cheryl
Administrator
Staff member
Road trip to Asheville, N.C.: A long way to go for some hikes and a historic home, but worth every mile - MSN
Lock the house and start the ignition around 7 a.m., and you’ll be in Asheville, give or take, by 9 that night. That’s close to one full day of your trip spent on the journey, with another day still to be sacrificed on the back end.
But it’s good to leave a place wanting more of it, and this college-hippie-mountain-music-brewer-artist-grandee town achieved that in the three full days our schedule allowed. We saw black bear cubs, live, by the side of the road on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a ship-size public sculpture by a MacArthur “genius grant” winner that breathed in and out, and the big old country house that everybody in Asheville visits, for good reason.
One of those good reasons to visit Biltmore, the absolutely massive old estate built by the Vanderbilt brand of 19th-century rapacious capitalism? Everybody, once in a lifetime, should witness a family house where the guest rooms are lined up like hotel suites and the basement poolside changing cubicles are nicer than your own home’s guest room.
Lock the house and start the ignition around 7 a.m., and you’ll be in Asheville, give or take, by 9 that night. That’s close to one full day of your trip spent on the journey, with another day still to be sacrificed on the back end.
But it’s good to leave a place wanting more of it, and this college-hippie-mountain-music-brewer-artist-grandee town achieved that in the three full days our schedule allowed. We saw black bear cubs, live, by the side of the road on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a ship-size public sculpture by a MacArthur “genius grant” winner that breathed in and out, and the big old country house that everybody in Asheville visits, for good reason.
One of those good reasons to visit Biltmore, the absolutely massive old estate built by the Vanderbilt brand of 19th-century rapacious capitalism? Everybody, once in a lifetime, should witness a family house where the guest rooms are lined up like hotel suites and the basement poolside changing cubicles are nicer than your own home’s guest room.