The Biltmore Estate

We drove out this morning to check out Lake Lure, NC.  It was pretty and the city of Lake Lure looked very nice.  We stopped and had a hot drink and were surprised by snow falling from the sky.  The Frankenstorm Sandy caused a very early snowfall in the higher altitudes and the border of Tennessee and North Carolina got quite a bit of snowfall overnight.

Since we were so close, we decided to drive to Ashville, NC and visit the Biltmore Estate.  If you haven't seen it, put it on your bucket list.  It's amazing.

There are 8,000 acres of Appalachian Mountains that make up this gorgeous estate.  It was built by a bachelor George Vanderbilt over a six year period starting in 1895.   It's an American castle, filled to the brim with interesting labor saving devices and leading edge technology; this home was a showplace in 1900.

Like a museum, you can't take any photos inside, but I took quite a few snaps in the gardens and outside the manse.  I gotta say, I wish I'd known the guy who built this great house.  He had a full sized portrait painted of the architect and the landscape designer.  Both men toiled for years to make George's vision a reality.

He wanted a castle like many he'd visited in Europe so he set about designing this home as a mountain retreat for his family.

Once it was completed, he found and married his wife and brought her to the estate she would manage until her death years later.  During their lives, they hosted myriad famous people, gave parties and entertained in style at this gorgeous home.

Vanderbilt is credited with forming one of the first forestry conservation efforts.  Biltmore was a self sustaining, working farm and dairy at its heyday.  Today, the entire property is open to the public and provides recreation and educational opportunities for the surrounding area.

The gardens are extensive and provide seasonal foliage to make any fall tour complete.  Their geometric planting of mums was colorful and expansive.  All I could think was, "I've killed one that color!"

The Biltmore was an amazing tour.  I highly recommend it for anyone with a few pennies to spend.  It's pricey, but the ticket prices go toward their conservation efforts, so I guess it's money well spent.

--  Sandee Wagner

Carving Pumpkins!!

In an attempt to avoid Hurricane Sandy, we abandoned our Outer Banks trip and went to Huntersville, NC to stay with family.  We got there in time to carve pumpkins with the grands.

First, we had to go back out to the corner farmer's market and buy some more pumpkins.  Everyone had to do their own pumpkins.  The kids had fun kits with 'stick in' parts to create Captain America, Elmo and the Angry Bird and Pig from the game.

We also had some stencils to do designs on the other pumpkins.

The cutouts and stick on designs have the added benefit of not requiring you to 'gut' the pumpkin.

I did pick a stencil design that required me to stick my arm into the pumpkin and scrape out the insides. I made a huge mess.  Stuff was flying everywhere.

The hardest part of the whole thing was waiting until dark to see how the pumpkins looked all lit up!  We loaded them with electric votives and set them outside.  Then had dinner and just waited and waited until full dark.

All the pumpkins turned out great.  We had a scary one.  We had the cute ones.  We had ones that were carved but not cut out.  All of them turned out fine.

My DIL even saw pictures of small pumpkins that had vampire teeth inserted making them fun.  We had to do that too.

All the decor turned out great.  We had fun helping do the Halloween decorating.

For being an unplanned side trip, we sure made a lot of memories on our little Huntersville stop.

So, fleeing a hurricane is not necessarily a good time.  But, if you have to change your plans, this is a good way to do it.

Find your family, carve a few pumpkins and enjoy the grands!!

--  Sandee Wagner

Weather Delays

Well, after watching extensive coverage of the "Frankenstorm" headed toward the east coast, we cancelled our beach reservations and are rearranging our plans for the Fall Foliage Tour.  If the winds are what they are saying to expect, most of the leaves will be blown off the trees this weekend anyway.

We had planned a little trip down memory lane.  A couple days in Morehead City and a review of our roots.  I was born in Cherry Point, NC and Gini remembers it fondly.  It would have been nice to eat a meal at the Sanitary Fish Market.  I was going to copy down the hush puppy recipe off the sampler on the wall...

But--best laid plans and all that.

Instead, we will go back to Lake Gaston and Roanoke Rapids Lake.  We had only scheduled half a day to see them both and they were so lovely, I think the possibilities are endless.  We will map a few properties and do a circuit of the lakes to see if there's enough 'blue water' to suit everyone.

Then we will head back west to my son's house.  Hopefully, this will keep us out of most of the bad weather.  There are three or four lakes we can day trip out from Charlotte to view.  They were not on our original inventory, but they come highly recommended by the locals, so we'll be off.

I don't have any pictures yet today.  It's foggy outside and appears to be a lousy day for both driving and foliage.  If we see anything spectacular, I'll post it later.

-- Sandee Wagner

Murphy's Law in Effect

The 2012 Fall Foliage Tour is specifically to allow my sister to shop retirement property in TN, VA and NC.  She plotted the route and booked all the hotels.  One of the things that my sister knows about me is that I don't have the same love of freshwater lakes as she does.  Give me a beach and the ocean any day!

Because she thinks that this road trip is somehow a sacrifice on my part, she planned this weekend for me.  Tomorrow, we are supposed to drive to Elizabeth City and spend the weekend near the beach.

Cue Hurricane Sandy.

As we watch the Weather Channel and its coverage of this weather system, I've got to wonder... "should we head east toward the coastline?"

