Sher Online

Had a really good sleep at the Country Inn in Asheville. Very comfortable bed, and nothing woke me up during the night. In the morning, we took our time getting up, cleaning up, eating breakfast, and getting on the road. The weather was in the mid-50s and sunshine, so it was just a beautiful day weather-wise.

Our destination was the Biltmore Estate for which Cathryn had gotten tickets online. Once again the GPS was a help, but it did get confused the last mile or two. No matter. We just followed the signs at that point and got there OK.

The long drive to the house through the grounds was just as beautiful as I remembered. It’s a lovely forest-and-rolling-hill landscape, even in January. We found parking easily, right where the shuttle bus was waiting to pick up passengers. A short shuttle ride and we were at the house. After taking a few pictures outside, we were on our way.

This is not a busy time of year at the Estate, so there weren’t many tourists. That was a good thing, for sure! Also, for this time of year, the audio tour headsets were complimentary. They really did enhance the tour, so saving the $10 fee was nice.

The house is as amazing as I remembered from my last visit (can’t remember exactly when that was, but I’m thinking it was 25 years ago, at least). The detail, the thoughtfulness of the architecture, and the richness of the furnishings, was impressive. The tour through the various rooms, and the audio narration, really did provide an idea of what life, lived in the house, was like.

I haven’t been through the pictures yet, but I assume they’ll speak for themselves. The only thing I’ll say is that despite what the pictures show, the overall lighting level in the house was really dim. At the time, the only electricity they had were Edison’s 15-watt incandescent bulbs, which they supplemented with kerosene lamps and candles. The camera was able to lighten up the rooms, though the light coming through the windows then was very bright. We’ll see. Anyway, they keep the rooms at the low lighting level both so it’s authentic and also because light causes deterioration. Many of the fabrics are original and bright light would accelerate their demise.

I remembered some of the features of the house, especially the fact that there was a bowling alley and a swimming pool, though I had forgotten what they actually looked like. One of the things I learned on this trip was that they didn’t have “pool” chemicals at that time, so biology won out. They filled the pool with ice-cold stream water, then heated it with steam from the house boilers. But the warm water encouraged the growth of algae and other creatures, so they only left the water in the pool for a few days, then they drained it again–all 70,000 gallons of it! Another interesting thing, which you’ll see in the pool picture, is that they had ropes hanging down for people who were not good swimmers to grab and hold on to.

One section of the house I remembered from last time was the servant’s quarters on the fourth floor. We did see some servant’s rooms in the basement near the kitchen. These were for those who had jobs in the kitchen area, though, not the housemaids. Apparently there’s now a separate “upstairs/downstairs” tour that covers those upper rooms, so I didn’t get reacquainted with those on this trip. No matter, it was all good.

We next went to check out the old stable area, which is now some shops and a cafe. Since it was lunchtime, we decided to eat here. The holding stalls served as dividers between many of the tables, which was pretty cool. It was a lovely, and tasty, meal. After eating, I got a chocolate ice cream cone from one of the small shops. Then it was off to the gardens to view those.

You can imagine that because it’s January, not much is in bloom. But what that meant is that we got to really see the “bones” of the place–the pathways and trees and such. We walked along some paths that went by the spring garden, the azalea garden, and the pond. Then we headed back to visit the conservatory (basically the greenhouse). This was a fabulous place with all kinds of flowers in bloom. My camera battery was almost gone by this time and I had left the spare in the car, so I ended up taking flower pictures with my iPhone (it’s a very handy gadget, that).

By the time we were through in the Conservatory, we were all ready to call it a visit, so we headed back to catch the shuttle back to the car. It was a good visit. I think it took longer than any of us thought it would, but that was perfectly OK. We saw the house, got some exercise and some food, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The crowds weren’t crushing because it was an off time of year, so we didn’t feel pushed anywhere, and we never had to wait in line. Yay!

We left about 4 PM. We had decided that we wanted to head to Gatlinburg by about 4, so this worked out well. We made the 2-hour drive in enough daylight to see the scenery. We did arrive too late to find the visitor’s center (and thought it would probably be closed anyway), so we just checked into the hotel. We’re at DollyWood’s Dream More Resort, believe it or not! In researching the hotels in the area, this had the best prices and the most amenities. I don’t know if the time of year changes the prices but think it probably does, so we got a real deal.

Once we unpacked, we decided to just eat here at the hotel, and the meal was great! We had the restaurant practically all to ourselves. After dinner, we walked the grounds a little bit. The pool looks pretty, but the area was closed, so we didn’t get to walk around it. They did have a couple of fire pits going, so we sat at one of those for a while and just talked. The portion of our bodies toward the fire were really warm, though the other side was pretty chilly!

We had planned to see a movie and thought tonight might be the night. But after a nice dinner and some relaxing, we decided to not go to the show. It was going to start at 9:40 PM, and that would have gotten us back pretty late. So we’re just chillin’, and I’m working on this blog. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up with entries every night on this trip, but I’m going to try!

Tomorrow is all-day in the Gatlinburg area. Not sure what we’re going to do, but we’ll be in this hotel tomorrow night, too. Then we make the long drive to DC.

More tomorrow!

BTW, in the first picture, Cathryn is imitating the lion’s stance…that’s why she’s crouching down. 🙂