The next morning, we got up early, had free sausage, biscuits, and southern style gravy (courtesy of our hotel). While watching the news during morning breakfast, there were two stories in a row about two activities in which we soon be participating. The first had to do with a two year old who recently fell to her death at Chimney Rock Park, the same park we were heading to that morning. It turned out that the parents let the child under the railing, and she fell. That scared me a bit, considering we were heading there in fifteen minutes. The next story covered a recent scuba trip by a British couple in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The couple stated that they had been left by the boat in shark infested waters when the current brought them approximately 200 meters away from the boat. They were rescued the following day. However, people on the boat and crew members stated that they never saw the couple and that the couple had been talking about recklessly diving while on the boat. Many believed that the couple staged this event, especially since they had enough water with them and didn’t inflate their safety devices. So, I felt a little reassured that everything would be okay while scuba diving in Australia…although a little apprehensive. Hopefully we are not the next couple found in shark infested waters. After the news, we were off.
We drove up the winding mountain roads (the windiest road we’ve ever been on) to Chimney Rock. We hiked around the park for hours. I had some difficulty in the beginning as I wasn’t feel the greatest, but after drinking some water and eating some granola bars, I was back in action. There were lots of fun rocks to climb, mini caves, waterfalls, and climbing stairs involved. We took lots of pictures. After Chimney Rock, we headed down the road to Lake Lure, but we didn’t spend too much time there. We drove back into Chimney Rock village and walked around. It was an old-fashioned, yet touristy, “hillbilly” town. We picked up some lunch consisting of a Boars Head sandwich (my favorite deli meat!) and headed back up the mountain to return to the hotel for a quick shower.
After washing up, we headed back out, this time to downtown Asheville. We walked around downtown for hours looking at little shops and art galleries. The town was really nice and hippie infested (Ed’s words, not mine). After exploring, we wound up eating in a Bier Garden. Microbrews were only $2.50!! The Cuban sandwich was excellent. The chicken fingers were pretty good too. The original plan was to head to a local bar for some live bluegrass music, but after calling the bar, the bartender playfully asked a patron at the bar, “Billy, did you bring your banjo? No, there’s no live music tonight, but plenty of cold beer.” Apparently the local newspaper was wrong. Instead, we headed back home, watched some TV (The Office reruns), planned the next day (decided to go The Biltmore Estate), and spoke with Jason. Jason informed us that we had forgotten my coats in his dining room. Oops. I’ll need that for New Zealand. We then headed to bed.
We started the next morning pretty much the same way. Ed ate sausage, biscuits, and gravy while I ate fruit loops and yogurt for breakfast. After breakfast, we headed down to The Biltmore Estate. While admission is quite pricey ($47 a person), you can definitely make a full day out of the visit. We first toured the house…something like 43 bathrooms and 60+ bedrooms in the house, not including the stables. The house was immense. I believe it was 1.2 million cubic feet. The basement included a bowling alley, a gym, an indoor swimming pool, several kitchens, servants’ quarters, and other things that I’m forgetting. It’s hard to imagine The Biltmore actually being a person’s house, let alone a country retreat. After touring the house, we headed outside to see the gardens. It was sprinkling at this point, but we looked around anyhow. The grounds were enormous! We walked around most of the gardens, and then got back in the car as it started to rain harder. We headed to the bass pond, took some pictures of the pond and waterfall, and then headed to the estate winery and farm. We took a quick tour of the winery, but didn’t stop for wine tasting as we would be on the road later. We then headed to the farm while it poured. They have several reenactments of the way things were done back then. While we were there, a blacksmith was doing a demonstration. We didn’t stay long because there wasn’t enough room underneath the roof. They also have butter churning, sewing, woodshop, and farming demonstrations. In addition, on fairer weather days, live music plays. You can also take horse rides, go bicycling, go rafting, etc.
After leaving The Biltmore Estate, we headed to the Great Smokey Mountains. We drove around this national park for hours admiring the huge mountains covered in clouds. It started to rain hard during part of the trip. At one of the pull-offs, we walked ½ mile up hill to a tower, which we climbed and saw nothing but clouds. On a clearer day, you can see different mountains, trails, etc. At this point, the Appalachian Trail hit. We saw several hikers that were hiking the trail. I can’t even imagine as I was huffing and puffing going up ½ mile. Very neat. When we left the Great Smokey Mountains, we went through a village in Tennessee called Pigeon Forge. This was Ed’s dreamland. There were more putt putt, strangely called Fantasy Golf, courses than I could count. In fact, there was even a Professor Hacker’s mini golf course (which we played in the Outer Banks). There was a magic show, a country medieval times with cowboys instead of knights called Dixie Stampede, a dinosaur museum next to a Cracker Barrel, a hillbilly fair, Country Bear Jamboree, acrobats, a huge go-cart track, some sort of crazy upside down building, and lots of other crazy “redneck” (Ed’s word) events. Ed says that if a word exists to describe beyond redneck, for example redneck + tourist, that’s what this town was. It was his fantasy come true. Hotel rooms were being advertised for $19.99 and $24.99. At first, I thought my eyes were playing a trick on me until I saw motel after motel advertise similar prices. It was crazy! We should have stayed there just to say that we stayed in such a cheap motel. However, we carried on and proceeded towards Nashville.
On the drive to Nashville, we spoke with Sarah, who said she would mail my jackets to Austin for us to pick up. We also made reservations to stay in a hotel while we were here. We stopped at Cracker Barrel for dinner. Ed had country fried steak, fried okra, mac and cheese, and hash brown casserole. I had chicken fingers and French fries. We then drove the rest of the way to the hotel.
Getting buried in the sand
Pretty flowers
The Currituck Lighthouse and sunset in the neighboring park
