Calendar of Events

Included with admission

Back by popular demand, The Vanderbilts at Home and Abroad exhibition offers guests:

• An opportunity to view rarely-seen treasures from the Biltmore collection
• A first-hand look at the Vanderbilts’ lifestyle
• Deeper insights into George, Edith, and Cornelia’s personalities, both at home and on their extensive travels

Access to exhibitions at The Biltmore Legacy is included with Biltmore daytime admission.

Learn Asheville’s history, discover hidden gems, and laugh at LaZoom’s quirky sense of adventure.

• Guided comedy tour bus of historical Asheville
• 90-Minutes – tours run daily
• 15-minute break at Green Man Brewing
• $39 per person (ages 13+ only)

Included with admission

Back by popular demand, The Vanderbilts at Home and Abroad exhibition offers guests:

• An opportunity to view rarely-seen treasures from the Biltmore collection
• A first-hand look at the Vanderbilts’ lifestyle
• Deeper insights into George, Edith, and Cornelia’s personalities, both at home and on their extensive travels

Access to exhibitions at The Biltmore Legacy is included with Biltmore daytime admission.

Join us as we discuss, The Guncle by Steven Rowley.  We will meet in person at the Weaverville Library with the option to join the discussion via ZOOM.  Only ZOOM participants need to register.  Copies of this title are available at the Weaverville Library while supplies last. Newcomers are always welcome.

Join other literature lovers to discuss your favorite books at the library! This month’s pick is The Other Dr. Gilmer, by Benjamin Gilmer.

We’ll be discussing “West With Giraffes” by Lynda Rutledge. Books are available for pick up at the library.
All newcomers are welcome to participate and no registration is required. Join us!

The Blue Ridge Mountains are home to a very unique creature that some say resembles a tribe of fairies carrying blue candles through the forest. 

The Blue Ghost Firefly (Phausis reticulata) is a secretive, hard-to-find native insect that calls our area home, and for a very short amount of time in early summer, they inhabit our surrounding woodlands of Transylvania County. 

You’ll experience an educational presentation at our outdoor amphitheater starting at 9:00pm and then use the cover of darkness and special flashlights to go in search of the Blue Ghost fireflies while hiking on a paved trail through the forest. Cradle of Forestry team members will be stationed at key locations around the trail to provide further information about this amazing natural phenomenon. Please feel free to congregate near these areas with your fellow firefly enthusiasts or go explore on your own! We require everyone to stay on the trail to prevent habitat damage, and team members will clear the trail and require everyone to depart by 10:30pm.

Ticket Purchase/Pre-registration is required. This is a light rain or shine, family-friendly event!
In order to maximize our participant experience while minimizing our impact on the resource, we limit each night to 125 participants. 

Learn Asheville’s history, discover hidden gems, and laugh at LaZoom’s quirky sense of adventure.

• Guided comedy tour bus of historical Asheville
• 90-Minutes – tours run daily
• 15-minute break at Green Man Brewing
• $39 per person (ages 13+ only)

Included with admission

Back by popular demand, The Vanderbilts at Home and Abroad exhibition offers guests:

• An opportunity to view rarely-seen treasures from the Biltmore collection
• A first-hand look at the Vanderbilts’ lifestyle
• Deeper insights into George, Edith, and Cornelia’s personalities, both at home and on their extensive travels

Access to exhibitions at The Biltmore Legacy is included with Biltmore daytime admission.

Fierce Poise is a dazzling biography of one of the 20th century’s most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, as she came of age as both an artist and a woman in the vibrant art world of 1950s New York. Brought to vivid life by acclaimed art historian Alexander Nemerov, this book comprises a portrait as bold and distinctive as the painter herself.

Read Fierce Poise in advance and join museum staff for a book conversation followed by a gallery talk featuring Frankenthaler’s artwork Book of Clouds, on view in SECU Collection Hall, level 3. Books are available at your local library as well as Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café for a 10% discount.

The Malaprop’s Book Club, hosted by Jay Jacoby, explores a diverse selection of fiction and nonfiction books determined by member suggestion. Click here to see a full schedule of what the club is reading. Club attendees get 10% off the book at Malaprop’s!

The club meets the first Wednesday of every month at 7:00 PM. The club will meet virtually until further notice. To join the club, please email [email protected]

The Blue Ridge Mountains are home to a very unique creature that some say resembles a tribe of fairies carrying blue candles through the forest. 

The Blue Ghost Firefly (Phausis reticulata) is a secretive, hard-to-find native insect that calls our area home, and for a very short amount of time in early summer, they inhabit our surrounding woodlands of Transylvania County. 

