Sleep like a log in these old-timey tourist cabins near Asheville

When you check into the Log Cabin Motor Court just north of Asheville, you're not exactly unplugged. There is cable TV on a flat-screen bolted to the cabin wall, and a microwave, mini-refrigerator and coffeemaker. The cabins even have wireless access.

But you are unplugged in a different way. Unplugged from the 21st century, and plugged into what travel was like when your parents were kids and your grandparents were doing the driving.

There was a time when tourist cabins like these were a step up in America's wanderlust. If you hit the road in the 1920s, there was no guarantee you'd find a hotel at all. Better keep that canvas tent folded up behind the rumble seat, Marge.

That's how the Log Cabin Motor Court started, back in 1929: Audrey and Zeb Foster had bought a pretty little pine grove between U.S. 25 and U.S. 19/23, about 5 miles from downtown Asheville, to build a country place. But travelers passing by on the way to Tennessee kept stopping and asking to pitch tents.


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