WASHINGTON — No one at the White House, or in the city of Asheville, N.C., or at one of the nation’s most posh resorts will talk much about what President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle might be doing on this weekend’s retreat to the mountains of western North Carolina.
However, their two girls aren’t coming along.
“They need a little time alone, perhaps,” Dolly Jenkins-Mullen, the chairwoman of the political-science department at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, said of the first couple. “Who doesn’t want to go off with their wife away from the lovely kids for a couple of days?”
The first couple is expected to stay at the Grove Park Inn, where rooms range from $280 a night for the room with “a subdued view” to $675 a night for the club level, with 24-hour concierge service and access to the inn’s romantic spa. A weekend package offers a couples massage.
The hotel has plenty of experience serving high-value, hush-hush guests who need lots of privacy. Ten presidents (including Obama, back in his candidate days) have stayed at the hotel.
A totally private weekend is planned.
