Biltmore Estate, Asheville, NC

23 August 2013

We had a fabulous time touring the Biltmore Estate here in Asheville. It is definitely important to devote a whole day to seeing this impressive place. Biltmore was built by George Vanderbilt, youngest son of the third generation of wealthy Vanderbilts. The house, in French chateau style, was completed in 1895 when George was 32 and still single. It has 101 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, and 4 acres of space under its roof. Imagine that much house for one single guy. He did marry not long after (how could such an eligible bachelor escape for long?), but he and his wife only had one child, a daughter named Cornelia, born in 1900, and George died suddenly at age 51 when she was not quite 14.

The property includes vast gardens, and we walked them first. Then we took a multi-hour walk of the house, using rented audio players that give great information about the house, the furnishings, the art and tapestries, and the people who lived there and visited there. The audio players are well worth the extra $10 it costs to use them. The house is absolutely amazing, and it’s the best house tour we have ever had. One of the wonderful things about touring here is that you are completely able to move at your own pace and you never feel hounded. Most rooms are monitored by friendly and knowledgeable hosts, there to answer any questions you have. The estate has 1800 employees to keep this whole operation going.

One cute story on the audio player was told by a preservationist who works at Biltmore. He had completed a restoration of George Biltmore’s bedroom, which involved new gold leaf on the walls and across a door to George’s private closet. With the new gold leaf, the closet door would not close properly, and in an attempt to close it, the preservationist went inside the closet and pushed the door shut from that side. It was then that he discovered that there was no doorknob on the inside. He called out for a long time, hoping one of the tourists strolling through the bedroom would hear him and get him out, but the closet was too soundproof and everyone passed by. Finally a little child heard his cries for help and with difficulty convinced his mother that someone was trapped in the closet. As the preservationist was finally released from the closet, the gathered tourists applauded. Now that closet door is left permanently ajar.

Descendants of George Biltmore own the property still, and continue to work on preserving the house and making it available to the public. If we ever get a chance to return, we would enjoy touring Biltmore again and taking one of the specialized tours, such as the Butler’s Tour or the Architect’s Tour, which cover other rooms and additional information from behind the scenes.

Right now we’re on the road toward Williamsburg, Virginia. We took a couple of damaging hits to the Flex’s windshield once again, and hope that it will be repairable without replacing the whole thing, which cost $500 last time around. My theory is that because we are travelling at 60 mph, we are sitting ducks to the many semis who pull around us and kick rocks at us.

Asheville, North Carolina

21 August 2013

 

It isn’t easy to transition from staying in a beautiful national park to a commercial campground, and this time the experience was more unpleasant than usual. This campground in Asheville, North Carolina, which shall remain nameless, has a filthy registration office and a very rude proprietor. After we backed into our site, our neighboring campers, Mike and Heather, however, quickly greeted us, which dulled the sting from the nasty proprietor’s behavior. They’re from Texas, a homeschooling family with four kids, with plans to be on the road for at least a year, maybe two. Of course, as homeschoolers ourselves, we felt an immediate affinity for them. Mike owns a stuffed animal business in Dallas which does not need much attention from him, plus a business as a “social media consultant”, work which he can do on the road.

This campground sits on the French Broad River, which looks like a smaller version of our Muddy Mo (Missouri River) back home. The campground has constant traffic noise, although that isn’t too unusual for commercial campgrounds. They often seem to be situated on any leftover piece of available ground, squeezed in next to a busy street.

Now, on to some of the great things about Asheville!

Asheville has a thriving artists’ district, and we had a great time touring a few of the galleries. Our favorite was owned by Daniel McClendon, who paints bold abstracts with animal themes. His gallery is a former biscuit factory and a wonderful space for a gallery and studio!

For dinner, we chose a funky, colorful restaurant called the Mellow Mushroom, with a big outdoor patio in front. What a perfect evening to eat outside! No bugs, no wind, and the perfect temperature. We ordered Holy Shiitake pizza and it was fantastic—several kinds of mushrooms, several cheeses, and caramelized onions. We observed that Asheville is full of free spirits, many with purple or green hair. Our new friends who appear in the next paragraph call these hippie-types Nature Muffins!

