade for lunch. Heavenly.

And after making it home relatively unscathed, the rest of our weekend was spent enjoying ourselves away from the craziness. Friday night we took Miss Taylor to her very first movie in the theatre. We figured that since the majority of Asheville was fighting crowds downtown, it was the perfect opportunity to see if T could behave herself at a big-girl movie. And it actually worked out perfectly, as there were only about ten other people in the theatre and Taylor was safe to get up and walk around a little bit during the movie. We saw Toy Story 3, and she was beyond thrilled to have Woody and Buzz up on the big screen. But I think she was more jazzed about the popcorn than the actual movie.

On Saturday we jumped at the chance to escape Asheville and spend the day at Lake James with the Bound family. If you are going to spend six hours in the sun and heat, the only place to do that is on a boat or in the water. And we were able to do both. Many thanks to Jamie, LeAnn and their crew for letting us tag along!

And today we are spending our day regrouping in the confines of our air conditioned house, eating the left-over snacks we brought home from the lake, reading my current gossip-magazines and taking long naps. We may or may not get out of pajamas at some point. Now tell me how walking through the crowded, steamy streets of downtown could be anywhere close to as lovely as my weekend was. Granted we don’t have funnel cakes at our house, but we definitely have more smiles and giggles here than there are at Bele Chere. And more cute, pinchable cheeks.