USA – 3 East Side USA

05 Nov

Travelling day; Up to catch a 10:10 flight to Atlanta, a 4.5 hr flight, crossing 3 time zones, thus arriving at 6:00 pm. By the time we organised a hire car, it was 8:00 pm by the time we reached our hotel.

Andrew had arranged for us to meet up with a former colleague of his for dinner, so we set out straight away, and had a very pleasant evening with Shane and friend Cat.

Our time zone change was confusing enough, but on top of that, Daylight Savings was coming off that night – it was amazing that we all turned up for breakfast on time.

06 Nov

On our way with our new car, a Jeep, heading North, into the Great Smoky Mountains, which were living up to their name, due to a fire which had been burning for two weeks. We stopped at a small town named Dilboro for a bit of lunch, really pleasant sitting outside in the hazy sunlight.

We continued heading North to join the Blue Ridge Parkway, with the surroundings reflecting late autumn, with carpets of red leaves and the trees holding on to what they had left.

We came across a sign saying Elk Crossing, and, sure enough, there were two Elk, not exactly crossing, but they could have been! How did they know?

Driving towards a town called Waynesville, we diverted into a side road which indicated a Visitors Information Centre. The centre was closed, and I wandered across to the “Rest Rooms”. The word Toilet is not mentioned in this country. When I came out everyone was gone!

After looking around, I found that the only place they could have gone was up a steep path leading to a lookout point.
After climbing forever, hoping that I wasn’t wasting my energy, as the sun was setting, which, of course helped me to believe I was on the right track, because Elly chases sunsets, I finally arrived at the summit to find the other three there. The view from the lookout point was actually no better than from the bottom! But at least we did some exercise (read incipient heart attack).

 

Onward in the dark to the town of Waynesville, North Carolina, where we found a good, inexpensive motel, and, just down the road, a restaurant. The restaurant could only serve us wine by the glass, not a bottle, so we asked the waitress about buying a bottle for our evening game of Five Hundred. She said they were not licensed to sell us a bottle, either with dinner or to take away, however, “The gas station across the road has a good selection of wines!!”

So the restaurant couldn’t even sell you a bottle with your meal, but you could buy as much as you wanted at a petrol station! What can I say?

07 Nov

Climbing up along the Blue Ridge Parkway towards the town of Asheville, we stopped at various lookout points, up to an elevation of 6053 feet. The higher we climbed, the more wintry the forests either side appeared, as almost all the trees were bare apart from the interspersed evergreen Pines. Once again the weather was being kind, with clear sunny skies. We had John Denver in our heads – Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River, Country Road take me home ………

 

We stopped at the head of a trail leading down to the Yellowstone waterfall at a place called Graveyard Fields, which has nothing to do with a graveyard, in fact some trees had blown over during a catastrophic wind many years ago, and nature’s recovery process, as soil was deposited on the pieces of fallen trees, resembled a graveyard.

The falls were very beautiful, but not spectacular, as it hadn’t rained there for a couple of months. At the base of the falls was a pool formed by lots of rocks, which we clambered all over, even Elly fully loaded with camera. A nice little diversion.

 

Onwards towards Ashville.

Bev had done some research and discovered that in Ashville, there is what is purported to be the largest home in the US, that of the Vanderbilt family.
The Vanderbilt family wealth was created by Cornelius Vanderbilt initially by running what has now become the Staten Island ferry, building his wealth in shipping, and then in railways.
His grandson, George Washington Vanderbilt fell in love with the countryside in Ashville in the 1880s, and bought approximately 250,000 acres of land there.

In 1895 he opened Biltmore House as an escape from everyday life for family and friends. It has 225 rooms, about 40 bathrooms, an indoor swimming pool holding 70,000 gallons, gymnasium, bowling alley, and such innovations as heating driven by a ship’s steam boiler, a walk in refrigerator room, two dumb waiters.
The Estate encompasses Biltmore House, a winery, a Bistro, a village hotel, a tavern, a village green, restaurant and upmarket accommodation at The Inn on Biltmore Estate along with several ancillary income producers such as a farm and various shops.
Biltmore House itself was designed by the famous architect Richard Morris Hunt, and was heavily influenced by French architecture and is a massive structure which took 6 years to construct, even to the point of building a temporary railway line to ferry materials and workers to the construction site.

