Asheville, North Carolina

We had a beautiful day Saturday, April 16, for driving for our departure day from Charleston, South Carolina. It was an easy drive on I26, rolling through some very pretty countryside. There are a couple of pretty good grades up and down the mountains, but, after driving in the west, they were easy-peasy! I had thought about staying at a campground in Pisgah National Forest, but as it was just a couple of days and our primary focus was visiting The Biltmore Estate, I opted for convenience and stayed at the KOA West Asheville. It was ok, but there was a lot of road noise, being just off the highway, and I think I will definitely stay over at Lake Powhatan on our next trip through there. We were settled in by 3:00 p.m., and I immediately set about getting my accumulated laundry done; chores don't end just because you're on the move!

Sunday we took a drive through beautiful Pisgah National Forest, in search of some leg-stretching walks and waterfalls. We were not disappointed!

We found the Moore Cove Falls trail, a 1.4 mile, round-trip hike. We tend to look for shorter hikes now, having two senior citizens with us. Honey is now 12, and Casey is 10 1/2. They are doing great for their ages, but we don't want to push them too hard. 

It's still very early spring here, but we did find some flowers that were blooming.

We made it to the falls, and after waiting a while, as it was pretty busy, I managed to get a picture without any people in it. Casey also found a friend here to go swimming with, a "golden doodle" who was even taller than he is.

After a picnic lunch in the forest, we took a short walk to another waterfall, Looking Glass Waterfall. It was very busy here as well. I guess being a Sunday and a beautiful day, a lot of people were out taking a drive!

Monday, we decided to spend the day touring the fabulous Biltmore Estate. We had toured the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, a long time ago, but even they were dwarfed by the immensity of this estate. What was even more remarkable to me was that besides the 250-room mansion and grounds, George Vanderbilt owned all the property as far as he could see in any direction. Just the drive into the mansion was incredible. I will say, though, it is not cheap to tour this mansion. Tickets are $60.00 each, and we also opted to take the hand-held audiophones for an additional $10.00 apiece because we find that we learn more from these tours using them. Plus, since we were there and it's going to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, we added a "Legacy of the Land" tour for another $20.00. It was NOT a cheap day! It was very interesting though. This time of year, they also have special exhibits during "Biltmore Blooms," and this year the exhibit is "Fashionable Romance: Wedding Gowns in Film." 

After parking the car, you take a shuttle bus to the mansion. There is never a long wait for a shuttle, they have a lot of them! We also found that, unlike the Newport mansions, it was extremely busy here. I found that a bit frustrating, as I hadn't expected such a massive crowd. It was very slow moving through the house.

Upon entering the mansion the "Winter Garden" room set the tone for the exhibit's theme, being beautifully decorated for a wedding.

A few shots of the dining rooms and lady's salon.

The outside veranda at the back of the mansion...

overlooking the Smoky Mountains.

Some shots of the Gallery and the beautiful tapestries on the walls. The Gallery is inside, along the veranda, with all the windows facing that beautiful view above. 

The Library was at the far end of the Gallery. The amount of books here is staggering. 

The second floor living hall hosted gowns from one of my very favorite mini-series, "Pride and Prejudice," with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy's and Elizabeth's wedding attire is above, and the gowns worn by Mr. Bingley's sisters is below. I must watch it again soon :-).

Mr. Vanderbilt's sleeping quarters....I think the square footage of just this room is bigger than my trailer's!

Spiral staircase and chandelier.

At this point, we had to pretty much scoot along, as we had spent a couple of hours in the mansion already, and the time for our property tour was coming up soon. This stone corridor led to the kitchen and storage areas.

Kitchen

Bowling lanes

Basement swimming pool. It was always filled when needed, and then immediately drained, as they had no method at the time for keeping the water suitable for swimming.

Fitness center!

The property tour was pretty interesting, but I'm not sure if I would say it was worth spending the extra money for. The most interesting tidbit I got out of it was that the property was designated a National  Historic Landmark in 1963, but not for the mansion. It was granted the status for the theme of "Conservation of Natural Resources," and that was due to Gifford Pinchot demonstrating for the first time in the United States that scientific forest management could be profitable. Another first for the property was in 1898 when the first forestry school in the United States was opened, the Biltmore Forest School. Nearly 87,000 acres of the estate's forest land is now included in the Pisgah National Forest.

After our property tour, we walked around the extensive gardens for a short while. 

The wisteria was just starting to bloom.

The walled garden in front of the Conservatory. It was filled with tulips, and they are now in the process of changing them out to something else.

Close-up of the tulip gardens.

Heading back up to the mansion from the gardens.

The architectural details were amazing, and a tad overwhelming. We did have a very enjoyable day exploring this beautiful estate. 

Our last day in Asheville we decided to take a scenic drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Stopping at the Visitor Center to get my National Park cancellation stamp, we looked at the different exhibits and plotted a destination for a short hike. 

