A Year from There to Here

A year ago today, we saw the Inn for the first time.

We’d been looking at bed & breakfasts for some time. We knew our combined backgrounds in food, hospitality, service, and business would make us good innkeepers, and we also knew we wanted it to be a family business. Following an eventful scouting trip involving the whole family, we were sure that the Blue Ridge Mountains, and specifically the Asheville area, were where we wanted to be. But with six of us – four adults and two kids, not to mention the dog and two cats – looking for a family home as well as a business, our requirements were pretty specific. From his and Georgina’s home in Virginia, Victor began working with an Asheville realtor, Sandi Moore, who found three likely properties for us. Frances drove from Philadelphia to Virginia, and the sisters were on their way to meet Sandi.

Not unlike Goldilocks, we found the first place to be close, but not quite right; the second place to not be quite comfy enough; but the third place… The third place was just right.

We were enchanted from the start. The short drive off the highway was through homey residential streets and past a meadow with a half dozen black cows grazing. We turned under the soaring iron Chestnut Walk archway and drove slowly down the sloping driveway covered in brown leaves and lined with moss-covered stones. On our left, beyond the fading rhododendrons and fiery burning bushes, we could just make out a creek. On our right, as we crossed a small bridge, more water: a small waterfall rushing to meet the same creek. Ahead, the drive angled up between towering evergreens and horse chestnuts.

The buildings themselves – the carriage house and the main house – had been empty and unloved for some time, and we could see the damage caused by the long neglect. The rooms in the main house – three private bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, plus two suites – were in need of varying degrees of updating and renovation. But even clearer to us was the vast potential – space for our homes here, wedding ceremonies there, receptions and parties spilling from the deck to the yard, shaded by a giant tulip poplar. A hundred flawless photo opportunities presented themselves in the streams, the wooden bridge all but held together by wisteria, the trout pond… Everywhere we looked we saw what we’d been seeking for both the home and business we’d envisioned.

Our tour completed, we stood with Sandi in the driveway, listening to the pure quiet broken only by the sound of flowing water, none of us yet willing to leave the beauty and peace of this place. As we stood silently, a small breeze shook the trees, and a shower of gold and red leaves floated down around us. And we knew – this was home.

In the year that has passed since, we’ve seen many of the challenges of owning a home and building a business, but our family bond has also grown stronger as we navigate these trials and celebrate our successes together. This is and has always been the underlying goal of opening the Inn – to be a family in the face of the many life demands that wear on family time.

One year ago today, we came home. We are glad to have you with us as we see what the next year brings to the Red Leaf River Inn.


We anticipate reopening the Red Leaf River Inn in the Spring of 2015 and hope you will follow along as we renovate and restore this beautiful property in Waynesville, NC.  Find us on Facebook and Google+, follow us on Twitter @RedLeafRiverInn, or visit us at our website.