The tourist side of things is managed very well, despite the $65 entry fee. You park your car, and then a shuttle bus takes you to the mansion. You then tour through the house guided by rope barriers and a small guide book.

Extensive Christmas decorations were already in place, including a giant Christmas tree in the banquet hall.

The amount of upkeep required must be enormous, an army of ten cleaners is employed full time, just to do the dusting, the cleaning and the polishing.

Very Downton Abbey – except for the exterior design.

The Estate itself employs 2300 people, so the town of Ashville depends heavily on the existence of the Biltmore empire.

We did the full tour of this remarkable Estate, and finished with a wine tasting session at the winery, and bought a couple of bottles – just to see us through.

08 Nov

Election Day! Day of mourning! What are the American people thinking??
We continued north on the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is the scenic route, but slower than the main highway, with a speed limit of generally 45 mph, but you can realistically only average around 30 – 35 mph, so we didn’t cover a great distance.

We stopped at one wayside area and climbed a track to an observation area, which didn’t really give us a much improved view, but did give us some exercise.

We were fairly high, at around 3000 ft, so here most of the autumn leaves had already met their maker, meaning the view, although very lovely, wasn’t what it would have been a few weeks ago, or, indeed, what we had seen in the West in the last couple of weeks. We stopped at quite a few lookout points along the way, and did a very short walk to a small waterfall, and that was about it for the day.

The overnight stop was at a place called Blowing Rock, at a cute little motel. We had dinner at a local restaurant, after which we adjourned to a pub to check on the election progress, where things were starting to look a bit pear shaped.

09 Nov

A cool change had passed through overnight, to match the cold reality of Donald’s win. In the breakfast room, a lady with a German accent asked us if we would mind having the TV on to listen to Hillary’s speech. She said she had been talking to her friends and saying ” Don’t vote for Trump, he is like Hitler.” Interesting. We agree with her and the similarities with the unemployment and racist retoric are on par with that of pre war Germany. They say Trump will have checks and balances and not a free hand……. hmm where have I heard that said?
Starting to have a close look at our distance to run up to, eventually Charlottesville, Virginia, we decided we might leave the Blue Ridge Parkway a little earlier than planned, to allow us to use the higher speed limit on the highway.
Prior to leaving the Parkway we did a short walk down to a cascade which was a lovely little spot, and gave us a bit of exercise. The wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped, a lot different to the weather we had had for our whole trip.

Elly spotted a few old abandoned houses on the way.

Further on we came across an old mill with water wheel. Called Mabry Mill, it is over 100 years old, and claims to be the most photographed attraction on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Extensive aqueduct structure made up the mill race, carrying water to the water wheel. With a neat stone bridge behind it, it made a very cute picture, although the aqueduct was leaking in several places, and needs a lot of work or it will just rot away.

Every time we turned on the car radio we heard almost nothing other than Trump analysis. I guess that will go on until he takes office.

We also stopped at a little old house right beside the road, called Puckett Cabin. Apparently Mrs Pucket lived there for the latter part of her 102 years. She was a midwife, and used to assist with births in the area, the last being in the year she died.
She claimed that of the thousand births she attended, she never lost a mother or baby ” that was her fault!” Interestingly though, none of her own 24 children survived infancy! Sounds like a dodgy track record to me.

We decided to push on a little further than originally planned, past Roanoke to the small town of Lexington. This is a town full of character; it is the home of the Virginia Military Institute, and the Washington & Lee University. We found a charming old hotel, managed by a woman, originally from Italy, who convinced us that the hotel restaurant was the best in town, so we ate there as well, and it was pretty good.

10 Nov

This morning was a bit laid back, as we wandered through the quiet town of Lexington. Some very cute shops and old buildings dating back to the 1800s. We stopped at a small cafe for morning coffee in Andrew’s never ending search for a good cup of coffee in America. Still largely unsuccessful – Maybe Donald will fix that.