Before leaving home, the Escape Forum led us to connect with Barbara and Kevin, who live near Asheville, and who have an Escape 19 on order. They came to see us in the campground and to soak up some Escape 19 atmosphere last evening. They brought wonderful banana bread to share with us, and Great Husband made coffee. In April Barbara and Kevin will be going to Chilliwack to get their new trailer and then plan to travel for 60 days in it right away. They are so excited and we are so excited for them, too!

Great Smoky Mountains NP Part 3

20 August 2013

Today we drove the Cades Cove Loop, a longer one-way scenic drive through forests and meadows. People of European descent settled in the area roughly between 1820 and 1920, with a maximum population of 280 farming families at one point. The population dwindled as the states of Tennessee and North Carolina purchased their properties for the purpose of creating Great Smoky Mountains National Park. A number of family cabins and churches remain and can be visited.

Oliver Cabin

Gorgeous view from the Oliver Cabin

Our second sighting of a black bear

The Primitive Baptist Church

Luckily for us, we made three more black bear sightings, all in the Cades Cove area. The best of the sightings was a large juvenile in a tree. The assembled crowd got to watch that bear climb quickly down the tree trunk and as he did we all dashed back over a low fence and to our cars. Only the slowest guy got eaten.

Besides many cabins along the route, we thought the highlights of Cades Cove were the old mill in operation at the Cades Cove Visitors Center, and the Primitive Baptist Church, where a park volunteer told us about the beliefs of the Primitive Baptists. The sect, still in existence, believes in predestination, literal interpretation of the King James Bible, and “holding people accountable.” They do not believe in missions, which accounts for the existence of a separate Baptist Church in Cades Cove, called Mission Baptist Church. Ministers of the Primitive sect are not supposed to go to any seminary for education, and they become pastors instead by “feeling the call” and subsequently being accepted by the elders. They are not supposed to give prepared sermons, but just speak “what the Holy Spirit tells them to say.” Since there were three or four ministers at any one time in the congregation, and each could speak as long as he wanted on Sunday, the combined sermons could go on for hours and hours.

Cades Cove meadow

The mill at the Cades Cove Visitors Center

Run! He's coming down!

While we were in the Cades Cove area, we took a drive through the campground there. We did not like it nearly so well as Elkmont Campground, where we are staying, especially with our stream-side site. Surprisingly, both campgrounds have many empty sites right now. The weather has been off-and-on rainy with mild temperatures--perfect camping weather. Here’s a caution for future visitors here--we have been really dismayed by the poor lane discipline of many oncoming drivers on the turning and twisting roads inside the park. Beware of that big motorhome speeding toward you in your lane!

One of the great things about camping is meeting fellow campers. Owners of Fiberglas campers especially seem to seek each other out. Tonight we met Robert and Debra from Minneapolis, who have a 15-foot Trillium. Despite having two 12-V batteries for it, they run out of power in just a day, so Robert and Great Husband were consulting about what might be wrong, and we got a tour of the Trillium. It had interesting features such as jalousie windows and snap-in carpeting. The door didn’t fit at all as received from the factory so Robert had to do lots of modification to make it fit. They also don’t like the three-burner stove, which may have three burners, but which can’t possible handle three pots at the same time because the burners are so close together, intersecting actually. Robert and Debra chose not to have a bathroom in the Trillium, which makes it seem remarkably spacious inside. We enjoyed seeing their shower hut outside, which is a tent for one person to stand inside. They fill a bucket and use an immersion heater hooked up to their generator to heat the water. A 12-volt water pump feeds the hot water up to a shower head. They stand in a kiddie pool inside the shower hut so they are catching all the water to later dump back into the bucket to be disposed of properly as gray water. Wow!

