Well friends, I loved our entire trip. Days 5-8 were my favorite, and if I had to pick one, day eight may have been my very favorite! So be prepared, this post is a long one! We started out the morning by exploring Columbia a bit more. Matt found the School of Benson and felt he needed to take a picture!
We also drove over to the football stadium.
Then we headed to the state capitol building.
Next we headed to Asheville, NC to tour the Biltmore Estate, the largest house in the US. It's so big, a bridge was built for the interstate to go over the many acres of the property.
Look at that house!!
I mean, I would have no problem living here!
Okay, I maybe got a little bit excited about taking pictures of the house!
We thought this would make the perfect backdrop for our North Carolina state picture. We went up to the balcony and asked a guy to take a picture of us. This is what happened...Where did the house go?? Did it disappear??
We waited until this guy left and had a lady take our picture. Much better!!
It's almost as good as two summers ago when we asked another guy to take a picture of us at Mt. Rainier. Same story, different verse! This is what he took...
Then we waited until he left and asked another person to take a picture and we ended up with this!
Moral of the story: we no longer ask men to take our picture! ;)
Then we headed inside for a tour of the house! Get ready, I went a little camera crazy! Lucky for all of you, not all of the pictures uploaded to the blog and I figured I had enough posted as it was. Here is the winter garden.
I was really impressed with the ceiling in the billiard room.
These are the original billiard tables from the house.
Next we headed into the banquet hall. It's seven stories tall!
It also has a pipe organ!
The dining room has three fireplaces and a regular sized table they usually sat at for family meals!
The breakfast room where they ate lunch.
Some of the Vanderbilt royalty including Cornelius himself, center.
Next was the salon which was actually never finished in the time the Vanderbilts lived here. The house took six years to build and still wasn't completely finished!
The music room was next.
Then we walked outside along the veranda to check out the gorgeous view!
We headed back inside to walk through the tapestry gallery.
And the library. They must have owned every book ever written up to this point in time.
Here is a chess set that was once owned by Napoleon.
And I thought this globe was really cool. A little blurry because the lighting was fairly dark in every room!
The beautiful grand staircase!
Next we headed up to the second floor which housed most of the bedrooms and of course more living rooms!
Maybe this is overkill showing picture I took of pictures?? You can skip through whatever you want! On the right is the landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed the grounds and Central Park. On the left is Richard Morris Hunt who designed the mansion.
Mr. Vanderbilt's bedroom
The oak sitting room which connected the spouses bedrooms where they met for breakfast and discussed itineraries for the day.
Mrs. Vanderbilt's bedroom.
Some of the 33 guest bedrooms were open to glance through as well. This one, known as the Watson room, is the only bedroom with two beds.
Many of their rooms had their own bathrooms and closets.
We took a quick peek outside before heading to the basement.
We walked through the stone hallway which went about 29 feet below the ground. It took two years to build the foundation. We also read they created a railroad to run from Asheville to the Estate while they were building the house in order to bring supplies and workers in everyday. Once the house was finished, they tore down the railroad tracks!
We were led into the Halloween room which Cornelia Vanderbilt (the daughter) painted with her husband and other family members for a New Year's Eve Party. The pictures are really blurry but fun to see their artistic talent!
Then we walked through the recreation portion of the house including the bowling alley,
swimming pool,
and gymnasium.
Then we saw where the servants lived and worked. Most of the pictures turned out really blurry except for a few. They had three kitchens, one for pastries, one for cooking meats, and the regular kitchen. The original pots and pans were also displayed in the kitchen.
Seriously this house is beautiful inside and out!
One family asked us to take a picture so Matt felt he needed to take a picture of me taking a picture of them! I was really getting into it!
We thought the background was so good we had them take a picture of us too!
Once we left the house, we walked through the beautiful gardens
and the conservatory.
One last look at the house!
I don't think we got any other pictures of our rental car so we thought, why not take one of it next to the most beautiful thing we saw on the entire trip! Matt made sure to mention this car was nicer than anything the Vanderbilts drove....Can't argue with the facts...
We LOVED driving a car with no cruise control!...
We continued our tour throughout the estate including lakes and multiple fields.
We went to A LOT of work to get this picture. Yes, I know it is crooked and blurry, but I am posting it as is anyway! I could not get the camera straight, and we were on the road. There was no traffic when we decided to take the picture, and as soon as I had the camera set up the best I could, there was a solid line of cars for what felt like 30 minutes, although it was probably more like two or three!
The property also has two hotels, multiple restaurants, a petting zoo, and the most visited winery in the US. After we drank our ticket prices worth in complementary wine tastings we took off down the road to our next stop.
The Great Smoky Mountains!!
We ran into some elk while the weather was still sunny. We made it to the visitor's center where they told us a big storm was coming in about an hour.
We drove the 45 minutes to the trail of the observation deck. Once we got there, the rangers told us we had 20 minutes before the storm with 80 mph winds and hail would hit. YIKES! I was already feeling sick from the windy roads, then we had to hustle up the 1/2 mile uphill trail to the observation deck.
We made it!! But as you can see, the storm was brewing!
The Appalachian trial runs right through the park so we took a few steps on the trail to say we've been there. Someday, when a storm is not approaching, we will spend more time on it!
After a bit of running down the hill, we made it to our car when the first rain drops started to fall. We were very lucky! Others, not so much. I hope they all fared well with the storm. We drove about 15 minutes to an open parking lot further down the mountain to wait out the storm.
Once the storm let up, we crossed the state line to Gaitlinburg, TN for dinner. If you have never been to Gaitlinburg, you should go! We were in for quite the treat. One of my friends told me about it. It is kind of like Branson, MO, but all on one street. They also bring in college students from around the world to work at all the restaurants and shops. Many of the people visiting are from around the Appalachian Mountains region, and I could tell the student workers were getting a really good view of what Americans are like....j/k, except it's probably pretty accurate!
We enjoyed some fudge and then headed for our hotel on the other side of the mountain. The storm took out several trees that blocked the road so the DOT closed the road through the park. Matt befriended everyone else waiting in theirs cars and made the decision to drive around the mountain. It turned into a late night, but who would want such a perfect day to ever end?? Tomorrow is our final day from our trip! If you missed any other days click below to catch up!
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