We chose the Craggy Gardens Trail, a short hike to an overlook of the Smoky Mountains. 

Much of the trail winds through a rhododendron bald, which must be awesome when the rhodies are in bloom.

From here you can see why it's called both the Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway. 

Thus we came to the end of our time in Asheville. We will definitely return to the area, as there is a lot of hiking and recreation opportunities here. We didn't explore much of the town itself, and we do hear that it is quite a "foodie" town, which we always like exploring :-). Our next stop was Lexington, Kentucky, where we got into all sorts of things that no-one who knows us would ever expect! I will get that post up as quickly as I can; we are almost to Wyoming at this time, and will soon be starting work, so I better get caught up right quick! Thanks for stopping by :-).

We Interrupt This Expedition....

I still have entries to do on our stays at both Asheville and Lexington, but we are currently in Rock Island, Illinois, after having some trailer trouble. Ah, the joys of traveling :-).

So the story starts in a little town called Shelbyville, in Illinois. After our touring weeks, I was looking for a place to just relax for a couple of days, and this is a nice Corps of Engineer campground, Lithia Springs, on Lake Shelbyville. Hey, full hookups for three nights cost $36.00, what a great deal, right? It was very nice, quiet and peaceful, just what we were looking for. We had actually planned only two days here, but an approaching storm front caused us to leave Lexington a day early and take advantage of the dry driving conditions. We were very glad we had done so, even though we did have one of the wickeder thunderstorms we've ever experienced :-0!

We enjoyed our stay there, and got ready to head out Friday morning. Everything went great, just as usual, until......there's always an until, isn't there :-)? Our rig has the Lippert 6-point-leveling system, which Al does really like. A lot. Until it doesn't work. Which is what happened Friday morning. He pressed the button to retract the back four jacks, and they all retracted, the front landing jacks did as well, which is bad, then everything just died. We kept getting error messages. So the trailer is completely tilted downward, no possible way to hitch up, and the controller is not working. The manual override is not working. Even the manual method of operating the jacks is not working. This is not good.

We called Lippert's technical support/service department. They were very helpful.....NOT! The girl that answered barely listened to what we were describing, said she had "never heard of this problem with the error codes," and then had him check the voltage, assuming the batteries were low. Then while he was doing that, said she couldn't wait on the phone while he did this, and we had to call back when we had the readings. Upon calling back with the readings that the voltage was fine, she told us we would have to call a mobile tech and hung up. Really. Great.

Next, I looked up any RV dealers in the area. I found one and gave them a call. This was another useful call. The gentleman who answered the phone told me he was way too busy to even think of coming out, and he had no idea how to deal with the autolevelers, as none of his trailers even have one. Well, at least he was honest, right?

I decided to go see one of the camphosts and ask if they had any suggestions. Here's where, for a change, our luck was on the good side (a very rare occurrence!). There was a mobile tech in the park at that very moment, doing some work on another host's rig. Well, I beat feet right over there and asked him about our problem, and he said he would come right over after he was done with that coach. Awesome!

What he thought was going to be a simple fix, though, turned out not to be. He thought re-setting the system would work, but as he found out, the control panel wouldn't let him do anything. He figured the control panel went bad, and set about bypassing the system, jumping the valves to get the landing jacks to raise up so we could at least get hitched. Once this was accomplished, he called in to his shop to see if they had a control panel there, but they did not. He suggested that we call ahead to our next stop and see if any dealers there would have the part. I was so thankful for his help, his name is Calen, and he owns Countryside Campers in Para, IL. So if anyone needs any assistance in this area of Illinois, we can highly recommend him.

Before we pulled out of Lithia Springs, I looked online to see if there were any Grand Design dealers in the area of Davenport, Iowa, the direction we were headed. I found one, Terry Frazer's RVs, and gave them a call. Again, our luck held, and they told us to come on by first thing the next morning and they would take a look at it.

True to their word, we arrived there just before 9:00 a.m. and two techs came right out. After listening to our description of the events, they also felt that it could be either the control panel or possibly the "brain" panel. They brought out a test control panel, plugged it in, and, voila!, our jacks were working again. Thank goodness. Within 20 minutes we were on our way back to the campground, ready to continue our expedition west. So we can also recommend Tom Frazer's RVs in Eldridge, Iowa for anyone that needs assistance. It's so wonderful to find good, helpful places out here as we travel.

Tomorrow, we continue westward, driving for the next four days until we reach Custer, South Dakota, where we will stop for a five night stay. In the meantime, I will get the blog updated with our activities in Asheville and Lexington, where we had some fun times. I now return you to the regularly scheduled programming :-)

Charleston, South Carolina

Our trip continued as we drove north for about 2 hours to another historic old city, Charleston. We've never had the opportunity to visit this beautiful city before, so it was added to this year's spring itinerary. We departed Camp Lake Jasper fairly late, around 11 a.m., since it was such a short drive to Charleston. We actually stayed a little north of Charleston proper, in Mount Pleasant at the KOA canpground there. Ginny and Patti joined us after having breakfast with Bill and Denise, and we had a beautiful day for the drive. After getting settled in to both our campsite and their hotel suite, we had a quiet evening at the trailer.