Great Smoky Mountains NP Part 2

19 August 2013

This afternoon we headed to the Sugarlands Visitor Center, watched the 20-minute park video, and toured the museum displays, devoted to the plants and animals of this area. Usually the text with such things is painfully dull, but this time it was so entertaining, written in colorful first-person by Robert G. Johnsson, the author of “A Naturalist’s Notebook.” The accompanying sketches from the same book were just as charming. About a third of the displays also included stuffed critters and preserved plant specimens.

We got a tickle out of a conversation we overhead in the museum. A girl of about 10 was trying to find the display for a particular insect called a bald-faced hornet, so she could answer a question in her Junior Ranger book. A park volunteer was trying to help, but didn’t know offhand where the display was. “To me it’s just another bug that should be killed,” said the volunteer. That attitude was so refreshing! But we’re afraid her attitude will get her signed up soon for mandatory retraining to get her back on the official National Park Service script!

From the visitor center, we headed into Gatlinburg, a terribly touristy town we learned to detest from a previous trip here 14 years ago. The Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, which is part of the national park, starts out from Gatlinburg or we would have avoided this town. The motor trail is a one-way scenic drive of five miles, with many stops to see old cabins, an old mill, and meandering creeks, all enjoyable.

We also hiked the Laurel Falls Trail which is 1.3 miles one way, fortunately uphill when you’re feeling fresh and downhill when you’re not. Another hiker, more nature-aware than we are, spotted a mother black bear and three or four of her cubs below us in the forest. As the mama bear came gradually closer and closer to the trail, Great Husband decided it was time for us to get out of there, but the mama bear must have had the same idea about then. We caught one last glimpse of a cub climbing awkwardly over a fallen log as both the humans and the bears departed.

Cabin along the Roaring Fork Nature Trail

 

Laurel Falls

 

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Part 1

18-19 August 2013

Our second day was another long driving day. We timed it to arrive for 12:30 Latin Mass in Nashville, Tennessee at Assumption Catholic Church, in the historic Germantown area. We were enormously impressed with the very elderly priest who said Mass and gave a no-holds-barred sermon. His pain was palpable--over the state of the Church, the papacy, and the failures of his fellow seminary graduates to stand up for the Faith. Of his class, he is the only one still living, and he asked us to pray for his deceased classmates. He also asked us to pray for the suffering Catholics and Christians of Egypt right now, who are the descendants of the Egyptian people who cared for the Holy Family when they hid from Herod during the Slaughter of the Innocents. The congregation at Assumption Catholic Church was predominately young families and the choir (all men) was excellent. You know a really good choir when they are not a distraction to the Mass but a suitable supplement.

As a prelude to the next paragraph, let me explain that Great Husband has a longstanding fear of librarians. He considers them “terrible profilers” and he is an innocent victim of their profiling. Even when he is well-behaved, he imagines they’re constantly keeping him under a watchful eye, and he is at all times at risk of incurring their wrath. Sooner or later a librarian will descend upon him, wearing a scowl, to tell him what rule he is violating.

Although we made tracks, we didn’t arrive in the Great Smoky Mountains until nearly dark. We had a reservation at Elkmont Campground, on a site that backs up to the stream called the Little River. It is an absolutely beautiful setting. What we didn’t know in advance was that the only place to get water for the camper was six miles away near the Sugarlands Visitor Center, and we did not enter the park from that direction. We were fortunate that we arrived with about a third of a tank from home. In the morning we found a spigot in this campground and were putting some more water into our tank when along came a stern park volunteer, materializing out of thin air. She was probably a former librarian. Somehow it is against the laws of Tennessee to get your water there at the water spigot. Great Husband was trying to distract the librarian with questions about the policy before finally getting around to turning off the water, but it didn’t work. She was savvy to his wily ways. So, be forewarned if you camp in this national park, fill your water tank on the way in. We did figure out that we can also get water right here in the campsite by repeatedly filling a cooking pot and pouring it into the side of our camper using a curled up plastic cutting “board” as a funnel. It’s one of the fun aspects of camping—finding solutions with whatever you have on hand. But beware of librarians.

Overnight there was a steady light rain. This morning we have enjoyed relaxing under our canopy to avoid the still-dripping trees, while sipping hot coffee and watching some kids swim in the cold water.