You’ll experience an educational presentation at our outdoor amphitheater starting at 9:00pm and then use the cover of darkness and special flashlights to go in search of the Blue Ghost fireflies while hiking on a paved trail through the forest. Cradle of Forestry team members will be stationed at key locations around the trail to provide further information about this amazing natural phenomenon. Please feel free to congregate near these areas with your fellow firefly enthusiasts or go explore on your own! We require everyone to stay on the trail to prevent habitat damage, and team members will clear the trail and require everyone to depart by 10:30pm.

Ticket Purchase/Pre-registration is required. This is a light rain or shine, family-friendly event!
In order to maximize our participant experience while minimizing our impact on the resource, we limit each night to 125 participants. 

Learn Asheville’s history, discover hidden gems, and laugh at LaZoom’s quirky sense of adventure.

• Guided comedy tour bus of historical Asheville
• 90-Minutes – tours run daily
• 15-minute break at Green Man Brewing
• $39 per person (ages 13+ only)

Join us at Eliada Home’s campus for a small group guided walking Farm Tour. Tours last approximately 1 hour. Participants will learn about outdoor and greenhouse growing practices, aquaponics, hydroponics, market gardening, corn maze production, and about our equine therapy program.

Reservations required. There is no cost, but donations to the non-profit agency are greatly appreciated.

We recommend bringing the following: comfortable shoes for walking on pavement and grass, hat, sunglasses, and water. This tour is not handicap accessible and will require participants to climb stairs and walk on uneven ground.

Sandburg Home Tours – Thursday to Sunday at 11am, 1pm, 2pm.

*As of April 2022, tours are free until further notice. See rates below if they change before your visit. Online reservations are available at recreation.gov.

The Sandburg Home is a great place to start your visit! The ground floor of the home contains visitor information, exhibits, tour ticket sales, the park store, and you can watch the park video. The main and top level of the home are furnished with the Sandburg family belongings. Visitors may only access the furnished ares of the home on a guided tour.

• Tour Reservations: Reserving in advance lets you pick your preferred house tour time. Tours fill up quickly. Last-minute, in-person tickets may not be available on the day you visit. Plan ahead and reserve house tour tickets at recreation.gov.

• Passes: The park does not currently sell the America the Beautiful– National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Passes.
  *These passes do not waive the house tour fee, but do provide a discount.
  *You can purchase a pass online at America the Beautiful – National Parks & Federal Recreational Lands Annual Pass | USGS Store.
• 30-minute house tours are offered year-round, schedule varies by season. Visit recreation.gov for the current schedule.
• Visitors may only tour the Sandburg Home on a guided tour.
• Tours are limited to 6 persons.
• Strollers are not permitted on the house tour, but there is a place to leave them for storage. Infants and small children should be carried through the house while on tour.

  Sandburg Home Guided Tour Fee
  *Tours are free until further notice, this chart is the rate when fees resume.
  (credit card only)
  $10.00 for Adults 16 and older
  $6.00 for Adults age 62 and older and all interagency pass holders
  Free for Children age 15 and under

Included with admission

Back by popular demand, The Vanderbilts at Home and Abroad exhibition offers guests:

• An opportunity to view rarely-seen treasures from the Biltmore collection
• A first-hand look at the Vanderbilts’ lifestyle
• Deeper insights into George, Edith, and Cornelia’s personalities, both at home and on their extensive travels

Access to exhibitions at The Biltmore Legacy is included with Biltmore daytime admission.

The Blue Ridge Mountains are home to a very unique creature that some say resembles a tribe of fairies carrying blue candles through the forest. 

The Blue Ghost Firefly (Phausis reticulata) is a secretive, hard-to-find native insect that calls our area home, and for a very short amount of time in early summer, they inhabit our surrounding woodlands of Transylvania County. 

You’ll experience an educational presentation at our outdoor amphitheater starting at 9:00pm and then use the cover of darkness and special flashlights to go in search of the Blue Ghost fireflies while hiking on a paved trail through the forest. Cradle of Forestry team members will be stationed at key locations around the trail to provide further information about this amazing natural phenomenon. Please feel free to congregate near these areas with your fellow firefly enthusiasts or go explore on your own! We require everyone to stay on the trail to prevent habitat damage, and team members will clear the trail and require everyone to depart by 10:30pm.

Ticket Purchase/Pre-registration is required. This is a light rain or shine, family-friendly event!
In order to maximize our participant experience while minimizing our impact on the resource, we limit each night to 125 participants. 

Learn Asheville’s history, discover hidden gems, and laugh at LaZoom’s quirky sense of adventure.

