SibSab – 2025

If you read my post last year about our SibSab (Sibling Sabbatical), you know that just weeks before our scheduled trip to Montreat, the remnants of Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina with record-breaking rain fall.  The photo above is what it looked like at Lake Susan, in the heart of Montreat.  With many roads into and out of the area washed out, our trip there had to be canceled.

While in North Carolina in April for our brother-in-law’s retirement party, my wife and I drove to Montreat to see how restoration efforts were going (more on that trip next year).  We were pleased to see that much progress had been made.  As a result, my siblings agreed we should return in October of this year.

When I went to make a reservation for the 100-year-old house we had rented multiple times in years past, I discovered that the home was no longer available for rent.  Calling the rental agency, I learned that the owners had decided to retire there permanently.  Fortunately, there was another home recently added to their listing that would accommodate us four siblings.

As usual, my sisters drove over one day from northwest Arkansas for the drive to Montreat the next day.  However, having recently injured my back (yet again!), I knew an 8-hour car ride would aggravate my condition so instead, I booked a flight to Asheville, NC.  I arrived on a Friday afternoon, and my brother kindly picked me up at the airport for the 40-minute drive to Montreat.

On our way back to the house, my brother and I picked up pizza and a few groceries for our dinner that night.

When we arrived at the house, I was very pleased to learn that while my siblings had checked into the house before I arrived, they had left the very nice master bedroom and bath for me.

On Saturday after breakfast and some sibling time together, my brother and I walked down to Lake Susan from our house.  There, he and I did many of the usual things we do.  After taking a few photos of the lake…

… we walked to the Assembly Inn where there is a large porch overlooking the lake.

We were both happy to see the peaceful lake scene we were so accustomed to seeing fully restored from the previous year’s flooding.

We then walked over to the Montreat Store and sat out on their porch to rock and listen to the calming flow of water over the dam’s spillway.

This house did not have an outdoor gas grill and so instead of my usual grilling out steaks, I prepared my delicious pistachio crusted salmon, a new recipe I had discovered along with my sister’s excellent double-baked potatoes and some veggies.

Sunday turned out to be a mostly indoor day with typical Montreat rain.  In the afternoon, my sisters baked a tweed cake (a white cake with finely grated chocolate folded into the batter to give it a “tweed fabric” appearance).  Although we planned to celebrate early my eldest sister’s birthday, this cake was my favorite and one they volunteered to cook for all of us to enjoy.

That night we took our sister out to dinner to celebrate her birthday returning to the house to enjoy our birthday dessert.

While eating breakfast on Monday morning, we had a real mountain treat.

Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed movement through the window and glanced out to see a mama bear in our next-door neighbor’s yard.  We all jumped up and rushed to the window.  We then saw one of her cubs…

… behind her.  And up in a small tree, we saw a second cub climbing up and down.

 I noticed this tree was fairly flimsy and I feared the cub would fall out of the tree, but he/she expertly made its way to the ground and then proceeded to climb over our fence into the neighbor’s yard.

Our sister braved going out front to see the bears climbing back over our fence and pad up our driveway to the garbage cans.  Monday is garbage pick-up day, and we speculated the bears had heard people opening their cans.  Fortunately, we had not put our garbage out yet as mama bear managed to get our can open.

In all our years of going to Montreat, this was our closest and best bear sighting ever!

After breakfast, we drove up to the campgrounds where we had camped for so many years with our parents.  Walking past the site where we typically pitched our tent, I found telltale signs of the flooding from the year before.  The height of the mass of tree trunks and branches wedged against the tree gave me a sense of how high the floodwaters had been.

And to the right, the entrance to another campsite was closed due to severe damage.

Our sister snapped a photo of my brother and I next to the stream where the debris pile showed how far below the flood waters, we would have been had we been standing there the year before.

After lunch at one of the usual restaurants we frequent and some shopping in the usual spots in Black Mountain (5 miles from Montreat), we returned to our house to take one of our typical sibling photos.

That night we had a great sibling conversation, one of several over the weekend, as we began to prepare ourselves for the end of our SibSab.

On Tuesday morning, my sisters dropped me off at the airport for my flight home as they set off to drive back to Memphis.  Our brother set off on the continuation of his travels to his college reunion later that week.  But before parting ways, we as usual discussed our next SibSab in 2026.  If all our plans work out next year, we will have two SibSabs, one to a location three of us have never been to before and a second one returning to Montreat for more time together in our mountain retreat!