By Mary Ann Anderson
From Tribune News Service
Ashenville—With summer just getting started and heat and humidity practically smothering most of the country like a fat wool blanket, now is the time to plan a romantic getaway to higher, cooler elevations. The historic, stunningly serene Omni Grove Park Inn, in the heart of western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, has been welcoming guests to the clean, pristine air of its slope-side retreat for more than a century.
The iconic Grove Park has long been a symbol of the Blue Ridge, probably as well-known as other local landmarks of the Biltmore House, Chimney Rock and the Blue Ridge Parkway. The hotel, literally chiseled into the granite wall of Sunset Mountain, opened in 1913 after Edwin Wiley Grove and Fred Seely, both in the pharmaceutical industry, and their crews quarried the rock from the mountain’s massive boulders. Using only one steam shovel, it took roughly 400 men and a team of mules and wagons less than a year to hew the boulders from the rocky terrain and build the inn. It is, to state it plainly, a remarkable feat that resulted in an architectural wonder….