North Carolina

I have dreamed of living in North Carolina for the last nine years. It all started when my family took a trip back East. Maryland was the furthest South that we visited but I decided that I loved all of the green trees and wanted to live on the East Coast. I looked at a map and chose North Carolina as my dream location. Why North Carolina...I liked the name. So for the last nine years I have dreamed of living in in North Carolina. I have had North Carolina on my watch list for Travelocity and Southwest and have toyed with the thought of moving away from Utah several times. Well on July 30th all my dreams came true. After visiting the Smoky Mountains Seth and I drove down to Asheville. We arrived in the late afternoon so we took in a movie (Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio) and stopped at a pizza place for dinner.

On July 31st we visited the Biltmore Estate. The estate was built by George Vanderbilt and completed in 1895. It is the largest residence in the United States. We took an audio tour of the house and enjoyed the gardens. This place was amazing. I have been to Versaille in France and was much more impressed by the Biltmore. George Vanderbilt apparently spent half of his fortune to build the estate. It is truly remarkable. If you come to visit….I will probably take you there.

Here the happy couple is in front of the Biltmore Estate.
Seth volunteered to take a photo of me in front of the Biltmore.

He quickly discovered his new favorite game of "keep the camera away from Suzanne." I will spare you all the photos he took. I am quite positive that he will keep me laughing everyday.

He also volunteered to take a photo of me in front the Lion just outside the front doors. The night before we had looked through the pictures of our trip and he realized most of the pictures were of him.


These pictures are from the back porch. The views were spectacular. I'm not sure it looked quite this way when the Vanderbilt's lived in the home. They planted most of the trees on the Estate.



The picture below is outside the Grand staircase tower. There were doors on each level...I suppose to allow servants to keep the windows clean. I wish we could have taken pictures inside...but it was not allowed.

Inside of this room the Vanderbilt's only child Cornelia was born. She gave birth to her two sons in the same room.


The gardens were exquisite. If only Darcy would have hopped out of the pond.




At this point it started to rain. I thought it was romantic...at least until it started pouring.





We thought the trees below were quite interesting. They had shaped a pear and apple tree into this shape. Who knew you could do such a thing.


We arrived back at the car drenched.

Then we had a picnic in the car.