Next on our agenda was a visit to Natural Bridge, a short drive away. This is a state park, and began with steps from the car park down to a river, which we then followed around the corner to be presented with a spectacular view of the Natural Bridge. It is horizontal limestone strata, and has been carved out by the very quiet Cedar Creek which we were walking beside.

The bridge is a natural arch 65 metres high and has a span of 28 metres, and, in fact a road passes over it. It is massive, and is very impressive as you walk under it. The signs actually recommend wearing a hard hat when walking under it, although they don’t provide hard hats!
Lumps of rock in the river beneath are indicators that it is still shedding, and the size of the rocks would suggest that a hard hat wouldn’t be too effective if one hit you.

Walking on after passing the bridge we came across a restored Indian settlement. This was really well presented and preserved. The Monacan Tribe treat the bridge as a sacred site, and after looking around we found a woman from the tribe sitting inside one of the shelters with a fire burning in the fireplace. She gave us lots of information about the history of the tribe, as well as the ongoing maintenance done to keep the display in good order.

We walked on a little further, and when we returned, we found Andrew deep in conversation with a gentleman who was dressed in the attire of someone who ran a trading post in the 1700s, apparently part of the settlement presentation, as he was wandering around the grounds within the settlement. Apparently they had exhausted the historic conversation and were now talking about the ramifications of the Trump victory. It was really interesting to get the thoughts of a reasonable, rational person on the life and contradictions in American society, including the fact that you could stroll through this beautiful park openly carrying a gun. He said ” Thank you very much!” for sending America the Australian nutter who built his Ark, using, he said, taxpayers money.

He was very proud that his state of Virginia voted for Hillary, but he retained a hope and belief that America would get itself through this period without disaster.

A really lovely morning spent there.

Driving north towards Charlottesville Virginia, Bev suggested that we visit Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. This wasn’t his birthplace, but the residence he resided in later in life. It took him 40 years to complete as it was built in various stages.

He was a man of varied interests, spoke many languages, brought many things home from his extensive time overseas, particularly from France.
He loved mechanical and scientific things – the clock above the entrance hall was an example; a cable with weights ran from the clock along to the left corner and then down towards the floor, this drove the chimes, whilst another cable ran to the right corner to power the clock. The weights on this side, as they descended, passed labelled days of the week, so the clock gave the day and the time. One problem was that the ceiling wasn’t high enough, so only six days were visible, so to allow the weights to keep falling, a hole was cut in the floor and Sunday was in the basement!

Jefferson was a prolific letter writer, and he used a polygraph, which, with a system of levers, mechanically reproduced what he was writing as he wrote. Because of this, historians have an archive of thousands of letters he wrote, and can trace his movements fairly comprehensively.

The house is very well preserved and is set in expansive grounds, although you wouldn’t call it luxurious by any means.

He wrote the Declaration of Independence, declaring that ” all men are created equal”, but he kept slaves to work on his property. He also founded the Univerity of Virginia, as well as being the third President of the United States.

We had dinner that night with Colin and Meg, Colin being the brother of the partner of Bev and Andrew’s daughter Lisa – is that confusing?

11 Nov

Elly wanted to have an early morning to check out Skyline Drive, which is sort of an extension of the Blue Ridge Parkway, in her attempt to find bears, which had eluded us thus far.

I elected to sleep in and do boring things like the washing.

Elly didn’t have any luck with the bears, but I did the laundry very well, if I say so myself.

In the afternoon, after wandering around the local mall for a while, which was a very pleasant scene with only pedestrian traffic, brick paving and trees, I accompanied Elly once more to the Skyline Drive in search of more bears, while Bev and Andrew hung about and took public transport back home when they had had enough.

Elly and I ventured up to the Skyline Drive but we were a little pushed for time. Eventually in a small side picnic area we cruised slowly, when suddenly two Deer ran past us onto a grassy area nearby. It was fairly dark by then, so it was going to be a tough job for Elly. I turned the car headlights onto them while Elly snuck closer to get some photos.

