B&T Sunshine Tour 2022 - Day 3 & 4

I had to steal another picture from the web ℅ The Luxury Columnist because the day was actually rather bleak and rain.

The Biltmore was constructed from 1889 to 1895. It was much farther from the Village Inn, where we were staying, than we expected. At every wooded curve, I anticipated that the land would open up to this most beautiful site known as the Biltmore. It wasn’t that dramatic but once in sight there it was the largest house in America (175,000 sq ft), #4 in the world, the grounds and home of George and Edith Vanderbilt and it was breathtaking to behold even on this gray day. George and Edith were great adventurers and they memorialized their adventures throughout this enormous house. What with the foyers, the sitting rooms with fireplaces almost as tall as me (5’4”), the Louis XVI room which actually seemed to extend to a wing, the kitchens and dining rooms, the staircase which you can see in the picture from the outside, corridors wide enough and high enough for horses and cars to pass through, down to the polished bowling lane in the basement..oh the stories these walls must hold!

After the grand tour, we were relaxing in our Village Inn room when word came in that Blake and Kate had made it to Maidens, VA. A video of a long wooded drive opened up to a huge house which would become their new home. (Finally the grand entrance I expected with the Biltmore.) Congrats to them and us for another great road trip excuse!

There is no doubt about it, B and I have totally different agendas when it comes to food. For breakfast B brought packaged muffins for the trip. Apparently I’m used to a bit more in the morning. I wanted to stick with his schedule but found myself snacking on chips and bites of sweets which never really satisfies long term. We also have different sleep schedules. I crash early and he sleeps in from a long night of personal party time. So, I was pleased to find a window of time this last morning on the Biltmore Estate to sneak away for a crab and pesto egg scramble at the Village Social dining room. Sigh…so lovely on the tongue! And once again the third out of four days, my soul was so satiated, I blinked back those tears of new experience, relaxing joy.

We left the Biltmore around 10:30 excited now for a glimpse of the beach. Folly Beach. I was reading a book by Bill Noel named Folly. Its the first in a series of I think 18 books centered at Folly Beach solving murder mysteries or maybe just mysteries in general. I hadn’t gotten far enough into the book to exclaim familiarity with too much but it appeared to be a light read well, as murders go.

Folly fun is contained within a few blocks of Center Street. We were able to visit Rita’s bar where I struck up a conversation with a woman my age who had moved there 4 years ago with her husband, who was managing the bar that night, and we suspected her son, who was bartending. They are set for retirement in a fabulous community and loving it even though they still have to work to maintain it. We also stopped at Snapper Jack’s for a beer. They  were serving up some fine looking sushi rolls but B said "No way Jose!". The WashOut was my favorite. Bought B a t-shirt there. He looks great in it.

We had dinner at Tides Hotel’s BLU restaurant. Too chilly to eat outside but I wanted to eat overlooking the ocean which turns out was hard to see. We did pop out into the salty air after and the night sky opened up to a perfect view of Orion! What a treat that was for me. I have studied Orion over the years including using it to find other closeby constellations and stars such as Taurus and Pleiades, the seven sisters, which is depicted on every Subaru vehicle as a reminder to look up and see the stars!

This picture is from our Tide’s room the next morning. Again a gray and stormy day. Even so, it was 50 degrees plus, a good 20 degrees or so above the Ohio weather we came from. Next stop, Amelia Beach where it will be another 10 degrees warmer!

B&T Sunshine Tour 2022 - Day 2

You never know how the day will go until well…the day goes. We started out looking for the Hatfield's in Pikeville but B was not really in the mood and we didn’t have a real plan so I didn’t complain. Later, in Tennessee though, we made a stop at a gas station and found a flier for a Hatfield-McCoy Self guided drive through that passes by grave yards and points of interest (killings?). If only we had had that the day before. It would have been a perfect tribute for a Pikeville visit. But we so loved the 23 South experience that we will be back and you gotta leave room to explore for the next time.

B was excited to get back on the road so off we went. Again taken by the beauty of 23 South, we traveled 3-½ hours to Ashville, NC. The cloudless blue skies were stunning against the Appalachian mountains. As I viewed the mountains to my right I kept seeing these stripes that waved along. I thought they were logs at first but turned out they were the tree’s shadows creating these flowing trails. It was gorgeous though trying to take pictures at 60 miles an hour wasn’t real successful.

I find that often I miss the best pictures because I’m in too much awe of what I see before me. This was particularly true of the blue ridge mountains so I downloaded a photo from the web taken by a Michael A Milton that does it justice.

