Our Last Day in Asheville

We've spent the past three days touring the Biltmore Estate, Asheville, and the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's been a great time and one we've been waiting all winter to do. The estate was beyond incredible and the town was all we envisioned although it is spread out a bit more than we anticipated. We drove about sixty miles of the parkway and got a good feeling of the folk art and folklore of the area. It's been a great visit and I would highly recommend it to anyone.

Here are some pictures from the past week, including some from St Joseph Peninsula

Sea Trout and Redfish from St Joseph Peninsula. The fishing was great. We stocked our freezer with seafood.

Gulls and waves on the beach.

One morning we found this shrimp boat docked off the beach. Apparently they fished all night and anchored to sleep the day away.

Pompano from the surf. We caught seven during our last week at St Joe.

The Biltmore at Asheville. George Vanderbilt's 1895 home.

The architecture and detail was amazing.

This kind of exquisite masonry was everywhere on the building.

The foyer was breathtaking.

AN organ at one end of the dining room.

The formal table would seat over thirty people with ease.

The casual table for small family dinners.

A view in the library. There were 22,000 books on the shelves. 

The sitting side of the master's bedroom.

And Madame's bedroom.

The servants dining hall. It was like Downton Abbey for real.

Another look at the dining room.

The billiard room in the basement.

The basement featured a pool. dressing rooms, a gym, and a bachelors wing with billiards, a smoking room and this gun room.

A view from the yard back toward the house. The trellis was covered with flowering vines.

The flower gardens looking towards the greenhouses.

A beautiful tropical jungle in the Arboretum.

Every estate needs a bass pond and boathouse.

The estate originally sat on 125,000 acres. Nowadays it is a mere 8,000.

A tunnel on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Appalachian Mountains.

A waterfall along the B R Parkway.

A temple in Asheville. Architecture here was amazing.

The Grove Arcade was a huge indoor marketplace in the center of then downtown Asheville.

New Belgium Brewery opened a plant here. We had lunch from a food truck and beers from the brewery.

Our last day on the parkway and the views disappeared in the mist.

A mountain éclair from the bakery in Biltmore Village.

...

Our Days are Winding Down

We spent the past two weeks at St Joseph Peninsula State Park near Port St Joe in the Florida panhandle. The days were all sunny and warm and we spent a lot of time on the beach and in the kayaks. Bev and Gary camped near us for the first week but left on Friday the 14th for Michigan.
Fishing was great here with sea trout and redfish on the bay side of the peninsula and pompano in the surf. We filled our freezer with fillets and even Nancy bought a fishing license for the last week of our stay (her first license ever!). She caught a couple of sea trout from her kayak and she pulled in the biggest pompano of the week. I think she is hooked now and we are going to have to get her equipped with her own gear for the years to come.
We left St Joe on Sunday morning and drove all day until we reached a campground near Athens Georgia a bit east of Atlanta. We spent a rainy night there without even unhooking the camper. This morning we finished our journey to the Ashville area and plan to spend a few days exploring here. We want to see the town, the Biltmore Mansion and estate, and drive the Blue Ridge Parkway in the mountains. There is a lot to do and see here and we are looking forward to a few busy days ahead. Today is a bit murky and drizzly, but it is warming up and clearing for the next week and we are looking forward to seeing the sun again.
The trip is winding down fast and we plan on being back in Michigan on Sunday and back to the north country on Tuesday night or Wednesday.
Hope all is well with everyone reading this.

Two Nights left at Oscar Scherer S.P.

Our time at Osprey Florida is winding down. We spent days with my brother and Sis in Law, Donna, Becky, Dave and the kids and with Bev and Gary who left this morning for St Joseph Peninsula in the Florida panhandle. This evening Dave and Becky were leaving for their long drive back to Michigan. Brother Bob, too, is leaving for Michigan in the morning. Safe travels to all. (As for us, we're staying put!)
We all went for a boat ride out of the port at Sarasota on Thursday. It was a dolphin/Manatee outing that took us out of the bay and around a couple of islands. We were successful in seeing both species up close and personal. We also saw some of the most impressive waterfront real estate we could have imagined!
The weather was getting so hot the middle of last week with the highs around 90 and the lows at night in the mid seventies. On Thursday morning we had a big thunderstorm that went through pretty quick, but dropped a lot of rain and brought the temperatures down. Today we were around 72 for a high and tonight we are going down to the mid fifties. Be careful what you ask for. Its the first time I've worn jeans in months!

The gang at Siesta Key Beach waiting for the drum circle to start.

Lunch at Sharky's at Venice Beach on Wednesday

Imagine living like this in Sunny Florida! Boat ride anyone?

Homes on the waterfront at Lido Key outside of Sarasota.