(Apologies for the lack of pictures in this post! We are in Bolivia and the wifi is touch and go. I will add some photos when we are stateside.)

This leg of the trip was made up mostly of excellent food and places we wished we could have spent more time exploring. Thursday morning we drove out of Cade’s Cove to Clingman’s Dome and walked half a mile up to the very top, along with a mishmash of day trippers from Gatlinburg and Appalachian Trail hikers. Other people coming back down the path let us know there was a black bear a little ways off the path, but since they also told everyone else they saw, we pressed on. It was a pretty foggy morning but the view from the observation tower was still spectacular. We headed out of GSMNP southbound for Asheville, driving through the Cherokee Nation on the south edge of the park. While many East coast Cherokee were forcibly relocated during the Trail of Tears, including those who originally called Cade’s Cove home, 800 stayed. They are known as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. 
We got to Asheville around 3:00 and had a late lunch at Cúrate, a tapas place Victor had read about somewhere as one of the best brunches in the country. For better or worse we were too late for brunch, but after two days in the backcountry the food tasted even better than it might have under normal circumstances. Two ladies came in while we were waiting for our first course to arrive and declared that Cúrate was the best restaurant in Asheville. We feasted on fried eggplant with local honey and rosemary, Spanish lardo with pimenton served on crostini, a beautiful salad of tomato fresco, shaved raw local trout, kalamatas, and Spanish olive oil, shrimp sautéed in sherry with roasted garlic, Lamb skewers served with house made pickles, an amazing sandwich with mild pork sausage, confit piquillo peppers, and a killer house made aioli, and finally a Grant Achatz-esque pistachio cake with lemon thyme ice cream. I can’t get enough of the small plates trend, because I can never decide what I want when everything is so good.  
I really wish we had built in more time for both Asheville and Savannah. Both of us had been to the Biltmore on previous family vacations, but the city itself seemed really cool. We did at least make time to get a cup of coffee and some free Wi-Fi before heading to our campsite. 

We spent the night in the Lake Powhatan recreation area, a forestry service campground with free hot showers. It doesn’t get much better than that after a few days roughing it. It threatened rain all evening but we only got a little bit over night. In the morning we got on the road early, since the drive from Asheville to Jacksonville is about eight hours on the freeway and we planned to avoid 95 as long as we could. We followed the path of the Savannah River through South Carolina, including a drive by the Savannah River Site, a huge nuclear research facility built in the 1950s. You can’t really see anything from the road, but they also don’t really like for anyone to stop, either. It is the US’s only source of tritium, and it’s where the neutrino was discovered and where Californium-252 was first isolated. 

Our plan was to get lunch in Savannah; for a while we talked about just pressing on and skipping it, but thankfully we decided we really needed food. A friend of Victor’s (a former student at SCAD) had recommended the Green Truck Pub. The next time you find yourself in Savannah, do not pass up the chance to go there. They’ve converted an old fast food place into a farm-to-table scratch kitchen serving one of the best burgers I’ve ever had and lots of great local beers. Victor went for pimento cheese on this burger and I had the Greek style with feta and olive tapenade. Everything they can make in house they do, including their ketchup and some seriously rad pickles. 
The weekend in Neptune Beach (outside of Jacksonville, FL) was filled with yet more food and time spent with family and friends, including a swim in the ocean and a nap on the beach. Life is good. Monday we drove to Miami to catch our flight to La Paz, Bolivia, but that is another post entirely. Stay tuned…