A few weeks back I saw an opportunity to purchase a yearlong pass to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., for just a little more than a single-visit ticket.
As a result, I bought one for me and one for my wife, Laura.
I have visited Biltmore probably eight to 10 times since not long after I graduated from college in 1983. And each time, I have enjoyed seeing the lavish home, which has been the largest private residence in the United States since it was built in 1895 for steamship and railroad company heir George W. Vanderbilt.
I have also been mesmerized by the hundreds of acres of woods, fields, and gardens surrounding the home, most of which I have just hurriedly driven past during previous visits.
So my goal with the pass is to visit the world’s largest home several times over the next 12 months during the various seasons, and also stop and walk around some of the scenic and pristine places on the estate grounds I have not examined closely in the past.
I hope to get a little more of a feel for what it might have been like to be a Vanderbilt, even though getting to enjoy tea with the descendants and current estate owners, the William Cecil family, is apparently not covered in my season pass.
I also plan to chronicle my experiences, beginning with my first visit using the pass this past Thursday.
We were in the Western North Carolina area, so we decided to visit Biltmore as we were getting ready to head back home.
My goal was for us to arrive around 8:30 or 9 a.m. before the crowd or heat, and be sitting down to eat lunch next to the home when many of the others began arriving.
Well, guess what? We were pulling into the handsome ticket building well inside the estate grounds close to 11 a.m., just a little later than expected. And by then, we were not alone.
The Biltmore Estate does plenty of advertising, so crowds do come. However, the home and grounds are so pleasing to the eyes that the other people gathered around you are not as noticeable or as distracting as at some crowded places.
And there is plenty of room to wander and escape others.
With only a limited number of hours to devote to this trip, we decided to focus mainly on the house and gardens immediately surrounding it.
We pulled into one of the several parking lots hidden away in the woods surrounding the front lawn, and I started thinking how Biltmore had grown in support facilities in the 30 years since I first visited.
For example, you purchased your ticket in the buildings out by the front gate in the old days, you could park almost in front of the home, and no massive hotel on the grounds existed, among other changes.
However, the timelessness and European manor feel of Biltmore remain just as when I first saw the place.
After taking a shuttle van, we went in the house and began looking at and admiring once again all the big rooms on the first floor. I tried to imagine what it would be like to have that massive structure as your own home.
Unfortunately, photography is not allowed inside the home, but maybe that is good, as I would have probably become carried away trying to take pictures.
Even though it had been more than three years since I last visited Biltmore, I started looking for subtle adornments and features in the house I had not noticed before.
We then went up into the upper floors, taking yet another different route through the rooms than before, and then toured the basement areas that included a two-lane bowling alley, a swimming pool, and servants’ living and working areas.
When I first visited Biltmore in 1983, I had become interested in the Lyndhurst mansion of Coca-Cola bottler J.T. Lupton in Riverview and knew that it also had a bowling alley. So I envisioned I was at the now-razed Lyndhurst when I saw it.
The Biltmore home apparently is not air conditioned, but it did not seem overly hot behind the thick walls. Windows were open, and fans were running.
Lunchtime had arrived by the time we finished walking around the home for slightly more than an hour, so we wandered over to the food areas in what was the old horse stable building on one side of the home.
After briefly pondering sitting down in the café, we went and ordered at a walk-up restaurant, similar in offerings to a Panera, although pizza was also sold. I had a delicious bowl of tomato basil soup and an equally tasty chicken salad sandwich.
Despite eating outside in the warm courtyard area, I found the soup still quite enjoyable.
The price of the items was a little more than a typical Panera, but that seems to be the case at all places where finding a dining alternative is basically impossible.
Because of the crowd, it was hard finding a table in the shade, but we did find a picnic style table.
While all the numerous Biltmore employees seemed almost as friendly as those at Chick-fil-A, they did not seem to have anyone wiping the picnic tables, and that was my only complaint.
With the heat and a potential afternoon thunderstorm approaching, what was also planned as a walk among the gardens ended up being a trip to the ice cream store for me instead after taking a few pictures of the outside of the home.
Instead of smelling the flowers, I ended up tasting the flour in the form of a waffle cone topped with a big helping of the praline pecan flavor of ice cream. I enjoyed it as we found an even shadier spot to sit in the entrance hall into the various souvenir shops within the former stable building.
While Laura and I decided we would probably visit some of the other places on the Biltmore Estate grounds rather than the house during our next visit because of our familiarity with the structure -- despite its 250 rooms – I plan to visit the area around the home each time.
The reason, of course, is the Biltmore Dairy ice cream.
Like the Vanderbilts, it is quite rich.
Jcshearer2@comcast.net