Layers of blue shades lined the bright blue sky. The forests that cover these mountains are predominately made up of spruce and fir trees and they emit isoprene, a building block molecule for many compounds, into the atmosphere creating the blue hue! A moistness glistened my cheeks once again for the gorgeous sites of the world we have been blessed with to explore. I’ve missed it all for even longer than I thought. I flew from place to place for years to other wonderful places while missing so many glorious sites along the way. This trip was eyes open wide!

The Biltmore was a place we had hoped to hook up with B’s brother and his wife who live on their mountain in Vilas, NC. It didn’t work out this trip, but my husband was impressed by the estate layout so we planned to visit the house Day3. We shopped a bit and overheard a constant buzz of ‘You must come, We love to come for Christmas time at the Biltmore!” It was a full moon and a gorgeous night this night! I image it would be magical at Christmas.

Back in our room, we discovered that our nephew, Blake, and his wife, Kate, were only 90 minutes away. They were camping at a KOA in Blountville, TN off I-81. They had been traveling from upper California where they packed up their 6 cats, 1 dog and a snake in an RV to sojourn cross country to their new home in Maidens, VA! Unbeknownst to us, we must have crossed paths around Kingsport, TN earlier that day.

Smiles and sleep were coming much easier these days!

B&T 2022 Sunshine Tour - Day 1 

We had decided to break down our travel days into 4-5 hour drives. B, the driver, and I, the navigator, could have gone farther this day but when we stopped, we were happy not to continue. The number of trucks traveling 23 South from the south end of Columbus made us feel like we were joining a convoy! The truckers in Canada were protesting COVID-19 mandates and talk of a peaceful U.S. People’s Convoy from California to Washington DC was circulating. For now, we were all going in the wrong direction to participate in either. 

B and I were going south in February to find the heat of the sun and beauty of the land. It had been a long, long, long, long time since we had been on the road let alone on vacation by ourselves. Maybe 30 years. We are both now semi-retired and spend a lot of time together…apart. The excitement of spending quality time together has been highly anticipated. Day 1 of 17 and the excitement was holding its own. As the traffic leveled out, I was struck by the gentle rolling hay fields of Ohio and the continuous view of something other than my house, or my parent’s house, or the routes in between. I blinked back tears a few times from the joy of it all! The farther we got, the less traffic we saw on 23. In fact by the time we crossed over from OH approaching Greenup, KY, we were a bit surprised to be practically the only vehicle on the road. 

 

I was reminding B that my mom and I had driven down to Greenup with quilt tops we had worked on together to drop them off for quilting. My Mother-In-Law, Ethel, had sent her tops there and, with her being my mentor, I followed in her footsteps. It was indeed much cheaper than what you might pay in Columbus at the time and that included the shipping costs both ways. Mom, who is now in the Alzheimer Care Facility, Kemper House, uses that quilt to this day…say…20 years later. 

 

Gift cards were our topic of conversation while passing through Ashland, KY where Big Sandy Superstore originated. B had recently rediscovered an old Big Sandy gift card. I am a stickler about using these cards. I’m all for companies making money, but I refuse to be the one to leave gift cards on the table as a donation. For sure we will take a walk through a Big Sandy when we get back.

 

Traffic was still light as we approached signs for Louisa, KY. (I love the way that Louisa flows off the tongue!) When we entered Kentucky, there were signs declaring we were traveling the Country Music 23 Highway. I found this map showing where Tom T Hall, Randy Skaggs and many other country stars hailed from in Kentucky. We were on our way to Pikeville, home to Patty Loveless. Anyway, the map was across from the women’s bathroom inside the pictured tabernacle. A young, sweet southern drawl was ahead of me quietly waiting for maintenance to let her in. When I arrived, it was determined that he wasn’t about to leave until he painted over the walls, so she and I made a pact to keep an eye out as we took turns in the men’s room. Pretty disgusting…yep...pretty disgusting. It was a fun place overall though and so very out of place in the middle of nowhere. That’s just how I like it!

Our first night away and we actually were in a room with a view. It was spent at a Holiday Inn Express alongside the Levisa Fork River and a railroad track. When looking up which river this might be, I was amazed to find out that driving down 23 south around Pikeville was driving the second biggest engineering feat in the world! The river and the railroad used to run through Pikeville until a cut through Peach Orchard mountain rerouted them. Strategically constructed from 1973 well into 1989, it is second only to the engineering development of the Panama Canal and has been touted the 8th wonder of the world. WOW! And we haven’t even been to the Hatfield - McCoy museum yet.