We drove back to meet up with the others for dinner.

12 Nov

We met Ann, Colin and Doug’s mother, who had driven up to meet Bev and Andrew for the first time and had a coffee before Elly and I took the car and headed north, while the others went to stay with Ann for the night.
We travelled through the Skyline Drive, once again on the lookout for the mythical bears, with the usual success rate. Lots of stops along the way looking at the scenery ( and for bears ). We did do a nice walk down to the waterfall at a place called Dark Hollow, which was really lovely.

Finally, we arrived in Washington DC and settled into a really nice Airbnb apartment, and started to orient ourselves to work out how we were going to get to our walking tour the next day.

13 Nov

We chickened out, and instead of the Metro, we Ubered into our meeting spot for the walking tour. Our guide was Ingeborg, a native Washingtonian, who began the tour at the Washington Monument. It was interesting to know that the colour of the stone about half way up changed colour slightly – this marked the spot where construction had stopped for many years, including during the civil war, something that you don’t notice from a distance.

During the next four hours we walked to the World War II Memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Roosevelt Memorial, the Martin Luther King Memorial, and, finally, the Jefferson Memorial.

That was a lot of walking, and we felt that was our exercise for the day. The Americans really do devote a lot of energy and money into their memorials, and it really is impressive.

We then walked another mile or so to find a restaurant our food guru friend Geni had recommended, and had a late lunch.

We then finally faced the Metro system, and with the help of station staff, managed to find our way back home, to find that Bev and Andrew had arrived in the meantime, so we went out and found a local restaurant to finish off the day.

14 Nov

This morning Bev and Andrew headed of for a walking tour, while Elly and I Metro’d to spend the morning and some of the afternoon at the Holocaust Museum, which is an amazing place. The presentations are superb, and the amount of archival material they have is vast. We spent a few hours there – it begins on the fourth floor and works its way down, and then there is a temporary exhibition about collaboration on the lower floor. This must be one of the most impressive Holocaust Centres anywhere in the world outside Israel’s Yad Vashem ( and Elly’s Melbourne Jewish Holocaust Centre!).

In the afternoon we spent a little time in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, which was fabulous. We hooked on to a guided tour covering the Apollo 11 moon voyage, with a mockup of the Lunar Lander right next to us.

We saw enough to know that we had to return the next day to even approach seeing it all.
15 Nov

A relaxed morning, with a Metro ( we know how to work it now) trip back to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I didn’t realise that there are 19 Smithsonian Museums in Washington.
The Air and Space Museum is fabulous; they have every flying machine from the first Wright Brothers to the Lunar Lander.
They have WW I aircraft, WW II aircraft, a DC3, a DC7. Through to a B747 cockpit, A320 cockpit and the Concorde.

Rockets, Lunar Module, Command Module and all the stuff in between.Then back to the Spirit of St Louis, and Amelia Earhart’s own aircraft. And Gary Power’s U2.

We watched an IMAX presentation on the history of the journey to the stars, in 3D, which was brilliant, with lots of high definition footage of shuttle launches and International Space Station operations, along with amazing stuff they are doing in preparation for a manned Mars mission.

Dragging ourselves away from that we decided to visit the International Spy Museum, which is not part of the Smithsonian. This was at Elly’s suggestion, as it has always been an ambition of hers to be a spy!

I have to admit, that although it was quite fun, it was a little lower down the scale of excitement than the Air and Space Museum, and it did feature James Bond rather a lot.

16 Nov

This morning a little culture with a visit to the Capitol Building, which, I have to say is very impressive – all those black SUVs outside made me start looking for men in suits with curly wires coming out of their ears – but I didn’t see any.

We joined up with a guided tour and saw all the publicly accessible places, and heard the history behind all the different rooms. Lots of statues all over the place – apparently each state is allowed to send two statues of their favourite past person, as long as the original person is already dead, and they will be guaranteed a spot, alongside all the other super past people.

The interior was beautiful and ornate

After leaving the Capitol Building we headed across to the White House to give Barack our encouragement for his last days of calling the place ” Home”

We didn’t see him but I am sure he must have seen us, although I’m not sure that was a good thing, if the two guys on the roof with tripods were any indication.

