Through the Palmetto State

Departed: Fripp Island, SC  10:30 a.m.
Arrived:  Flat Rock, NC 4:00 p.m.
278 miles

Hey friends,
This is Sunday and Monday's blog, as we had a poor wireless signal last night.

Back in the motorhome again after a fun weekend at Fripp Island with a few of the Inman clan. The weekend was a huge success, sweet wedding ocean side followed by an awesome party in an unbelievable beach house. As they say, "a good time was had by all!"

So we came up I 95 to I 26, through countryside I had not traveled through before, so that made it a bit more interesting. However, I was a bit distracted as I was finishing up a trash romance novel on the kindle.... hey, it was only 1.99 for the download, it was worth at least that much! Oh, and I mustn't forget rode by Inman, South Carolina. Here's proof:

As we rose in elevation to higher ground the fall foliage was looking pretty impressive, I'd say at about 75% towards peak.

So we arrived at Lakewood RV park. A very nice quiet park, after a while I realized why it was so quiet... it was a 55 and older park...no children and bicycles, just dogs and wheelchairs! We had some of Mary's delicious, quick and easy brunswick stew for supper and went to bed early. Well some of us went to bed early.

Monday, October 17, 2011
Departed: Flat Rock   9:45
Arrived:  Asheville  10:15
30 miles

Oh, to be a Vanderbilt!

So as we are watching the morning news in Asheville, we realized that Obama was going to speaking in Asheville this morning at the airport. Too bad, you had to have tickets to go hear him. You know we would have ridden through fire and brimstone to get there! So we were a tad concerned that there might be traffic issues on the way to the Biltmore house, but thankfully that did not prove to be so. We did see a pile of policemen waiting to block off the interstate for the King of Hope and Change.

We arrived at the Biltmore house got our ticket and made our way to the RV parking lot. We all commented, boy they sure are organized, parking attendants everywhere, helpful shuttle bus drivers etc. It was also a gorgeous ride down the two mile driveway. We rode the shuttle to the house and all along had been thinking, Monday morning, shouldn't be crowded, we can leisurely walk through
the house. Boy, were we absolutely wrong! We found out later that this weekend had been their busiest in about 7 or 8 months, and it spilled over to Monday, too. Of course we couldn't take any pictures on the inside of the house, here's the outside gate and then a picture of the front that I'm sure most of you are familiar with. Then there are a few pictures of scenes around the estate.

After the tour of the house we rode to another part of the estate about 5 miles away, the Antler Hill Village where we ate lunch and walked around with the pups. It's hard for me to fathom that the estate is 8000 acres! Here are a few more pics.

We checked in this afternoon into Bear Creek Campground right off the interstate, which I'm sure I'll be hearing tonight. We got situated into our site which was extremely close to our neighbors. We noticed that they were from Michigan, and shared that we had been there this summer, etc. Struck up a conversation and ended up inviting them over for happy hour. Great folks, that's the best part about camping is meeting people from all over the country.
Happy Camping!
Carla