Murphy to Manteo: Finding new adventures, historic detours, and the soul of North Carolina on the state’s longest highway: U.S. Route 64. Read the series.
Just by lounging on the lawn at High Hampton Resort in Cashiers, you become part of a century-long tradition. But as I recline on an oversize chaise next to my lifelong best friend, Brooke — whom I can always count on to be up for an adventure — I can’t shake my thoughts of responsibilities back home. I wonder aloud if we should be doing, well, something.
“We are!” she insists. “This” — she gently clinks her martini glass against mine — “was on my to-do list.” She grins and takes a sip. The only other sound is the quiet murmur of music and conversation spilling out onto the terrace.
Summertime guests at High Hampton Resort relish lake activities. photograph by Tim Robison
And OK, yes, we hear the distant giggles of children. But, crucially, they aren’t our children. We drop our heads back and sigh. Our husbands and precious toddlers are back home in the Triangle, so there’s no go go go, no must-dos. No sticky hands or scheduled naptime — although, actually, that last one sounds pretty nice.
The lawn before us drops down to a sparkling lake and the breathtaking granite face of Rock Mountain, in whose direction every chair — from pale green Adirondacks to squishy chaises like ours — is pointed.
Brooke raises her eyebrows over the top of her sunglasses. Like sisters, we can communicate with just a look, but I don’t need to see her eyes to know what this one means: Perfect.
• • •
As little girls, Brooke and I begged our mothers to send us to sleepaway camp. The summer we were 8, they agreed. That July, we arrived at Camp Pisgah, a Girl Scout camp near Brevard, with dreams of secret handshakes and friendship bracelets — and promptly found ourselves homesick.
After our moms dropped us off, my tears started to flow. “It’s just one week,” Brooke told me as she pulled me in for a hug. But that night in our cabin, a mountain breeze blowing through the windows, we cried side by side, hunched over notepads on our twin beds. Our moms still laugh about the melodramatic letters they received: My tears are all over this paper, we wrote. Please pick us up — we want to come home!
At Looking Glass Falls before drop-off, the writer (right) and her best friend, Brooke, were inseparable. Photography courtesy of Katie Schanze, photographed by Matt Hulsman
Still, joyful moments hold more weight in my memory: Blue Ridge mornings as we trekked to the dining hall, matching necklaces from the camp store, eating Oreos slathered in peanut butter by a campfire, paddling a canoe in a fit of giggles, and, on our last night, pushing paper lanterns out onto the lake, candlelight flickering on the water. Our homesickness all but forgotten, we made a pact: “We’ll come back next summer.”
• • •
High Hampton Resort is less than an hour away from Camp Pisgah — just off U.S. Route 64 — and with its chestnut bark-sided inn and surrounding cottages, its croquet and tennis courts, its hiking trails and dahlia garden, its lake and boathouse, it feels like a grown-up version of summer camp, the perfect place to relive our childhoods — with upgrades.
This 1,400-acre property has long been a retreat for those who come to escape the heat and to fill their social calendars. The tradition began in 1924, when Ernest Lyndon McKee and his wife, Gertrude Dills McKee, North Carolina’s first female state senator, opened a small inn with an 11-hole golf course. Over its many summers, High Hampton Resort became a treasured destination for generations of visiting families.
The heart of it all has always been the large Adirondack-style inn, built from American chestnut trees and completed in 1933 (a replacement for the original, which burned down in 1932). Its expansive wraparound porch and red rocking chairs have invited guests to make themselves at home ever since. Today, High Hampton Inn and the surrounding cottages and cabins make up a nationally designated historic district, and the stylish new furnishings and amenities never overshadow the rustic charm of their storied past.
Upon arriving at our luxurious lakeside suite in the 1932 Halsted Cottage, Brooke and I most certainly do not cry, except for maybe tears of joy.
Free time calls for chocolate chip cookies (with a pinch of salt) and postcard penning. photograph by Tim Robison
In the mornings and evenings, we trek across the grassy lawn to the historic, wood-paneled dining room, where we devour dishes like house-made tagliatelle and North Carolina trout paired with seasonal ingredients by Executive Chef Scott Franqueza. And I don’t remember the mess hall of our youth having desserts made by a James Beard award-nominated pastry chef like April Franqueza: Each breakfast begins with a surprise — her still-warm coffee cake, perhaps, or a flaky, buttery croissant — and each dinner ends with desserts like pavlova, chocolate chip cookies, or coconut cake.
At night by the firepit, we plot out days filled with croquet and canoeing. We hike into the clouds, climbing to the peak of Chimney Top Mountain. When it rains, we cozy up in the inn to play checkers; we talk about how much we miss our boys and wish they were here, and then how wondrous it is that they aren’t. We laugh about the girls we once were and still are. We write postcards to our husbands, the ink blurred by rings of cocktail condensation — We’re never coming home! — and to our moms — Remember when …?
Spot original American chestnut paneling in High Hampton’s cozy lobby (pictured) and dining room. photograph by Tim Robison
Stay friends with someone long enough, and you meet different versions of them: the brave girl, the loyal friend, the new mom. With a little luck (and a lot of intention), you learn to love each one. You get to grow up together.
Our last night at High Hampton, we look out over the lake in comfortable silence, candles and fireflies flickering on the terrace. We grin as our eyes meet, the most recent iteration of a long-ago secret handshake.
We’ll come back next summer.
High Hampton Resort
1525 Highway 107 South
Cashiers, NC 28717
(800) 648-4252
highhampton.com
More to Explore: Find camp-inspired ways to play in western North Carolina at ourstate.com/summer-in-the-mountains.
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