We went to Asheville for a weekend in October, which I'd been meaning to do for years. The city is good — better than I expected, actually. The food is good, the streets are interesting, the light in the evening through the western windows of the place we stayed was genuinely beautiful.
But what I kept coming back to was the fact that from certain rooftops you can still see the ridge. The mountains are right there. You don't have to go far to be in them. I think about that more now than I did before we went.