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sat10AM - 7PM
sun11AM - 6PM
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What a difference a few decades make! The images of New York City were taken in 1970 (Bernard Gotfryd, Library of Congress) and in 2018 by Afif Ramdhasuma (from pexels.com). Earth Day has been celebrated on April 22 since it was established through grassroots efforts in 1970. It was a response to increasing concerns caused by smog (intense air pollution caused mainly by exhaust fumes), Great Lakes at risk of dying from pesticide runoff and waste dumping, and rivers that caught on fire (the Cuyahoga River in Ohio famously caught fire in June of 1969). It was also the year when monumental legislation was enacted to address all kinds of environmental concerns. ...read more
At Home | Inspiration
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If it’s true, as they say, that seeing is believing, then we at Mast Store would like to propose another entry to your quip collection: Doing is moving. “Doing” not only requires movement - “doing” moves you both physically and emotionally. ...read more
Local Flavor | Mast Family Favorites | Travel
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What is a library? It’s a big building with lots of books in it. But wait, it’s so much more. The library is a gateway to your wildest dreams, a place to learn, a place to imagine, a place to make friends. Today’s libraries are repositories of books, but they also are places to get help to learn to read or improve your reading, to improve your math skills, to listen to a performance by a string quartet, to watch a movie, to refine your crafting skills, and to gather with fellow writers. Yes, libraries are SO much more. ...read more
Adventure | Inspiration | Mast Family Favorites
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... Our favorite foods! Food is universal because everybody’s got ta eat! And the last two months of the year are filled with more than their fair share of family meals, work gatherings, special outings to favorite restaurants, tins filled with homemade cookies and fudge, and the anticipation of food traditions handed down from generation to generation ...read more
At Home | Recipes
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Even before we bought the Mast General Store, we were taken by the beauty of Valle Crucis. We’ve heard people describe the drive out Broadstone Road as traveling through a time portal. In the 1970s, fields in the river bottoms would be filled with tobacco, cabbage, or high with hay to feed cattle that were grazing in the summer pasture. ...read more
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The lucky few who have seen the Earth from a different perspective – astronauts - all echo the same viewpoint upon their return. Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut and the first human to go to space, commented, “Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it.”
Behind the Scenes | Inspiration
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After my husband and I retired from our careers, we lived full time in our RV for two and a half years. During that time, we traveled around the country working in different campgrounds. We worked several summers in Shenandoah National Park as campground hosts for the National Park Service.
Our duties included checking campers in and out of the campground, helping them with various needs they may have, clarifying the rules and regulations of the park, and, my favorite, keeping the wildlife and the campers safe from each other. At times this required us to scare bears from the campsites. In order to do this, we were given slingshots and taught how to brace the metal section on our forearms to shoot more accurately to scare off the bears without actually injuring them.
At that time, Shenandoah National Park was home to the highest density of black bears in the eastern United States, so we saw them frequently. It was not unusual to have campers come tell us that a bear was close to their campsite or in the campground. Most of the time, we were able to send the bears on their way by simply waving our arms and yelling, “Shoo, bear!”
One evening as we were eating dinner, there was a knock on the door. It was one of the other campground hosts who needed us to help with a bear in a campsite. We arrived at the site to see the bear walk up to the picnic table where the campers had been eating their dinner, pick up a loaf of bread, walk just into the edge of the woods, sit down, and eat the bread. After some hasty consultation, we decided that the next time he came to the table, we would start running, yelling, and shooting our slingshots.
Soon enough, the bear appeared and grabbed some more food. Whereupon, we began our attack. He headed for the woods with us in pursuit, but instead of running away as they usually did, he stopped on a boulder, looked at us, and ate the food. He was a tough old bear, so we had to call a ranger, who brought his special gun which made an extra loud explosive sound. The ranger shot the special gun into the air and that sent the bear away from the campground.
I never think of Shenandoah without thinking of bears.
- Mary, Mast Store Asheville
For more of our Mast Family National Park Service adventures and recommendations, click HERE