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.

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