How We Spent Our Summer Vacation - The Fourth Week

When we returned from our morning walk on Saturday, there was a call from the furniture store telling us our table was ready. That was fast!

We got cleaned up and then went to one of the neighboring towns for the “Mater Fest”. We didn’t buy tomatoes, though they had cases and cases to be sold. They did look pretty good, though. We bought a couple things for Heidi, most notably some treats designed to help with her bad breath. It was really fun walking through the various crafts and things.

We drove from there into Waynesville to pick up the table. It turned out great. Wanna see it?

We really just hung around the early part of the week. There was laundry. We cleaned the bird doo-doo off the awning. I made a couple greeting cards. Nothing too exciting… until Wednesday.
That was the day we went to the Biltmore Estate outside of Asheville. WOW! This is a private residence, owned by the Vanderbilts. It has 250 rooms. It’s an American castle – in fact, the largest house in the U.S. I didn’t take any photos inside, but here’s one of the outside.

Now you have to look at our mugs in front of the “little shack”.

We got the headphones with the recorded tour information and did all four stories plus the basement. We got to see about 60 of the 250 rooms. The table in the formal dining room was 40-foot long – bigger than our RV. It was such an interesting tour. We both would highly recommend it to anyone visiting that area. It’s incredible what money can buy.

After doing the inside, we had lunch in what had previously been the stables. Or at least that area. We walked though the shops and then went to the gardens. It was built to the same massive scale as the house. Here’s just one portion of it.

From there we drove to the winery and toured that area. They didn’t have a formal tour going on, but we did get a good chance to taste many of their wines. We found a couple that we liked and bought several bottles.

We got a call from some old friends from Colorado that day. They were in the area and were coming to spend a couple nights at Creekwood Farm. In fact, they got there before we got back from Asheville. They have a travel trailer and are moving from Arizona to a new location, as yet undecided.

Heidi remembered them immediately and got very excited to see them. One sniff and they were best buddies again.

We spent time with them off and on for the remainder of the week. It was really fun to catch up with what’s been going on in their lives since we saw them last. They left Saturday morning.