The more things change the more they stay the same

I don’t know if that’s true but I like the wisdom often captured in cliches and this thought was crossing my mind. We moved to Hendersonville to begin a new chapter in our lives together. Tess said she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in Inman, I may have been a little reluctant to leave what had become or home, a point she repeats relentlessly, but thank god I did find that wisdom and at least in part to an article that my staff member gave me about a hiking group in Hendersonville in Bold Magazine. So one Saturday morning I got up early, drove to Saluda to meet a group I did not know. Join a hike that was almost cancelled by rain but I had met a hiker just long enough to say ok we will go anyway. He knew the area. We stopped in Hendo and sat down in a rocker in front of Mast General before heading out to DuPont forest and specifically Hooker, the teens got a big laugh out of that, Falls and Triple Falls. This guys was a truck driver and was telling me all about how he could log into the system and choose his schedule. It was kind of like Uber for Trucks, but Uber didn’t exist yet and so he had a very flexible schedule. I remember thinking how impressed I was that he knew his way around, like he was some kind of genius when really he just lived here. We drove out to Dupont to meet the others and continued the Cancelled Hike in what turned into a beautiful day.

It was after that hike, that day, that chance encounter that Tess and I started looking at and considering Hendersonville over Greenville. She said, do you really want to be up there with all those old people? Well I said it may be better to be the younger people in the old crowd than the older people in the young crowd. Downtown Greenville, by the way, had become so expensive that we were starting to look at home farther out halfway back to Spartanburg. So Hendersonville became our destination. 

So it all started with a hike. Then it continued with hikes that Tess and I would take into DuPont when we would come up here to spend the weekend. We stayed at Mill House Lodge https://goo.gl/maps/p3mWSF9dKMxnDL4B9 Mill House Lodge

(800) 736-6073

with our loving cocker spaniel, Chance. Such a romantic little place and we had wonderful times. We would drive up on i26 but we would follow the signs to Carl Sandburg Home and follow Upward Road across 176 over to Hwy 225 that lead us to Mill House, with a waterfall, near Bonclarken, we would say with a younger roll, through Flatrock passing or stopping at The Wrinkled Egg and up into town in a way that made the whole experience feel like we were escaping in the mountains.