Wow! Just Wow!!

Wow!  Just wow! 

Those are the words I spoke when I got my first look at the Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina.

Even enshrouded in fog, that first glimpse of the mansion is one that will stick with you.

We had tickets for a 10:15 entry into the house for the self-guided audio tour.  They were letting people in regardless of their ticket time this morning, so we went in around 10 AM.

The audio tour device was like a handheld phone, and you dialed up the museum stop you were at and held the device to your ear, just like a phone, to listen to the recorded audio.  There were 35 stops through three floors plus the basement on the tour, and it took us a full two hours to get through the tour.  This included a short rest break on the beautiful porch overlooking the hills (or mountains? I’m never quite sure).

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the Biltmore House.  There are plenty of places you can read more about the estate, so I won’t go into details in this blog post.  I’ll just show you what I really liked!

Outside the house, there’s a big wall leading down from some of the parking area that has a gently sloping brick path with very short brick steps in the middle.  I nearly missed my footing on it when we went down because I didn’t see that the middle was steps.  I wondered why they made the steps so shallow.  Well, I found out when the Garden shuttle driver told us that the wall was originally used for horses and wagons to bring the rocks down to be used for building the house.  Ah ha! That made sense – the shallow steps in the middle were for the horses and the sloping sides were for the wagon wheels!

Next to the Biltmore House is a shopping and dining area where the stables used to be.  I was able to take a few photos of the shops before they opened.  

After the tour, we bought a book for a keepsake and to read more about what we saw on the tour.  The lady who wrote it has worked for the Biltmore Estate for over 40 years.

On the other side of the house were the gardens.  Another WOW from me – y’all know how #flowersmakemehappy!  We took the shuttle to the conservatory rather than walking because it was getting hotter as the day went on – I’m glad we did because the shuttle driver gave us information about the gardens on the way and on the best way to exit the property if we weren’t going on to the winery.  We wouldn’t have known any of that if we’d decided to just walk.

The gardens were beautiful.  As I walked through, the fragrance was so pleasing.  It made me think of passages in the Bible that talk about the sweet, soothing aroma of offerings made to the Lord.  I wish I could make these pictures scratch-and-sniff so you could enjoy the scent, too.

As we were leaving, we were able to get some good pictures of the Biltmore House without the fog.  All in all, it was a good visit and I’m glad I got to see it!

Other Travel Notes.  

We decided to get a meal out while we were already out, so we checked out the Cornerstone restaurant that was two blocks from the hotel.  It’s family-owned and has been for 18 years.  DH had the meatloaf that he says is the best he’s had, and I had shrimp and grits, only because they were gulf shrimp.  They were really good, and the sweet waitress even asked the cook if he knew where the shrimp came from.  We were wondering if they were from our neck of the woods, but they weren’t.  

We also talked with her about the devastation of Helene from nearly two years ago in this area.  She was able to tell us where some of the worst of it was.  It’s still so sad.

We took advantage of the remote start feature for our car when we were hiking back to the parking lot after the Biltmore tour.  It sure was nice to have the AC already going and the car somewhat cooled.  I will have to remember this for future hot days!

One other thing – while at the Biltmore, a staff person was dusting one of the rooms.  She had a really nice duster that was great for knick-knacks, pictures, etc., that you need to dust but don’t want to have to pick up and set down each time.  I asked her about it and she let me take a picture so I can look for one when we get home.  (Also she said she has to dust the rooms Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.)  She said it's made from goat hair.

Thanks for hanging out with us.  We hope you have enjoyed these few pictures and look into a visit to the Biltmore Estate. Have you ever been in person?

Disco Chicken and the 1982 World's Fair

What do Disco Chicken and the 1982 World’s Fair have in common?  Read on to find out!

This would have been our official first day of NERT travel if we hadn’t gone to Tennessee first.  But because we did, we spent the day going from the Nashville area to Asheville, North Carolina.

We started the morning early enough to attend worship services in Cookeville, Tennessee, at the Jere Whitson Road church of Christ where we found out that the preacher there not only grew up in the same hometown that DH did, he went to the same congregation that DH’s parents attended (DH had already left home when this fellow was there).  We often find that the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” is easily illustrated when visiting churches while traveling.

From Cookeville, we continued heading east on 1-40 towards Knoxville.  This is the only day where driving on the interstate made more sense than other routes, although we did take the backroads for most of the way from Murfreesboro to Cookeville.  We stopped for gas at a Costco about 15 minutes west of Knoxville.  The gas was $3.35 per gallon, best price so far.

