Weird day trips from Asheville

The strangest Asheville finds are often a short drive out. These 8 day trips — Judaculla Rock, The American Museum of the House Cat, Hot Springs Resort & Spa and more — are each hand-vetted and sourced: ghost towns, hot-spring soaks, roadside oddities, and odd small-town museums worth the gas. A weird day trip is its own kind of date.

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Judaculla Rock A low soapstone boulder above Caney Fork Creek carries roughly 1,500 carvings — nearly 1,460 cup marks plus c… Cullowhee
The American Museum of the House Cat Dr. Harold W. Sims Jr. spent more than thirty years accumulating feline artifacts — fine art from the late 18… Sylva
Hot Springs Resort & Spa The mineral water here leaves the ground at 100-104 degrees — North Carolina's only natural hot springs — and… Hot Springs
Paint Rock A 107-foot cliff at the Tennessee line carries North Carolina's best-known pictograph: alternating red and ye… Hot Springs
Brown Mountain Lights Overlook (NC 181) For over a century people have reported balls of yellow and blue-white fire rising, drifting, and blinking ou… Morganton
Road to Nowhere / Tunnel to Nowhere When Fontana Dam flooded the north shore in the 1940s, Washington promised Swain County a new road to its dro… Bryson City
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) In 1962 NASA carved a satellite tracking station out of Pisgah National Forest to talk to Gemini and Apollo c… Rosman
The NuWray Hotel The NuWray has been renting rooms on Burnsville's town square since 1833, which makes it North Carolina's old… Burnsville