As the experts talk more and more about it, it is clear that NC will miss the worst of this storm.  It is going to hit FL and then spin up and threaten the northeast next week.

But still, do we head to the beach when weather like this is threatening?  At best, we will be driving through rain and holing up in a hotel room with our feet propped up.  At worst, we will be stuck somewhere without electricity, heat and/or air, and other amenities.

I imagine we could cancel our reservations at these hotels, head inland and check out a few more lakes.  I'll have to see what my sister thinks.

--  Sandee Wagner

Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia's Best Kept Secret

After our aborted attempt to locate Smith Mountain Lake yesterday, we started out this morning with a new plan.  My sister spent hours pouring over Zillow last night and she copied lots of the 'for sale' houses on both sides of the lake down in order.  We put the first address into the Hertz RentACar's "NeverLost" system and took off.

She plotted the addresses so that we could go from house to house and see most of the shoreline and all sides of the lake.  It worked like a charm.  The first neighborhood we visited sat on one of the many 'fingers' of land that intersect this lake.  It was beautiful water and in the early morning light, the lake surface looked like glass.  We saw a couple of boaters and fisherman, but it was very placid for all that activity.

Our idea to let the gps get us around the lake by putting in address after address backfired a little.  Who knew the "NeverLost" system considered dirt roads viable alternatives to highway travel?

It was an old fire trail and wound back through the woods for miles and miles.  Had we not seen two other vehicles, we probably would have panicked and backed up or turned around.  We knew the road got to another main road because two vehicles came from the other direction toward us.  It was still a bumpy ride.  But, what the heck!  It was a rental.

After we drove around to several different neighborhoods and checked out some houses, some condos and a few patio homes, we stopped to just enjoy the glorious fall foliage.

I wish my little camera could do justice to the brilliant reds, oranges, yellows and greens we saw all around us.  This part of Virginia is rolling hills and farmland.  Imagine all the fall foliage broken up by fallow brown fields, brilliant green pines and austere trunks of trees already denuded of their leaves.  Quite the visual impact, that's for sure.  I've always thought that fall was my favorite season of the year.  After this drive through Virginia and Tennessee, I'm sure of it.

--  Sandee Wagner

Sandee and Gini's Excellent Adventure

Today we continued our 2012 Fall Foliage Tour with a short trip from TN into VA.  Our destination?  Gretna, VA.  This small town is our jumping off point to explore both Smith Mountain Lake and Lake Leesville.

We've been told that Smith Mountain Lake is the best kept secret of Virginia.  I'm beginning to believe that myself.  We couldn't find it.

We spent at least two hours within five miles of the shore and could never find our way down to the water.

When we finally wound our way to the Smith Mountain Dam--where we were told a lady worked full time handing out maps and giving tours--the aforementioned lady was leaving the offices and locking up.  We stopped long enough to snap one picture off the bridge leading up to the dam.

We did find Lake Leesville.  They are currently in the middle of a building project to add a 60 foot fishing pier and beef up some shore line.  We know this because we toddled down to the lake's edge to see the water quality and were quizzed by the workers and informed that the public lake access was closed to the public for this building project.

The team leader was a little bored, so he chatted with us and told us all about the lake, the water quality and the impact of changing water levels as water was released into the river below.

The foliage was beautiful and we had the picnic area all to ourselves... mostly because it was closed to the public.  Not that there were any signs that told us that.  We just followed the signs to the lake, parked our car and walked down to the water.

Us and the guys in hard hats got to enjoy this glorious scenery.  Tomorrow, we will try to suss out the secret of Smith Mountain Lake again.  But until then, please enjoy our vistas of Leesville Lake.

--  Sandee Wagner

The Fall Foliage Tour 2012

My sister is shopping for a lakefront retirement home.  She asked me earlier this year if I would like to accompany her on a road trip to check out some lakes in Western NC and Eastern TN.  I said yes.

We've been on the road for a couple of days so far and the foliage is perfect in this neck of the woods.

We drove from Charlotte, NC over to Johnson City, TN and the colors were glorious.  Of course, I was driving a rental car up and down twisty two lane mountain roads, so no pics of that, but I do like the view of the recreation area at Boone Lake Dam.

The "Tri-City Area" consists of Johnson City, Kingsport and Bristol, TN.  I'm a real fan of the area.  It's temperate, gets all four seasons and has a nice standard of living.  I think my sister has eliminated this as a destination for her husband and herself, but I'm considering getting my DH to take a look at it.  Very nice area indeed.

One of the hidden treasures of the area is Jonesborough, TN.  We made a trip to that historic downtown area and fell in love.  First, they decorated Main Street for fall.  Each street light was flanked with bales of hay, stalks of corn, pumpkins and mums.  So pretty!  All the merchants got in line with their own displays of pretty fall flowers and decor.  Walking down that street was a treat.

But what made the experience for me was discovering the International Storytelling Center.  The Mary B. Martin Storytelling Hall was a lovely facility devoted to my favorite pastime.  I walked through the hall, checked out the gift store and was crushed to realize that they didn't have performances on the only days we would be in town.  I'll have to wait for next time I visit.  I know I'll be back.  This place invites storytellers to spend a week here and tell stories.  They have a different storyteller each week from May through October.  What a marvelous entertainment for this idyllic small town.  We are heading to VA tomorrow to check out another lake.  I'll try to take some better pictures of the foliage.

--  Sandee Wagner