Events of Tuesday, January 25, 2011

                This morning, we woke up in a relatively quiet Target parking lot in Asheville, North Carolina, had breakfast, and drove to Biltmore Estates, the largest family home in America.

                As we drove up, we followed signs to RV parking and went into a building clearly marked “Group and RV Sales”. The helpful lady there told us about a discount we were eligible for with our Good Sam RV Club Card. With this discount, all four of us kids were free, and Mom and Dad were only $27 each. In high season, it would have cost us $60 apiece. Glad to have gotten such a sweet deal, we drove through the stone arch entranceway and on through the grounds towards the house.

                Directed to parking lot B-3, we parked and caught the shuttle to the Biltmore Mansion itself. Heading inside, we proceeded directly to the audio tours, thinking it was included in admission, like at the Newport mansions in Rhode Island. However, each audio guide cost $10, in addition to the admission charge. It seems our “sweet deal” only got us in to the mansion with a free parking spot and shuttle ride, nothing more. Remembering how much insight these audio tours gave us in the Newport mansions, we decided to get two to share among us. Then we decided that this technique would result in us moving through the mansion painfully slowly, and rented four more audio players.

                It’s sort of hard to sum up such an expansive house. It is the largest privately-owned home in the United States, at 175,000 square feet, which is about four acres – and that’s just the house! In total, the estate today covers approximately 8,000 acres. Biltmore House is a Châteauesque-styled mansion. George Washington Vanderbilt II, a grandson of railroad tycoon and family patriarch "The Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, built the house between 1889 and 1895. In its 250 rooms are forty-three bathrooms and thirty-five bedrooms for family and guests. That number does not include the sixty-four or so servants’ bedrooms.

                Also impressive in this mansion was the electricity throughout the house in the mountainous sections of North Carolina in a time when electricity was new and very rare. One example of this innovation in action was the electric light in Mr. Vanderbilt’s bedroom closet, which turned on automatically when he opened the closet door. He also used electric lights to light the forty-foot-tall Christmas tree he showcased on the first family gathering at the Biltmore when it first opened. Continuing the tradition, the Biltmore still displays an equally  tall Fraser Fir tree decorated as it might have been on that first Christmas celebration.

                In the basement of the Biltmore were a variety of impressive recreational areas. The 70,000-gallon indoor swimming pool was heated and still has its original underwater lighting (in a time where electricity itself was brand-new). Across the hall, we visited the Biltmore gymnasium, where guests could exercise. There was an archaic-looking rowing machine, parallel bars with very thin mats beneath them, a rope ladder hanging from the ceiling, medicine balls, and funny bowling-pin-looking weights which were lifted and swung in a dance-like exercise movement. “Needle Baths” along the back wall were the equivalent of our modern shower massages, to soothe tired muscles. In addition to the water falling from the shower head, vertical pipes located at intervals around the showers had holes in them, which pummeled the person showering from all directions.

                This place was huge for a family of three, George and Edith Vanderbilt, and their only daughter, Cornelia. It was a home for entertainment, where guests could relax and enjoy all the estate offered. What with all the guests and their servants, not to mention the family’s five huge St. Bernard dogs, it was apparently quite a lively place.

                In the servants’ domain, we found four separate rooms that served as pantries: the first for fresh fruits and vegetables, the second for canned goods, the third for pickled goods, jams, jellies, and the like, and the fourth for dried goods. Not only that, they had three separate kitchens! The first was a pastry kitchen, the second served as a rotisserie kitchen, and the third was the main kitchen. All this space just for the preparation and storage of food really set us a-drooling, especially considering the extremely limited pantry and kitchen space we have in the RV.

                As we finished our audio tour, we explored a few gift shops and then decided we were done. However, we couldn’t just exit the estate. We had to catch a shuttle back to the parking lot, and then drive Harvey all the way through the estate before leaving the way we came in. Along the way, we saw some ducks flapping their wings to keep warm and standing on the edge of ice on a large pond. We also drove by the bass pond and through the deer park. We learned that Mr. Vanderbilt stocked his estate with fish and wild game to entertain his guests. The estate is quite the extensive place!

                Back in the city of Asheville, we refueled our vehicle and visited the post office, before starting on our drive through the rain to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. On the way, a policeman pulled Daddy over for not having his headlights on while his windshield wipers were in use. After we had a hard time finding our registration, the policeman with an amusing Southern twang issued a Buncombe County Sheriff Warning Ticket and allowed us to continue on our merry way.

                In Gatlinburg (“Gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains!”), we found the campgrounds all closed for the season or closed for the night or just too expensive. So, instead, while some of us went grocery shopping, others looked for motels in Gatlinburg. Daddy found us an awesome family suite at River Edge Motor Lodge. It had two bedrooms, a total of three queen-size beds, a living room area with a sofa bed, a full-size eat-in kitchen (with a dishwasher!), one bathroom, cable TV/HBO, a full-size refrigerator, a coffee maker, a microwave, a hair dryer, free wireless internet, and a private balcony. The suite sleeps seven. Mom and Dad got their own queen-size bed in their very own bedroom, with a private balcony. Lindsey, Abby, and I got the other bedroom, which had a huge walk-in closet and two queen-size beds. Lucky Lindsey got a queen-sized bed all to herself because it is her turn to sleep in the table bed in the RV. With the sofa bed, Ben had the whole living room to himself, including the TV (which we did not use at all). The "River Edge" even serves a complimentary continental breakfast each morning! Daddy scored on this one!

                After moving in, we enjoyed a delicious fish taco dinner and brownies for dessert, both of which had been prepared in the RV kitchen and cooked in the suite kitchen (I say “suite” because it was SWEET!). Following the easiest dinner clean-up we’ve had in a while, we had our math session with Dad at a nice, spacious dining room table. Next, the boys enjoyed haircuts from the very skilled hairdresser Lindsey. Some of us showered, before heading to bed for a night of deliciously restful sleep.