Elkmont Campground, Site G3

Little River behind our site

These kids played for hours and hours in the cold water.

Looking from the stream up to the Escape

Wayne Fitzgerrell State Park, Illinois

17 August 2013

We’re off on another grand excursion, having left Omaha on August 17 with a planned return on September 11. We’ll be going to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina; Asheville, NC; Williamsburg, VA; Washington DC; Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania; and whatever else strikes our fancy. For part of the trip we’ll be joined by Tall Son and Whistling Son, which means we’ll have four adults sleeping in the 19. It will be cozy.

One of the wonderful benefits of these extended trips is that beforehand we accomplish a lot of tasks at home that would otherwise be easy to procrastinate about. This time some items got piled onto our list that we didn’t anticipate. A contractor, installing new sliding glass doors at our house, accidentally kicked over a can of dark brown paint onto our white carpet in the living room. We didn’t have time to replace the carpeting in the two remaining days at home, but lots of other good stuff got done.

We always meet some true characters on our travels. On our first day on the road we were stopped at a rest stop when an Airstream pulled in next to us. The owner struck up a conversation with us while chomping on a big roast beef sandwich and spitting bits of it at us as he talked. He was one of those people who is only interested in the talking side of a conversation and not at all in the listening side. He was trying to sell us on the delights of group RV tours, which he and his wife have taken frequently. The company he likes is called Fantasy RV Tours, and we’ll look at their website when there is time, although we are too independent to ever consider going with a tour group that way. As the man yakked, we could catch little glimpses inside his Airstream, which was a total pit! His wife did not emerge, but we could see her eating a sandwich of her own in the depths of the Airstream. We decided that this was probably her big chance to be free of her husband’s endless chatter. I got into the Flex and turned on the engine to give the man a big hint that we wanted to leave, but he still kept jawing at Great Husband. Finally we escaped with the man still in mid-sentence, and had a good laugh about the whole episode.

Our site at Wayne Fitzgerrell State Park

A mother deer and two spotted fawns were wandering the campground,
but I was too slow at grabbing the camera.

 

We spent the night at Wayne Fitzgerrell State Park, a little bit south of Mount Vernon, Illinois. We had stayed a couple of times before at a commercial campground in Mount Vernon, but this state park was far nicer, not far from the interstate, and we recommend it. Reservations were not available but we didn’t have any trouble finding a site. If you arrive before 8:00 p.m. there will be a camp host ready to sign you in. The camp host we met was very personable and enthusiastic. With her high-pitched, sing-song manner of speaking. I suspect she was a retired kindergarten or first grade teacher. FYI, sites have electricity, but not water.

Wayne Fitzgerell has an enormous lake and the campground is laid out in fingers of land that edge the lake. We enjoyed the beautiful scene at sunset and then the frogs sang us to sleep.

Rock Creek Station State Historic Park, near Fairbury, Nebraska

At the end of May, 2013, we camped at Rock Creek Station for three nights so we could attend Rock Creek Station Days, a special event which commemorates three American stories which all occurred at this location—the Pony Express, the Oregon Trail, and the famous shooting by Wild Bill Hickock of McCandless and his friends. We walked still-existing Oregon Trail ruts here, rode in a covered wagon, ate buffalo stew, and watched a reenactment of the Hickock shooting, the details of which remain a mystery since there were conflicting contemporaneous reports of what actually happened. We chatted with Civil War reenactors, one of whom was an expert in Civil War era medicine. Other experts demonstrated crafts, such as making apple butter, biscuits, and rope. We really enjoyed this brief camping getaway not far from home. The campground is very nice.

Baffled Again

Here's the latest baffle experimentation for curing a refrigerator that won't cool on the road. It is a piece of white aluminum custom-fabricated by our Dometic service representative to fit our Escape 19. The theory is that air may be entering the top vent at highway speeds, preventing the warm air from leaving the refrigerator coils. This baffle is meant to redirect the air away from the vent and create a wake (low pressure zone).