Several weeks ago, our niece had mentioned to me a restaurant in Knoxville called Disco Chicken and Donuts.  It is a fully gluten-free food stand in the Kern's Bakery building which now functions as a food hall (glorified food court without the rest of the mall).  Since finding fully gluten-free restaurants is hard when traveling (and even when not), I wanted to try this!

On the way to the restaurant, which is right near UT-Knoxville,  DH noticed the big gold Sunsphere that was from the 1982 World’s Fair that was held in Knoxville.  We have a glass from that World’s Fair but I never remember that the reason we have it is that DH actually went to the World’s Fair when it was in Knoxville 44 years ago!  So that was a treat for him to see the Sunsphere again!

So about that chicken and those donuts!  It’s been so long since I’ve been able to have fried chicken tenders that actually taste good and are gluten-free.  We each got a plate with two chicken strips and fries and a donut hole.  It also came with coleslaw, but I was able to trade-in my coleslaw for an extra donut hole (and the nice guy at the counter actually gave me two extra).  This was a lot of food, but we took half the chicken and donuts to go to have for dinner later on.

While the donuts were my favorite bite(s), DH said he thought the best part of the meal was the gluten-free sweet tea (haha).  And yeah, it was really good sweet tea – after all, we were in the south!

After a late lunch we continued working our way across Tennessee.  It was new territory for me and I was thinking about the destruction the Asheville area had from the storms a few years ago. I wasn’t sure where that all was, so now I want to go look it up.  We took a quick rest stop at the North Carolina welcome center before making it into Asheville.  There was a really pretty yellow flower there. #flowersmakemehappy

Oh, the answer to the question of what do Disco Chicken and the 1982 World’s Fair have in common?  They were both in Knoxville.  And if we hadn’t had to go to Tennessee a few days ago, we wouldn’t have had gluten-free chicken and donuts nor been reminded of DH’s trip to the World’s Fair.  (I sent a picture to our sons and told them to ask their dad about that trip some time.)

~ Cindy D.

Prologue, part two

Prologue, second day.

This morning started out early, mostly because the first morning on central time means we haven’t adjusted yet, so we still wake up the usual time as we do at home.  There was no need to hang around the lodge, and we had a lot to reload into the car after taking out all the food, so we got to it.  Thankfully it was so much cooler and no humidity when we tackled this task.

We normally travel up I-59 to I-24 across Monteagle to get to the greater Nashville area, but after making that trip last week, we decided we wanted to find a better way (for us) to go – one that didn’t involve three lanes of traffic driving at insane rates of speed along winding roads up and down the mountain.  That kind of driving just stresses us out!  So last week I spent some time with the map and found a way to go a little further west and then north to avoid that.

And I have to say, I found a pretty good route.  GPS says it would take about 30 minutes longer, but I’ll drive longer if it means I can arrive without being so stressed.  We headed west through Fort Payne, Alabama, and then over towards Huntsville, before turning north to get to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where we were spending the day and night.

While planning the route, I had noticed a marker for the North Alabama Railroad Museum.  This is mostly an outdoor park with old trains, but they do have volunteers who docent for the place some days of the week.  During the fall and winter, they also offer special train rides.  We were there early today and took a short walk to look around and stretch our legs before getting back on the road.  We found another Publix for a rest stop in Meridianville, Alabama.

This part of Alabama was all new territory for me, and I have to say it was really beautiful.  I can see why people like living in northern Alabama.

We arrived in Murfreesboro around 11 AM which still gave us plenty of time to get to the funeral home for family visitation.  We stopped to gas up at Costco, which you will probably notice later on becomes a theme!  Gas today was $3.36 per gallon.

We stayed at the same hotel we stayed at last week when we made the trip to see DH’s sister before she passed away.  The hotel was gracious enough to let us check in early (11:30 AM) which gave us time to unload everything we needed for the night and get changed and freshened up before heading to the funeral home.  Our contingency plan was to just change into our dress clothes in the restrooms at the hotel, but we were thankful to not have to do that!

I won’t write about the funeral except to say it was a beautiful tribute to DH’s beautiful sister.  And it was wonderful to see so many people there who loved her dearly.  And to also see our nieces and nephew and great-nieces and great-nephews, and even a great-great-nephew!  (Wow, that makes me sound old!)  And some cousins from various sides of DH’s family.

I’ll leave you with this picture of one of the flower arrangements.  My sister-in-law loved flowers, and these are a lovely reminder of how much she loved each one of us.

