If I were to tell you that Mount Mitchell is the highest point in the eastern United states, you would suck your breath in, in appreciation of the enormity of the lump of rock rising up out of the Appalachian mountains of western North Carolina. Were I foolish enough to show you a picture of said mountain from the front lawn of my in-laws cabin in Celo, North Carolina you might wonder what I was talking about.
The unhappy fact is that the Highest Point in the Eastern United States is a mere 6,684 feet above sea level, and I once rode my old Vespa 200 to withing a whisker of ten thousand feet in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. And there were many trails for me to explore on foot from there. I took this next picture while standing next to my Nissan in a vast spacious empty parking lot two days before Christmas, 2008.
Despite it's lack of elevation in absolute terms, and despite the childish simplicity of it's approaches Mount Mitchell is a lovely place. Or it would be were the temperature not hovering around 15 degrees Fahrenheit with the winds howling lank banshees across the exposed summit...
Mount Mitchell is well sign posted because it is the major attraction after all and as far as getting there goes we headed up the valley of State Highway 80 from Burnsville:
Until we reached the stone bridge, characteristic crossing points of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a federal depression era public work that winds across the mountains as far north as Virginia I believe.In any event we were somewhere around Mile Marker 480 around here just north of Asheville:
The parkway is a delightful drive limited supposedly to forty five miles per hour lined with views right and left and requiring no more speed than that if sightseeing is what you are there to do. Speeding on a motorcycle would be delightful given the right time of year of course...
But even at a modest 3500 feet, or so, this clearly wasn't the right place to ride a motorcycle at this time of year, for someone who usually only sees ice in his drinks:
The road surface was mostly dry and clean so we rolled along without a worry. And we stopped to try to capture the views, though I have to say their beauty goes far beyond what I could capture:
The parkway was closed right at the entrance to Mount Mitchell making an approach directly from Asheville impossible but we turned up the state highway towards the park with no problems at all. The road winds up between pine forests, stunted by the elevation and lack of soil...
...past the ranger station...
...to the vast spacious empty parking lot at the top:
I left my wife in the car and took off for the last 980 feet to the top, along a brand new paved highway that faintly resembled a path hacked through the pine trees lining the way:
There were non-accessible (to wheel chairs) trails off to the sides from this main highway, as I hiked my solitary way up:
To the top itself finally:
Apparently the old concrete tower much beloved by my brother-in-law has been replaced by a much more stylish accessible round observation platform flanked by the grave of Elisha Mitchell, the North Carolina University professor who suffered a fatal accident on the mountain negotiating a waterfall. He was 64 and completing some scientific study of the mountain, the year was 1857, he died. His remains are in the tomb like contraption alongside the observation platform, which was marked with a compass rose and benches to sit upon:
Temperatures at the summit were horrendous as a strong south wind was blowing and the benign 25 degree (f) temperatures in the parking lot below were as nothing compared to the Arctic gale howling around the top of the mountain. I managed not to fumble my camera over the side and took some pictures of the superb views, surprisingly not covered in Siberian snow:
That last one is obviously of the road up and the ranger station a little dot along the way. I hurried my way back down into the lee of the pine woods and took a moment to catch my breath and observe another weird thing. Not the ice though heaven knows there was lots of that:
No, the weird thing I saw was little round PVC pipe headers sticking up out of the ground and then when I saw this on the way down I had to wonder what the Asheville water department was doing all the way up here:
Happily for me the heated Maxima was in the parking lot with my patient wife inside. her arthritis doesn't agree at all with this weather, even less than i do, and I was glad she had chosen to wait inside, alone in the giant parking lot:
On a previous visit to Asheville many years ago in our previous Maxima I had taken a detour and we had gone for a tour of the very western tip of North Carolina through the mountains. That was the time I forgot to use the automatic gearbox to maximum effect and we had suffered a nasty case of burning brake pad syndrome. This time as we descended the mountain I prudently put the gearbox into second and we descended at a stately 29 mph without touching the brakes:
And so we descended back to reality, one hairpin at a time and left behind the magnificent views to a few stray cars coming up behind us. I wondered if this might be the outcrop known bluntly on the topo maps as "Celo Knob":
Temperatures were rising: I started to imagine I might survive the awful cold.
