Days 3, 4, 5 – Lake Norman, Asheville, and a little Tennessee

July 10th – Lake Norman and Asheville, NC

We spent the night of the ninth into the tenth with the Martins at their lakehouse on Lake Norman. Jim Martin (jr) was a high school friend and college roomate of Tom’s, for reference, and his parents Jim Sr. and Dotty Martin are the former governor and first lady of North Carolina.

In the morning after breakfast, we were treated to swimming in the lake, being dragged around behind the boat, and rolling about in the inflatable hamster ball.

After lunch, we packed up the camper in preparation to leave, only to discover that one rear tire was half-flat. Dad and Jim reinflated the tire in a very manly fashion, and we finally made it out of the driveway around 1:30pm.

We headed west towards Asheville and drove through a thunderstorm along route 40, near the Smokey Mountains.

But the rain cleared by the time we reached Asheville, North Carolina, and we arrived at the Biltmore Estates to sun and a cool breeze. Since we had arrived after 3 o’clock, we were allowed to come back the next day, and so we spent the afternoon exploring River Bend Farm and the Winery at Biltmore. Just as a reference towards the size of the Biltmore estate, the drive from the entrance to the Winery was three miles. Biltmore’s estates were landscaped by the famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, who also designed New York’s Central Park, and Baltimore’s Roland Park(!).

The sock snuck into a few pictures. To the left of the picture is the center stable, where the horses would be kept. To the right above the sock is the creamery, where they sell delicious ice cream made locally from local cows.

Here is the sock with working blacksmith, Doc Cudd, Jr.

River Bend Farm was a working farm on the Biltmore Estates. The unique(!) octagonal shape allowed for the horses to be stabled in the barn in the center, while still leaving plenty of room for storage of equipment and goods. When we were there, filling the outer rim of the octagon were displays of farm equipment and demonstrations of butter churning. There was also a blacksmith’s shop, where Doc Cudd was working, and a woodworking shop.

Edith Vanderbilt, George W. Vanderbilt’s wife, was believer in ensuring that all young men and women were proficient in a number of skills, so River Bend Farm was also used as a summer camp of sorts, where young men learned woodworking and farm skills, and young women learned to sew and embroider.

Those of us who already know how to knit, rode the tractor.

After the farm we went to the winery. The winery at Biltmore used to be the Dairy Farm, where the cows were kept and milked, and where the milk was processed into drinkable milk, butter, cheese, and ice cream. After the Biltmore estate opened as an attraction to the public, the dairy farm wasn’t bringing in enough revenue, so the converted it into a winery in 1985.

Both sections of the winery—fermentation and casking and bottling—were open for viewing, and made for a very interesting, real-time display.

Unfortunately, North Carolina is not the appropriate climate for growing grapes for wine, so the wine was (apparently) not very good.

So we returned to the farmyard, which was closed, but we harassed the chickens and goats anyway.

We learned that angora goats enjoy having their heads scratched, and that their horns are warm because they have a blood supply. We knew this in theory, but experiencing it was something different.

Finally around seven we drove to Lake Powhatan and set up camp for the night. Dinner was hardboiled eggs and Tostitos. Fortunately we were not very hungry, probably from the ice cream at River Bend Farm.

I personally was a little overcome by the cuteness of the situation. Being a former Girl Scout, I am expert at rigging up tarps. Yes indeed.

July 11th – The Biltmore Estates and Asheville, NC

The morning of July 11th we got up and packed up enough that we could change the tire on the Cacafuego. Success. Nothing else could possibly go wrong (so far, so good). At Sarah’s behest, we breakfasted at Waffle House, where the food was cheap and the blueberries were chewy and the server was irritatingly attentive.

Then we took the flat tire to Firestone to get it repaired and drove to Biltmore. This time we went to the chateau itself.

George W. Vanderbilt’s grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt, made his money in shipping (earning him the nickname “Commodore”) and then railroad stock. When he died, he left a fortune of an incredible one million dollars ($1,000,000,000). His son, George’s father, doubled the fortune in ten years to two million dollars. Fortunately for them, the modern equivalent is something close to ninety-six billion dollars.

So George, at age 30, was an incredibly eligible bachelor, and he bought a lot of land, built himself a French style chateau and called it Biltmore. The house itself is about 4 acres inside.

We toured Biltmore for hours. The house has four stories of living space for the family and guests, not including the basement. It has 255 rooms; 43 bathrooms; dozens of bedrooms; a banquet hall; a breakfast room (for lunch); the Winter Garden; numerous sitting rooms; a salon with Napoleon’s chess set; a bachelor’s wing which includes a smoking room, a billiards room, and a hunting room; female servants quarters on the fourth floor, with a common/sitting room for the servants; male servants and grooms quarters over the stable and carriage house; its own telephone system; full electricity; three or four separate kitchens for separate tasks (pastry, roasting, and main kitchen); a hand-wash laundry room; a machine laundry room; a drying room; a bowling alley; an indoor swimming pool with underwater lighting; a gymnasium; and scores of changing rooms for the guests. I may be forgetting some things.

The view from a rear porch on the ground floor:

After we had toured the top four floors, we had to go sit and rest before we tackled the basement. We sat under a tree out front near the carriage house and admired some of Sarah’s drawings (pictures are prohibited inside the house). [click to enlarge; they're wonderful drawings]

After a tour of the basement, Sarah and I headed up the hill to visit Diana under her cupola, and Ann and Tom took a short jaunt in the garden.

Then we drove back through the Biltmore estate to Biltmore Village, where I got to do some yarn shopping at Yarn Paradise. Their selection was huge, and it was wonderful. But we were all tired, so after we got to check our emails sitting out on the lawn by the RV in front of a tea room, we drove on back to Lake Powhatan, had dinner, played with a fire, and went to bed. Mom and I slept out in the tent, which on top of one and a half thick sleeping bags each was perfectly comfortable, if a bit hard, on the gravel.

Today, July 12th, we drove all day, stopped for lunch at Poppy’s organic grocer slash farmers market, and kept on driving out of North Carolina into Tennessee. We arrived in Chattanooga, TN, and found ourselves an RV hookup at Raccoon Mountain. Hooray!

The RV park has wireless, and electricity, so we are treating ourselves to air conditioning, a refrigerator that cools instead of merely stores, and recharging all of our copious electronics.