We’ve chosen a colorful fellow to help us wrap up winter and head into springtime in the mountains of Western North Carolina: our March 2015 bird in our 12 Months of Birding at the Inn blog series is none other than the Purple Finch.
A lot of our guests and friends of the Inn who live in the northeastern U.S. and also in the midwest are no doubt ready for Spring. It’s understandable, what with Boston getting more than 100(!) inches of snow this 2015 winter season and other areas seeing plenty of the white stuff to last through the rest of winter.
During the wintertime, there are fewer species of birds in our neck of the woods. However, the ones who are year-round and winter only residents really stand out. One such cold weather superstar is our February 2015 pick for our 12 Months of Birding at the Inn blog series: The Pine Siskin.
Five years ago, we did a list of good wintertime hikes ranging from easy nature trails to fairly strenuous hikes. It remains one of our most-read blog posts ever. Visitors to the Blue Ridge mountains near Asheville, NC, want to know good places to hike in winter (and the other three seasons as well). So why not add more to our list of seasonal favorites?
Happy 2015! Our guests rang in a relaxing and quiet New Year at the Inn on Mill Creek B&B, and we continue that theme with our Quiet Season B&B getaway special: discounted rates on stays of two nights or more from January through March.
We are so in love with the Conservatory at Biltmore Estate in Asheville. Sure, it’s beautiful all year long, but in the wintertime, it’s pure magic.
Since 2012, we have had exactly two inches of snow accumulation at the Inn on Mill Creek inside Pisgah National Forest outside of Black Mountain, NC. We’ve enjoyed seeing snow on the peaks at higher elevations along the Blue Ridge Parkway, but didn’t have much more than flurries here at 2,300 feet…until February 12, 2014.
The winners of the 21st Annual National Gingerbread House Competition were crowned earlier this month at an awards ceremony at OMNI Grove Park Inn. There were more than 150 entries this year, made of entirely edible materials!