It has always struck me as very old fashioned to stop at a Florida roadside stand and buy citrus fruit. Why bother to haul Florida grapefruit 1500 miles in the 
We left 
"We should stop," I said. "No," she said. "We'll stop at the next one we see." But I knew better so we pulled a (legal) U-turn and headed in. In to the stupid old fashioned citrus stand that has been 
It was a blast actually. We bought two bags of grapefruit for five bucks and for another five we got a bag of tangerines, all piled up and ready to go:
I'm pretty sure if you shop a lot you wouldn't be surprised by the interior of the store, cookies, jams, 
I wasn't about to be seen walking around in one but I took a quick picture to remind myself where I was:
And the old fashioned truck might look cute but orange processing has apparently moved along a bit with the times:
When I lived in Fort Myers almost twenty years ago (oops!) I used to ride across the state to visit a friend in Palm Beach and a half hour out in the country I would ride towards 
Take that you ski fanatics hoping for snow and ice this Christmas Day. Put me in an orange grove when the fruit are ripening and I will be happy.
We got back in the car clutching a quart (liter) of sweet fresh orange juice snagged for just three bucks and set off again down the highway.
That was definitely not my last stop at an orange shop on a Florida highway. But next time I'm going without my wife because I have a feeling an orange flavored chocolate something might taste good while on the seat of a Bonneville. It's worth remembering too, not a hundred years ago, oranges were so rare and 
Except perhaps not so much around Christmas time as the crowds are monstrous, and we got a taste of the crowding on the long drive in, past the carriage house photographed above:
Inside the massive mansion we got lost and separated all eight of us (including two infants) so we paused to regroup, and as we paused we realised the house was packed, people were streaming through in an endless crocodile of gawping visitors, bundled up against the frigid air outside:
And barely warmer inside the cool, somewhat heated interior of the Vanderbilt mansion. Which as they were celebrating Christmas like everybody else in Asheville, was decorated for the season:
And in the sun room just inside the entrance three hardy women sat at the piano and tinkled bravely away at Tchaikovsky as the Arctic blasts blew through the entranceway crowded with visitors filing slowly inside. I tell you, Charles Dickens wasn't in it, it was all pure nostalgia and quite wonderful :
The Vanderbilt mansion outside Asheville is a national landmark, like the Vizcaya Mansion I wrote up earlier on a visit to Miami. It has all the miles of corridors and rooms and crazy luxuries of the golden ages of decades past. It also has a website of it's own for those interested in hunting down facts and figures; goggle it and rejoice in what you find. Ours was a family visit, and pretty soon we found we had come at the wrong time of year, it was just too crowded:
The Biltmore House was supposed to exist as a working farm and it is still surrounded by acres of land. It is a major employer in Asheville, and it produces all manner of food products, not least wine:
The Mansion is the centerpiece of course with its heavy dark furniture, it's medieval tapestries, paintings and carvings.It brings a piece of Old Europe, to the wild rugged mountains of western North Carolina. Call it a civilizing influence, which wouldn't be exactly true, but the wealthy of years past wanted to take the fresh mountain air in the summer as much as the masses did. It is our good fortune the spires and towers are now open to all:
This immense block of granite is plunked down in the middle of the mountains with incredible views in all directions:
Inside, where photography is forbidden apparently there are miles of rooms worth viewing. We, the experienced visitors, decided to skip the formal tour and made a beeline for the basement where we figured only the hardiest visitors would penetrate after circling the drawing rooms and bedrooms in the floors above.
The basement is a world apart, long corridors lined with laundry rooms and sewing rooms, a bakery, a machine room with an electrical generator and a steam room with a heating plant. there's a two lane bowling alley and a magnificent tile lined swimming pool (empty) complete with diving platforms and submerged lights. And there are larders with meat, vegetables and fruit and cheese, bottling rooms and you name it, the farm provided it. And then there is my favorite room, the kitchen, a vast spacious room with a separate grill room and magnificent views out across the valley:
And there are the grounds which don't look at their best in my opinion on a twelve degree winter day be it ever so sunny:
What the flock of geese did on these wild cold nights I can't imagine. What we did was to leave the cafe area after a quick wine and chocolate tasting and a couple of purchases in the huge gift shop area (two bottles of Biltmore red actually). The crowds made it impossible to enjoy the Bistro which I had been looking forward to, farm produce in the Biltmore restaurant, but there we were. We went into Asheville instead to get cold and see the city, another essay entirely of course.
If you are in Asheville or riding this section of the Blue Ridge Parkway don't miss the Biltmore Mansion. I was frozen but still glad I went:
My joy is hard to discern I know. To those lighting candles, like my in-laws, Shalom...