~ Cindy D.

Prologue: Northeast Road Trip 2026

Prologue.  That’s what I’m calling the first two days of our Northeast Road Trip, because they are not really about going to the northeast.  Instead, they are about joining DH’s family in Tennessee for the funeral of his beloved sister.  It’s not how we imagined starting this trip, but we cannot imagine being anywhere else now that his sister passed away.  If you’ve been following our planning blog entries, you’ll know we had rearranged the end of our trip so we could get by to see her.  But as her health turned for the worse, we made a quick run to Tennessee last week to be with her and her family.  And as the funeral was scheduled for the day before we were originally going to start the trip, we just left early so we could attend the funeral before going forward with our plans.

That said, we’re still treating the first two days as part of the trip, meaning we’re following our usual road trip practices of staying off the interstates, dining at places we can’t eat at home, enjoying the journey as much as each day’s destination.  I’ll be making another smash book for this trip, and of course there will be pictures!

So let’s get to it!  Our first day had a longer-than-usual drive as we wanted to make it to the DeSoto StatePark Lodge near Fort Payne, Alabama.  We had stayed at the lodge in 2017 and enjoyed the rustic nature of this place constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps beginning in 1934. 

We drove up US27 for much of the way before cutting over to get to the state park.  Along the way we stopped a few times; our rest stop of choice is Publix as they generally have clean restrooms and are air conditioned.  We can also do a little shopping which is what I did at one of our two Publix stops in Georgia where BOGO means buy one at half price.  They had a few things I had wanted to get for the trip, so we took care of that while we were already stopped.

Because we had run this same route just last week, we had figured out the good stops for gas, too.  There’s a Marathon gas station in Bremen that is just the right spot for gassing up to get to Tennessee.  I had been a member of the Marathon Rewards club a while ago, so I signed in again so I can take advantage of some savings.  Which works out good because my next fill up at a Marathon station will get us 25-cents per gallon off.  For this trip, I did our gas budget at $3.75 per gallon and 30 MPG.  Today’s gas was $3.67 per gallon and we were getting about 32 MPG.

The DeSoto State Park is in central time zone, so we arrived before 4 PM.  We were assigned a lodge room that is closer to the parking lot than when we were here last week which turned out to be a really good thing.  There are bears that are active in the area, so that meant we had to make sure to get any and all food out of the car.  In hindsight, if I had thought of that, we probably would not have stayed here because we have brought quite a stash of car snacks and picnic food.  What I thought was going to be an easy unload of two small suitcases, a few electronics, and the toiletries bag became about half the car’s cargo!  And it was all so perfectly tetrised in.  At least I had taken a picture earlier so I can remember how to put it back!

Once we were settled in the room, we went out for a walk.  It’s been so dry in this area that the waterfall nearest to the lodge is dried up.  We walked towards another waterfall for a bit but decided we didn’t want to risk getting ticks or get more sweaty than we already were.  The humidity was pretty bad.  We did find where they have a native plant preservation project going on and a nice path that would be good on a cooler day.

When we were here last week, the Mountain Inn Restaurant wasn’t open for dinner because they are only open on the weekends.  So this time we were able to enjoy a delicious meal.  DH got the cat fish fillets and I had the grilled porkchops.  They took good care in the kitchen to make sure there wasn’t cross-contamination of my food, too.  (If you follow this blog for future entries, I’ll probably mention gluten-free dining many times.)  Also, the restaurant has a beautiful fireplace!

After dinner, DH sat on the porch until the bugs got too bad.  We would recommend staying here maybe in the early spring or late fall rather than August!

So that’s the first day.  Thanks for reading my narration and ramblings about it.

~ Cindy D.

Product Recommendation: Refillable Ice Bags

Earlier this year I was looking for better ice pack options for when we travel.  We have the typical blue blocks that you freeze and they stay cold pretty well, but they are dependent on having access to a freezer to re-chill overnight.  We've found that while many hotels offer a mini-fridge, not all of them have a freezer section, so there's no way to easily re-freeze the ice packs.

We've tried filling ziploc bags for freezers with ice, even double bagging them, but they still end up with a leak or sweating all over everything as the ice melts.  I thought surely someone has to have come up with a solution.  Sure enough, an internet search led me to these reusable ice packs that you fill with ice cubes.  And when the ice melts, you can use the spout on the side to fill your drinking cup with ice cold water.  Most hotels have ice machines, so that makes refilling accessible.  (We have occasionally had a hotel where the ice machine was broken.)  We've tried them out on a few trips we've taken since getting them and so far, so good!  They are pliable enough to smoosh around things in the cooler, too. 

