Summer in Black Mountain

When I lived here in high school, Black Mountain and Asheville just weren't cool. The only thing to do on the weekend was go to the mall, a football game, cruise Patton, or go "camping" to get wasted with half of the class. I couldn't wait to leave and never thought I'd come back.
But a strange thing happened in the years between. Asheville became cool. Black Mountain became cool. And we like being cool, so we decided to move back.
Sure we found our dream house and enjoy being a stones throw from the park and hiking trails and a small group of friends, but top on my list of reasons for moving to Black Mountain was for the "raining water mushrooms" at the newly renovated pool. I could just picture Mason spending summer days running through them and playing all day swimming and giggling. But these are just the tip of the iceberg of summer activities.
To be fair, I'm attuned to a whole different sector of fun since I have to plan for a two-year-old and not, myself, a 16-year-old. I'm sure some of these things were going on when I was young, but I either wasn't interested or had done it long, long ago when I was a kid and forgotten.
I fondly remember long summers here with days spent at our house pool (even choreographing involved synchronized swimming and dances to Paula Abdul - thank you Valerie Eubanks), playing in the driveway during thunderstorms, tubing down Carolina Hemlock, picnicking along the parkway or near Cradle of Forestry, going to Sliding Rock, hiking to Catawba Falls and up Mount Pisgah, building dams in the Montreat playground stream, catching fireflies at night, falling asleep the to sounds of tree frogs, and jumping on the trampoline.
So far, we have discovered that two-year-old-friendly activities such as Thursday nights with great, free music at Lake Tomahawk called "Park Rhythms" (along with the rest of the town in attendance), the Montreat playground has a fabulous fenced under-3 play area with tricycles, sand box, plenty of trucks, and a pint-sized slide/tunnel/boat which is most often empty, any stream is good for throwing in rocks, The Health Adventure is a nice, air-conditioned respite on the hot days we've been frequented with this year, the new "Splasheville" water jet park in Pack Square Park in front of City Hall offers hours of water fun, and the North Carolina Arboretum has miles of easy trails and is free on the first Tuesday of the month. Obviously, we are a fan of free. It's kind of hard to justify paying for anything when there is such a variety of fun and fulfilling activities that don't require money every day of the week. Like I said, Asheville/Black Mountain became cool...and subsidized.