Les Jones

Travel > Weekend Trips to Boone and Banner Elk, North Carolina

Driving time from Knoxville: 3.5 hours
Where to point your car: I-40 West to 81 North through Elizabethton

In a Metro Pulse wrapup, Knoxville singer Jodie Manross includes this vignette from the band's tour:

On Feb. 6, the band and I were traveling to a gig in Boone, N.C. when we got hit with eight inches of snow. Two tractor-trailers collided on the mountain roads, and it took three hours more than usual to get to Boone. Our show was cancelled due to the ice and snow. We ended up staying in a strange motel with a water wheel, a comedy club with a huge stage called Geno's Lounge, a bocce ball court, and outside pet rabbits you can feed for a quarter.

That's the High Country Inn in Boone. Melissa and I stayed there during a Valentine's Day ski weekend two years ago. The rooms aren't the greatest, but the hotel has nice quirks. There's a stream on the hillside that's been diverted into a stone sluice. There are ducks and geese, and a stone rabbit hutch. The sluice steps down the hill and ends at the bottom of the hill in a waterwheel.

Skiing in Western North Carolina
We spent some time in Geno's lounge practicing on the ski simulator and watching the 2002 Winter Olympics. We watched Olympic athletes in Salt Lake City trying to break records in the downhill, while we drank beer in Boone, hoping we wouldn't kill ourselves on the slopes. That trip was the first time either of us had skied. I was going to a March business conference in Sante Fe that included a day of skiing, and I wanted to take a few lessons before going out West.

The first day Melissa and I went to Sugar Mountain. It was snowing when we left the hotel, and was a near blizzard by the time we got to the lodge. Skiers were coming in off the slopes, and the weather was frigorific. It wasn't a good way for novices to start, so when the storm failed to lift after lunch we bagged it and spent the rest of the day bumming around Boone.

Appalachian State University is in Boone, and Lees-McRae College is in Banner Elk. College towns always have some cool bars and restaurants, and these two are no exception. Some of the things I recall visiting on the main drag in Boone are a cool old drug store, a large antique mall, an Irish pub, and a vegetarian restaurant.

The next day we went to Beech Mountain for another shot at skiing. That time we had great weather. The abundant sunshine reflecting off the snow made the below-freezing weather almost balmy. Within half an hour on skis we were down to T-shirts.

The morning ski lesson didn't go well. The artificial snow on the training slope was packed into ice. It's hard to manuever on packed snow, and even harder to sidestep uphill for the next run. Between wearing ourselves out trudging uphill in skis and beating ourselves up by wiping out, we weren't having much fun.

At lunch we were discouraged, but decided to give it one more try. Something must have happened during lunch, because we did much better that afternoon. I relaxed a little bit and learned to lift my turning ski a little instead of bearing down while trying to turn it. I could turn with some degree of control, and I could stop reliably without butt-braking. We were still amatuers, but we made progress.

There are plenty of other ski resorts in the area. Hawk's Nest is one that's close by. Even if you don't ski, there are snowtubing slopes on all three mountains, with special tube lifts to haul you up the slopes.

For some reason, ski slopes tend to have lousy food. For dinner drive into Boone. We especialy liked the Daniel Boone Inn. They serve family-style, with bowls and baskets of food brought to your table. Everything is delicious. We stood in line for an hour to get a table, so make reservations or be prepared for a wait.