The Changing of the Seasons

It’s October already, and the mountain’s pallet is changing from summery lush greenes and wildflowers to bright reds, golds, and oranges. The local businesses and residents are throwing themselves into autumn events, planning festivals, and lining streets and storefronts with displays of chrysanthemums, pumpkins, corn stalks, and scarecrows.

 

The nights are getting chillier and chillier and you can already detect the smell of fires in the air from nearby chimneys. Deer, bear, elk, turkeys, squirrels,and chipmunks are furiously foraging for every last scrap of summer’s bounty to fatten up or seek out their winter hideaways, and the mountains await their first dusting of snow.

 

With the coming winter, things slow down a bit in Maggie Valley, but local businesses enjoy robust activity on long weekends and holidays. Cataloochee ski area begins making snow in November, and is one of the first ski areas to open in the southeast and mid Atlantic states, and is one of the last to close. Cataloochee also operates a snow tubing hill which is very popular every weekend! Another unique opportunity is hiking the Blue Ridge Parkway after certain sections close for the winter. You can start at the gate on Soco Road in Soco Gap, and hike all the way to the top of Water Rock Knob (6000’ +) for a spectacular ten mile round trip hike, with
sweeping winter views and frozen waterfalls.

 

“Compared to the price of
properties on the coast, you’ll be truly surprised at the amount of land and quality of home your
money can buy. ”

-Jeff Baldwin

 

You won’t find yourself wondering what you can do very often, since the Maggie Valley, Waynesville, and Asheville areas are teeming with action and choices: hiking on countless, amazing trails that run the gamut of enchanted forests with rushing streams, waterfalls, and
rhododendrons, to wide open, wild and windswept balds. To stand atop a mountain peak and see an endless carpet of smokey blue mountains and valleys laid out before you as far as the eye can see, is truly something to include among life’s must dos! And compared to the price of properties on the coast, you’ll be truly surprised at the amount of land and quality of home your money can buy.

For you permanent or vacation house hunters out there, you won’t find a more opportune time to start your search: sellers get a little more hungry and the competition thins this time of year.

Give Jeff a call soon (in time to catch the changing colors of the leaves) 828-318-2233.