We spent our first day in the historic district of Charleston. We had booked another walking tour through "Ashley on the Cooper", which focused mainly on the Civil War history of the city and the historical buildings. The tours are a nice way to get an overview of the city, and by going slowly on foot, I feel like we have more time to appreciate the beautiful buildings and monuments. Our tour guide was very well versed in her history, actually bombarding us with so many facts that it was hard to keep up with her :-). It was very interesting.

Churches always seem to be highlighted on these tours, and this one was no exception. I was interested to learn that there was a significant Jewish presence in the early history of Charleston, which is normally associated more with the northeastern area of the country. 

We saw several very old, beautiful homes that belonged to influential people of the early colony. I really like the "welcoming arms" stairways like you see in the first picture. Very graceful. We also see a lot of wrought iron work all throughout the historic district.

While not as impressive as the garden squares of Savannah, the small parks and memorial areas were certainly very pleasant. 

Our tour finished up near the area of the city known as "City Market", and we walked down this cobblestone street towards it....

ducking into this "dueling alley" on the way. It's said that duelists would meet in these alleys to settle their disputes. We stopped at Low Country Bistro for some lunch, and it was very good. Al had the she-crab soup, and shrimp and grits, and I had the chicken and waffles. We very highly recommend this restaurant, everything was delicious. We then strolled through the City Market, taking in all the various handcrafted and not-so-handcrafted items available to purchase. I was particularly interested in the "sweetgrass baskets", being a very famous cultural handcraft of the African slaves that had been brought to this country. They are very beautiful, and I admire the amount of work that goes into each basket, but they were just a bit out of my price range! Very beautiful and very expensive, a small basket maybe large enough to hold your car keys runs about $50.00. I will just admire them from afar.

The next day, we had something totally different planned. We were meeting our very dear friends from New York, Bob and Chrissie Savage, who have a second home in Charleston. To our delight, when they heard we were going to be visiting the area, they cleared their busy calendar in New York and came down to see us. Bob, being an avid birder, was the person who first took me out birding when I became interested in it, and suggested we visit a wonderful facility nearby in Awendaw, South Carolina, The Center for Birds of Prey. We took their very interesting tour of the facility, first viewing all the different birds they have under their care, and then we had a flight demonstration by several of their raptors.

Sara is out in the field with a lure that she is using to tempt a peregrine falcon to demonstrate it's ability to hunt and catch it's prey.

He did an admirable job, and then displayed "mantling", in which he is protecting his catch from any other predator that may be in the area.

Sara then brought the falcon around for us to get a closer look. What a beautiful bird.

We also saw a barred owl. He looks quite tiny here in this picture.

When he took off in flight, though, look how wide his wing span is!

Our last demonstration was by a kite, but I don't remember what kind. We have the swallow tail kites in Florida, usually coming in sometime in March.

Lastly, they took us over to a different section of their aviary, where this cute little baby barn owl was brought out for us all to see. He was a little fuzzball :-).

We then finished off our visit with lunch across the street from the Avian Center, the Seewee Restaurant. It's a little scary looking from the outside :-), but Bob recommended it and he wasn't wrong -- it was very good, tasty food. After a good afternoon of catching up with each other, we bid a fond adieu to Bob and Chrissie. It's always so wonderful to see old friends from "home"!

Our last day in Charleston arrived, and unfortunately, it was a cold, rainy, windy day. We had planned to visit Fort Sumter, but with the weather being so nasty, we didn't quite feel up to a boat ride across the harbor and then walking around an open fort area. We did still go to town and stop in to the Fort Sumter Visitor Center, and spent some time there reading all of the exhibits.

As is the case with most National Park Service exhibits, it was very well done, interesting and informative. 

We walked by the aquarium on the way to the Visitor's Center, and Patti found a friend on a bench.

We then decided to spend the afternoon at Patriot's Point, touring the USS Yorktown, an Essex-class aircraft carrier.She participated significantly in the Pacific war theatre, and was also the carrier that picked up the Apollo 8 astronauts.

Several different aircraft were on display inside the ship, and we wandered around them after having toured the living and working areas of the ship down below.

Up on the flight deck, we saw several more plane exhibits. It was quite interesting to walk around the planes and see them up close.

We ended up spending several hours here at the USS Yorktown, and still didn't see everything. But our time ran out, and it was time for dinner and our last night together with Ginny and Patti. This was our parting point, with them returning home and we were continuing on with our travels out to Wyoming. It was so enjoyable having them spend a week with us on the road, and before you know it, we'll be back in Florida again! Doesn't it seem as if time really flies the older you get?

Our next stop on Expedition West: 2016 is another historic building, although in a completely different way. Join me for my next installment, as we head to Asheville, North Carolina and tour the Biltmore Estate!