Thanks for the suggestions. Mary lives in Boone, IIRC, and I doubt we'll get that far north, but she might have some ideas at that. And I'm sure she knows what the weather is likely to be like. (Now if only I can find her email address...)

So far we're only looking at the NC side -- we're not going to have a lot of time. We thought we might stay Monday night in Asheville.

This all assumes that the reason Amtrak showed "coach sold out" for the train on Wednesday is because something is wrong with their reservations system (a not unusual circumstance), and not because the train is actually sold out.