One moment you're kayaking down the rapids, or hiking above the clouds of Mount Pisgah. The next, you can be sipping Claret in the vineyards of a grand estate, or meeting an eighth-generation potter at his wheel. Or lying naked covered in a seaweed wrap.

You're not dreaming. You're in Asheville, a New Age city that is as welcoming to high rollers as it is to hippies, with vegan burrito bars and as much yoga as you can stand. Whether it's the altitude or the aromatherapy that frees the mind, so many with wanderlust have followed the Blue Ridge Parkway to Asheville that a local film production company makes good business selling regional accents, an assortment of dialects that rival in quality the offerings of New York studios.

Such variety fits well in a town of about seventy thousand souls whose manners include hospitality toward authentically diverse and ambitious tastes: Scotch-Irish pubs closing as the day breaks to earthy organic omelets with ramps and brown-eggs; a feeding frenzy of writers, sculptors, and ceramic and fiber artists alongside a thriving community of churches, and even the Lord's Gym, where a mural of Jesus presides over the treadmills. This high-altitude blend of laid back working cultures may be fertile territory for a 21st-century Southern fusion of sorts, exemplified by North America's preeminent fresco artist working happily alongside, say, the local moonshiner who makes kiwi-flavored hooch.

As fun and funky as Asheville gets, its heritage is steeped in all the glamour of the roaring twenties. The birthplace of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the city's façade is all Art Deco, from the Biltmore family seat to the historic City Hall. Recently, the city resuscitated the 1938 Woolworth Co. building, uncovering a grand staircase and stunning terrazzo floors, smothered beneath layers of vinyl tile. The result is the Woolworth Walk Gallery, which furnishes one hundred and fifty new and emerging artists with studio and gallery space.

Asheville's downtown is bustling with chic boutiques and upscale restaurants. You can fill an afternoon sipping coffee and browsing the Grove Arcade's mountain craft shops and surprisingly fine wine store, all nestled in an elaborate Tudoresque building occupying a full city block. And just outside town is Asheville's most famous house, the fabled eight-thousand-acre Biltmore Estate, from which once grander acreage was sold to establish the country's first national forest.

Today, rejuvenation is still a theme for Asheville – whether it's biking teams practicing for the Tour de France, or musicians or entrepreneurs seeking a breath of fresh air for their creative spirit… Asheville has something fresh for everyone.