| Canfield Travels | |
| USA West 2018 #8 April 6, 2018 |
Traveling North to NJ
From Stuart, Florida we traveled north along
the Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina coast to Charleston, enjoying the warm
but windy sunshine while another winter storm battered the northeast and
wondering if winter will be over when we arrive home in about a week.
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston continues to be a city of gracious
living with mansions, gardens and historic sites faithfully restored after destructive
hurricanes, an earthquake, and both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.
A
variety of shrubs and flowers greet the arrival of spring in this
southern city.
Stately
home
Signs of spring
The cemetery at St Michaels Episcopal Church,
site of the graves of John Rutledge and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, patriots
and signers of the Constitution, was the location of a scavenger hunt during
our family reunion at Isle of Palm many years ago.
Charles
Pinckney
Selling sawgrass
baskets,
After a short visit with Colorado ski friends
Katherine and Jack Jeter in Spartenburg, SC we continued to Asheville, TN to
sample some local craft beer and visit the Biltmore House and Gardens.
Biltmore House and Garden
A National Treasure
The Biltmore House and Gardens, designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, opened in1895 after six years of construction at an 1890s cost of about $6,000,000. It was the Vanderbilt family home until opened to the public in 1930 to generate income to help preserve the huge estate.
Biltmore
mansion
Indoor spiral staircase
Waiting
for
spring
Indoor garden
For those who have missed them on this trip, finally
a mathematics problem:
What would be the cost to construct the
Biltmore Estate in twenty-first century dollars?
Art and antiques collected from Vanderbilt
travels around the world decorate both the visitor and private rooms. The
Vanderbilt’s often entertained guests and their servants for several days or
weeks.
Formal
dining room
15th Century Belgian tapestry.
Guest
Unsinkable
Molly Brown
Former stable
The lower levels of the mansion housed
recreation areas and their household staff activities.
Well equipped kitchen Basement bowling alley
Orchids in the
conservatory
The Antler Hill Village Winery, adjacent to
the house and garden area, gave us the opportunity to sample several delicious Biltmore
produced wines before selecting a white and a red wine for purchase.
Unfortunately, the winery is not able to ship wines to NJ.
The former estate dairy barns, constructed in
1902, are now part of the winery complex. The dairy with 140 cows produced
enormous quantities of manure which was handled through trap doors in the floor of
the stalls. Dumping boxes were then released to empty into cars that rolled on
descending rails through subway tunnels to the rear of the barn for hauling away to
be recycled in the fruit and vegetable gardens. Visitors now walk through these
subway halls to the winery.
Traveling North