You can also just fill the bag with water or even your favorite drink.  Just freeze it overnight (if you have access to a freezer) and then when it thaws, you'll have it cold but not diluted like when you add ice to a drink.  (Don't you hate it when melting ice dilutes your water? ha ha!)

Not only will we use these in the cooler when driving, we also plan to take them with us on our activities so we have cold water waiting at the car when we get back from a tour, especially while it is still so hot out!

What about you?  What do you use for keeping things cold when traveling or out for a long day in the summer heat?

Don't forget to stay hydrated!

~ Cindy D.

(NOTE: I don't do affiliations or have an amazon store - any product links I post are directly to the product.)

Pre-game itinerary shift

Well, we've had a pre-game itinerary shift.  Instead of heading to Georgia to visit my parents at the beginning of the trip, we'll start by being with DH's family for a loved one's funeral.  Thankfully I had been paying attention to things like cancellation windows and routing options, so we were able to make an easy shift to go north, then east to get to Virginia Beach instead of going east and then north.

And because we'll be re-routing, we're adding a few things we had talked about doing on a different trip - including spending a day in Asheville, North Carolina, and visiting the Biltmore Estate!  DH visited there many years ago, but I've never been.  On the way to Asheville, we'll be passing through Knoxville, Tennessee.  Our niece saw a post on a Facebook Group about a gluten-free foodery called Disco Chicken and Donuts that was highly recommended, so she'd told me about it several weeks ago.  Our original itinerary was going to bring us nearby Knoxville at the end of the trip but not at a time of day that would coincide with mealtime - but our new itinerary will put us there in time for a late lunch!

And this just goes to show that even though I have much of the itinerary planned out, I'm not so rigid about our plans that we can't adapt or be spontaneous.  I just like to know where I can rest my head each night.

We've started packing - so it won't be long before we have updates from the road - we hope you'll join us along the way!

~ Cindy D.

Re-arranging a day because a tour was sold out - Burlington-style

You know me, I like to get everything sorted, reserved, paid for well in advance of our travels.  This makes things easier from a budgeting perspective and from a logistics perspective.  It can also be risky if there aren't good cancellation and modification policies in place, so I make sure to check those details before booking anything ahead of time.  I like to do the ahead of time reservations, too, because I want to get the time slots that work best for us.

With our trip starting in just two weeks, I've been going back through the details and purchasing the tickets for the first half of the trip.  So far it's been going well - that is, until today when I went to book our Burlington Trolley tour for 9 AM on the full day we'll be in Burlington - and there was only one seat left!

I had carefully crafted our day in Burlington to maximize our time there.  We were going to get an early start with the trolley tour at 9 AM, walk up to Church Street Market for a while, then take the Spirit of Ethan Allen boat tour on Lake Champlain at noon.  Following this, we were going to drive up to the Ethan Allen Homestead and Museum to catch their last guided tour of the day (at 2:30 PM).

But with the trolley not being available at 9 AM, I had to shift the whole day based on when the other trolley times were, when the boat tours were, and when the Ethan Allen Homestead and Museum is open and touring.

It took a bit of doing, but we were able to shift things so we'll go to the Ethan Allen site first, but with a later start since they don't open until 10 AM.  The first tour is at 10:30 and lasts an hour.  We'll have to hurry from there to get to Church Street for lunch at a place that comes with good reviews and gluten-free recommendations.  Fortunately there is a parking structure nearby so we can park and then just walk to eat, and then it's just a 15 minute walk down to the lake for the 2 PM boat ride.  We've been told that whatever else we do in Burlington, don't miss a tour on Lake Champlain.  The boat ride gets back at 3:30 and we've scheduled the 4 PM trolley tour - thankfully, the trolley tour leaves from the parking lot that's nearby where the boat dock is, so we should be able to make it.  It lasts an hour, so we'll be back at the car by 5:30.  Still some daylight as the sun doesn't set until 7:12 PM that day.

I hope we'll have time to stop by Lake Champlain Chocolates Flagship Store on the way back to the hotel.  They are open until 9 PM.  And I want to also make a detour to go see the World's Tallest Filing Cabinet if there's enough daylight.  If not, I guess a Google Maps image will just have to do.

This is why I like to plan ahead; it's much easier to re-arrange things while there's still time than having to do it on the fly.

We have a couple of other things planned for the afternoon we arrive into Burlington, but you'll have to wait until we get there to find out what they are!