We slept in a little later than we wanted (pretty much to
the story of our lives) but enjoyed the hotel breakfast before leaving. The
breakfast dining area was up a few steps and an older lady fell while we were
there...Devin helped her up. Devin had been searching online for leather since
we got back from our first leg of the trip and had found a jacket her really
liked from a place in Independence, VA called Fox Creek Leathers. It was pretty
much on our way to our next destination so we made it a point to stop in at
their store. He was able to try on the jacket he liked and, after an hour
later, he bought the jacket and we both got new chaps. I also got some gloves
and two new belts. This place is really great, everything is made in the USA
and guaranteed for life.
It wasn’t too much further down the road that we got hungry
and found a fairly large town. After getting sodas at McD’s we were really
wanting some Subway. We stopped at one where a makeshift sign read ‘No
Meatballs Today’ or something like that. The girl behind the counter told us
that they, and the Subway down the street were both out. I was really hankerin’
for a meatball sub so we got back on the road until we made it to another large
town (a college town, but I don’t remember which) where we found a Subway in a
gas station. Guess what? No meatballs. At least this lady was nice enough to
tell us that the distribution center for that area was out and that NO Subways
in the area had meatballs. We went to the Wendy’s across the street instead.
Eventually we made it to Asheville, NC. We had both gone
through Asheville many, many times on our way to where he was stationed and had
always wanted to go see the Biltmore Home. We got to our hotel and settled in.
We purchased our tickets at our hotel for a discount and headed to the Biltmore
Estate.
In case you’re unfamiliar, the Biltmore Estate was built by
Charles Vanderbilt in the early 1900’s. It is the largest home in America. We
got there late in the day but were still able to tour the house and gardens
area. You aren’t allowed to take pictures in the house so we left the camera in
the car. The house is enormous; all these rooms with all of this amazing art,
filled with the finest of everything. Huge hand-woven foreign tapestries adorn
many walls. Many paintings by famous painters. It has this spectacular
overlooking view of the North Carolina hills. It was one of the first houses to
ever have a bowling alley. It has a pool, a library with priceless books,
including a chess set owned by Napoleon Bonaparte (although we didn’t see it,
it was on display elsewhere). We saw their bedrooms which had recently been
restored. We saw just the main part of the house, there was still a whole wing
we weren’t allowed to go to. The house closed at 4:30 and we left there around
5:00, they were closing up behind us as we went through (the lady at the
entrance told us they wouldn’t kick us out, just close up behind us). After
that we headed down to the garden. A spectacular place, with many, many acres
of 7 different areas. We never made it the nearly 1 mile to the Azalea Garden
(which wasn’t in bloom anyway), but saw the other areas. The walled garden was
planted with beautiful mums and had lots of squash and cucumber varieties
growing over the arched trellised walkway. They plant perennials there all
year, with tulips in the spring, perennials in the summer, and mums in the
fall. We went to the hot house (enormous like all the rest) which housed all
types of tropical flowers, plants, trees, cacti… Devin really enjoyed some of
the crazy things in there. We finished by walking through the rose garden. It
smelled beautiful. All different colors and varieties. They even use one area
to test out different types of roses to see which varieties are best for the
garden. Eventually we decided to leave, right around dusk and when our feet
were just too tired.
We drove around the rest of the property. The barn was
closed by that time. They have a winery too but it seemed really touristy. They
had an exhibition on about the life and travels of the Vanderbilt’s, but we
were just too tired and were pleased with what we had seen that day.
Out hotel had given us a list of some of the best restaurants
in town so we picked a BBQ place. It was pretty good. We walked across the
street and got some frozen yogurt afterwards.
When we got back to the hotel we did laundry and watched our
shows. The dryer didn’t work very well so we had to lay out our damp clothes
all over the room in hopes they would dry overnight.
Nope…still no mileage. I think we gave up on daily mileage
for this part of the trip.
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