April 10, 2008 ISSUE
Business Spotlight
Mountainaire Inn & Log Cabins—
Your Family Away From Home for 54 Years
Story by Sam Calhoun
After staying at Mountainaire Inn & Log Cabins, you’re not leaving without a hug.
“We become our guests’ family away from home—they get hugs goodbye,” said Deborah McDowell, who owns Mountainaire Inn & Log Cabins, located at 827 Main Street in Blowing Rock, with her husband Jim. “We are here and we deal personally with every single guest. They come in as guests and they leave as friends.”
Your affection for Mountainaire Inn & Log Cabins begins with its eleven rooms. McDowell shops locally for bedding and decorations that she uses to personalize all the rooms.
“Each room is unique,” said McDowell, who designed a God Bless America Room, a Lavender Room, a Red Room, an Aunt Bea’s Room and a Williamsburg Room among others. “It’s all very unique—it’s like playing HGTV.”
And then there are the cabins. The two romance cabins feature Jacuzzis, and the three family cabins feature lofts for the kids and quiet bedrooms and decks for the adults. All the cabins feature knotty pine walls, massive wooden beds, mantels with decorations that change seasonally and ample parking right in the middle of Blowing Rock. And that parking comes in handy because of the inn’s location—guests are in walking distance of everything in Blowing Rock, including hiking trails, so they can park their cars and leave them.
Your affection for Mountainaire Inn & Log Cabins only grows when you discover all the extras included in your stay. McDowell and her staff of four employees act as your personal concierge, arranging theater tickets, flowers, reservations and even wedding plans if you so desire. Just last week, the staff arranged a wedding in two hours. Mountainaire also provides sleds for kids in the winter, a wide selection of board games and cards, a large VHS library, picnic baskets for hikes, directions to hiking trails, recommendations for guided fly-fishing trips, tips on real estate and chopped wood for the inn’s fireplaces. McDowell maintains a “secret garden” in the back of the inn that is only visible from the rooms, and fresh coffee, tea and hot chocolate are available in the lobby for guests.
Each room features at least four pillows per guest—McDowell admitted she has a pillow fetish—and all rooms are nonsmoking. But if you are a smoker, don’t worry—McDowell will give you a ceramic ashtray to use outside. And if guests bring wine to their room, McDowell sets them up with real wine glasses so they don’t have to drink out of plastic cups. Drinking wine out of plastic cups, according to McDowell, is subject to a tacky tax and won’t be tolerated.
And the list of extras goes on. Wireless Internet is available all over the 1-acre property, and each guest has access to the inn’s outdoor living room where live music and tiki torches light up the night. Guests have been known to share drinks and conversation at the outdoor living room, strike up friendships and decide to eat dinner together.
“We’re like a bed and breakfast, but we just tell people that the breakfast is across the street [at Knights on Main],” said McDowell, who, with her staff, handles all the landscaping and outdoor decorations at Mountainaire. “We have our own little slice of heaven here.”
McDowell and her husband purchased their little slice of heaven in 2006. Built in 1954 as the Mountainaire Motor Court, the inn was one of the first businesses in Blowing Rock. After the property traded hands many times, Ian and Joan Grey took over ownership of the business from 1991 to 2006, building the log cabins and restoring the inn.
McDowell and Jim both spent the majority of their lives in Raleigh, but they met and fell in love while attending Francis Marion University in Florence, S.C. After marrying in 1975, the couple moved to Raleigh where McDowell took a job as the facilities coordinator and office manager for Ciena Corporation. Jim took a job as a partner with the e-Components Company, a position he still holds to this day. The couple has two children—Jennifer, 30, who works for Wachovia in New York, and Ryan, 28, who lives in Charlotte.
While Jennifer was attending ASU, the McDowells regularly stayed in Blowing Rock.
“We just loved the charm of the whole town,” said McDowell, who eventually, with her husband, decided to buy a cottage somewhere in the mountains. A couple who the McDowells befriended on their trips to Blowing Rock knew of their interest and called them in Raleigh one day to tell them about a property for sale. The property, though, was the Mountainaire Inn & Log Cabins, and not the couple’s dream of a small cottage in the woods.
“So, in February 2006, we took a trip to Blowing Rock, fell in love and here we are. It was all serendipitous,” said McDowell, who admitted that Jim was a little leery of the purchase of the inn at first. “But he went out fly-fishing and caught his first trout, and it wasn’t the trout that got hooked.”
McDowell had no real experience running an inn, but felt she had other experience that would help her in the new role of innkeeper.
“I had no experience, but I was a mother. With dealing with teenagers coming in and out of my house, this was a piece of cake,” said McDowell, who lives on the property with her husband. “The other Blowing Rock innkeepers have been very good to me here, teaching me, helping me; it’s a real community effort. We all look after each other and learn and share.”
When the McDowells took over Mountainaire Inn & Log Cabins, they updated the landscaping, renovated the bathrooms, installed new storm doors, repainted the structure, added outdoor picnic tables, built fences and restored and cleaned the creek that runs behind the building.
Today, Mountainaire’s rates range from $59 to $119 per night for the rooms, and from $125 to $295 per night for the cabins. The inn is filled with repeat and new customers.
“We greet everybody; it’s how we treat our guests. It’s our personal [touch] and we’ve always got a smile,” said McDowell. “It’s always positive and uplifting here.”
In just two years, the McDowells have become a part of the High Country community.
“We have been so blessed,” McDowell added. “I like the beach, but I found that my spirit belongs in the mountains.”
Mountainaire Inn & Log Cabins is located at 827 Main Street in Blowing Rock, across from Knights on Main. The inn is open from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. seven days a week. For more information, click to www.mountainaireinn.com or call 828-295-7991.
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