Back to the Mall, which is the ” pathway” from Capitol Hill at one end, and Lincoln Memorial at the other. In that area are theWashington Monument, and all the Memorials I mentioned on the 13 th.

On one of the boundaries of the Mall are the entrances to many of the Smithsonian, and I decided that I would visit the American History Museum, whilst Elly and Bev checked out the African America Museum. Andrew hedged his bets with the American History Museum and one of the sculpture and art museums whose name for the moment escapes me!

After all our Museuming had been done we boarded a bus to do a night Monument tour. The driver was a sassy woman named Sunny, who had a good sense of humour and a never ending tourist spiel.
We had actually seen most of what we saw on this tour, but the night perspective was really impressive. The moon was out as well, so Elly had some fun with the camera and tripod.

17 Nov

Our last day in America, so we thought we would visit the Arlington Cemetery, where JFK and hundreds of thousands more are buried. The graves go right back through the Civil War, and are increasing at the rate of about 30 every day. I felt a little alien as our trolley bus guide was quoting who was buried where, generals and such, almost none of whom I had ever heard.

I have noticed in our travels, particularly in Washington, that the Americans place a great deal of importance in the military, past battles and wars and the “fight to preserve freedom”. Lots of monuments and memorials of all their wars, without any hint that many of them were stuff ups. That, and the ever present security and bag searches wherever you go, even though most of the officials are polite and friendly, made me feel a little claustrophobic.

Having said that, we had a great time in the US and saw lots.

We were all heading for Berlin in the evening, Bev and Andrew via Lufthansa to Frankfurt and Elly and I via WOW Airlines ( I kid you not ) to Iceland. Their flight left Washington’s Dulles airport, and ours left from Baltimore Washington International.
We allowed about an hour to get to the airport, and we both ordered an Uber at the same time. Bev and Andrew’s came, although a little late, and off they went, with us still waiting for ours. He didn’t come – he went to the wrong address! so they cancelled. Elly had to run back to the apartment, try to get on to wi-fi to order another car. This guy eventually came although the car model was wrong, as was the number plate. The driver said he couldn’t take us if these things didn’t match, but we brow beat him into it because by now we were running late.
We set off in what turned out to be the longest traffic jam I have ever seen, we were crawling along at around 20 mph for ever. The driver was trying his best, but we were starting to be really worried. Every freeway we turned onto was a traffic jam in itself. The driver said that it should take an hour usually, or one hour 15 mins tops. This was only 3:15 pm when we started.

Long story short, it took more than 2 and a half hours, and we hurtled into the terminal to the check in desk to be told that they could give us a boarding pass, but we would have to leave our luggage behind, and they wouldn’t keep it overnight or send it the next day! Great solution.

The flight left without us, and we were looking for options, one of which was to go on the next day’s flight – until they told us our fare was forfeit and we would have to buy another ticket.
British Airways was boarding a flight to London which would have done, but would have cost $5000, even so, considering our options, we may have had to take, but the check in girl said that, although they had some no- shows ( no doubt stuck in traffic ), the computer wouldn’t let her sell us those seats! Perhaps a software modification is required there – cost them $5000.
She did say we ought to contact Lufthansa or Turkish Airlines as they would be cheaper, although that would mean driving all the ways back to Washington.

So we tried checking on line. The free wi-fi was useless, so I paid for a faster service, which may have been faster, but didn’t work either! While I was doing battle with that, Elly went to the info desk and rang Turkish airlines, who said they had a flight via Istanbul at 10:55pm and if we could get there by 9:00pm we could buy a ticket, $2000. A lot of money to just lose, but better than $5000.

Now we needed an Uber in a hurry to get us back – but no wi-fi! Dammit! So it was a taxi back to Dulles Airport at more expense to the management – us! This trip was further than the one we did northbound, and took us 40 mins!!

A very expensive and extremely frustrating day, but finally on board to Berlin via Istanbul, arriving late, but arriving.