Nearby Destinations to Asheville

Full Asheville Travel Guide »    Asheville Interactive Map »    Print This Article »

View from Grandfather Mountain on the Blue Ridge Parkway

A thirty-mile drive south to Flat Rock will bring you to the Flatrock Playhouse www.flatrockplayhouse.org where dramas, comedies, and musicals are shown April through December. Also in Flat Rock is the Carl Sandburg Home. This historic site consists of a 22 room house, barns, sheds, rolling pastures, walking trails, two small lakes, ponds, flower and vegetable gardens, and an orchard.

A thirty-mile drive west to Waynesville during the last weeks of July will bring you to Folkmoot www.folkmoot.com, a festival of song and dance staged by performance groups from around the world.

The town of Brevard, an hour drive southwest, hosts the Brevard Music Festival www.brevardmusic.org/index.php each summer. Lasting almost two months, a variety of musical events ranging from grand operas and symphony orchestras to Broadway musicals and pop concerts as well as renowned guest artists are featured.

A 45 minute drive north brings you to the Hot Springs Resort and Spa nchotsprings.com. Reserve the jacuzzi-style tub of your choice, all individually enclosed and private. Bring a bottle of champagne and spend an hour or two. Hot Springs also has a few campgrounds and is passed through by the Appalachian Trail.

The Cradle of Forestry www.cradleofforestry.com is located about 20 miles southwest of Asheville off U.S. Highway 276 in the Pisgah National Forest in Transylvania County. Visitors will find a number of hiking trails in the area. Open 9AM-5PM, mid April through the end of October. $5 for adults, 16 and under free.

A popular tourist attraction is Chimney Rock Park www.chimneyrockpark.com, located 25 miles (about a 30 minute drive) southeast of Asheville in scenic Hickory Nut Gorge. It's a privately owned park (not part of the US system) with a fairly high admission fee ($14 for adults as of 2009), but the views are incredible and there are six different hiking trails, ranging in difficulty from easy-to-moderate to moderate-to-strenuous. Open all year.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee and is the country's most visited national park. A variety of trails for hikers of any age or skill level are available.

Gorges State Park www.ils.unc.edu/parkproject/visit/gorg/home.html is approximately 45 miles southwest of Asheville, located in Transylvania County and joins the North Carolina/South Carolina state line. Gorges State Park has over 80 inches of rain a year making it a temperate rain forest. The plunging waterfalls, rugged river gorges, sheer rock walls, and concentration of rare and unique species makes this a wonderful park to visit.

Nashville ← Knoxville ←

W  E

→ Hickory → Winston-Salem