• Guided comedy tour bus of historical Asheville
• 90-Minutes – tours run daily
• 15-minute break at Green Man Brewing
• $39 per person (ages 13+ only)

Sandburg Home Tours – Thursday to Sunday at 11am, 1pm, 2pm.

*As of April 2022, tours are free until further notice. See rates below if they change before your visit. Online reservations are available at recreation.gov.

The Sandburg Home is a great place to start your visit! The ground floor of the home contains visitor information, exhibits, tour ticket sales, the park store, and you can watch the park video. The main and top level of the home are furnished with the Sandburg family belongings. Visitors may only access the furnished ares of the home on a guided tour.

• Tour Reservations: Reserving in advance lets you pick your preferred house tour time. Tours fill up quickly. Last-minute, in-person tickets may not be available on the day you visit. Plan ahead and reserve house tour tickets at recreation.gov.

• Passes: The park does not currently sell the America the Beautiful– National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Passes.
  *These passes do not waive the house tour fee, but do provide a discount.
  *You can purchase a pass online at America the Beautiful – National Parks & Federal Recreational Lands Annual Pass | USGS Store.
• 30-minute house tours are offered year-round, schedule varies by season. Visit recreation.gov for the current schedule.
• Visitors may only tour the Sandburg Home on a guided tour.
• Tours are limited to 6 persons.
• Strollers are not permitted on the house tour, but there is a place to leave them for storage. Infants and small children should be carried through the house while on tour.

  Sandburg Home Guided Tour Fee
  *Tours are free until further notice, this chart is the rate when fees resume.
  (credit card only)
  $10.00 for Adults 16 and older
  $6.00 for Adults age 62 and older and all interagency pass holders
  Free for Children age 15 and under

Included with admission

Back by popular demand, The Vanderbilts at Home and Abroad exhibition offers guests:

• An opportunity to view rarely-seen treasures from the Biltmore collection
• A first-hand look at the Vanderbilts’ lifestyle
• Deeper insights into George, Edith, and Cornelia’s personalities, both at home and on their extensive travels

Access to exhibitions at The Biltmore Legacy is included with Biltmore daytime admission.

Join us at Eliada Home’s campus for a small group guided walking Farm Tour. Tours last approximately 1 hour. Participants will learn about outdoor and greenhouse growing practices, aquaponics, hydroponics, market gardening, corn maze production, and about our equine therapy program.

Reservations required. There is no cost, but donations to the non-profit agency are greatly appreciated.

We recommend bringing the following: comfortable shoes for walking on pavement and grass, hat, sunglasses, and water. This tour is not handicap accessible and will require participants to climb stairs and walk on uneven ground.

Wanna hear the best local music ​and​ drink the best local beers? Hop aboard LaZoom’s Purple Bus and rock out with a local band while we take you on a journey to Asheville’s premiere local breweries.

Madison C. Brightwell (a Weaverville resident) will read from and discuss her new novel – The World Beyond the Redbud Tree.

This novel was written by Brightwell during the COVID pandemic as a response to what she saw as a world that needed some healing and hope. The novel is set partly right here in Weaverville, and partly in a fantasy parallel universe, in which our teenage heroine, Charli, discovers a Utopian world where different and better choices were made – a world in which the native peoples were embraced by the white colonists and not destroyed by them, which created a harmonious and peaceful society. Madison hopes to inspire readers of the book to think about how we can all contribute to making the world a better place.

This event will feature…

An interview with the author,
Q&A with the audience,
A performance of an extract from the book by local actors,
Local musicians, and
A book signing by the author at the end of the evening.

The Blue Ridge Mountains are home to a very unique creature that some say resembles a tribe of fairies carrying blue candles through the forest. 

The Blue Ghost Firefly (Phausis reticulata) is a secretive, hard-to-find native insect that calls our area home, and for a very short amount of time in early summer, they inhabit our surrounding woodlands of Transylvania County. 

You’ll experience an educational presentation at our outdoor amphitheater starting at 9:00pm and then use the cover of darkness and special flashlights to go in search of the Blue Ghost fireflies while hiking on a paved trail through the forest. Cradle of Forestry team members will be stationed at key locations around the trail to provide further information about this amazing natural phenomenon. Please feel free to congregate near these areas with your fellow firefly enthusiasts or go explore on your own! We require everyone to stay on the trail to prevent habitat damage, and team members will clear the trail and require everyone to depart by 10:30pm.

Ticket Purchase/Pre-registration is required. This is a light rain or shine, family-friendly event!
In order to maximize our participant experience while minimizing our impact on the resource, we limit each night to 125 participants.