Mountain View

What I would do to wake up to this view each morning…on this porch…in this house…ok, stopping before I depress myself. Images like this are the reason my first trip to Biltmore left me feeling both exhilaratingly inspired and extremely poverty-ridden. I had never felt so poor in my life.

We’ll be taking in all that the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition has to offer this weekend, particularly the Dock Dogs competition at Brittlebank Park.  Get out and enjoy a very spring-ish weekend, Charleston!

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One Stately Estate

Visiting the Biltmore was part of my destiny.  Not exactly in the case of fated destiny, stars aligning, and all that jazz but more of a coerced destiny created by interested parties.

Like my grandmother, who, upon discovering that I had never been to this grand home in the Blue Ridge Mountains, was so aghast at the notion that she threatened to ‘kill me’ if I didn’t visit.  (True story.  That really happened.)

And like Suzanne’s mother, who was similarly dismayed when she learned of my apparent transgression.  Instead of threatening to kill me like my dear old grandmother, however, she purchased season passes for us.  That seems a little more rational.

This is probably only the second time that I have had a season pass to anything in my life, the first being a swim club membership in 6th grade that I obtained solely to have the opportunity to talk to a girl from class who wrote “can’t wait to see you at Splash this summer!” in my yearbook.  Guess what?  She wrote that in literally everyone’s yearbook.  Stupid circa-1995 Chris.  Anyway, I did feel somewhat cooler holding my newly minted Biltmore identification card and was immediately filled with wonder as to what exactly being a season pass holder entails.  Turns out, it’s a lot.  And after seeing the house, I can’t wait to partake.

Suzanne’s mother wanted a photograph of my reaction when I first came upon the house after emerging from the wooded approach.  We didn’t end up snapping one, but if we had, my expression would have been somewhere between “you got three numbers and the powerball on your lottery ticket” and “that girl REALLY did want to talk to you at Splash all summer.”

The Biltmore is awe-inspiring.  The sheer size of the place is only dwarfed by the immensity of the grounds it sits upon.  It doesn’t seem real at first.  It’s hard to wrap your mind around the thought that someone actually lived in this place.  It isn’t a Disney castle.  It was a highly functioning, highly innovative working estate home, serviced by scores of maids, cooks, butlers, and the like.  The history of the inner workings of the house is legendary and I will touch upon it in good time.

There is so much to tell about our experience within the house and on the estate itself that one post cannot do it justice.  We’ll have a couple more coming this week.  For now, I just hope that the accompanying photos give at least an inkling of its grandeur. I can’t wait to experience it in the spring.

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