Till paths be wrought through wilds of thought

Note: I returned Sunday afternoon from the NSDAR 2010 Schools Tour. I blogged daily about the trip on the KSDAR website, and decided to cross-post them here, too, just in case any non-KSDAR folks were interested in hearing about the trip. Read all of the posts in chronological order here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here!

Day Nine, October 16, 2010--The Biltmore Estate

Greetings!

The school visits part of our tour has come to an end, but our tour chairmen planned a day of fun for us on our trek back to Washington, D.C. with a stop at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina.

We started our day in Clemson, South Carolina, and settled into our bus ride with many questions about the schools we visited this week. Luckily, the President General, National Schools Chairman, and a representative from the Development Office were all on our bus for the second half of the tour, so we were able to ask our questions in a great forum! The Schools Chair was a particularly good sport, as we grilled her on everything from funding to paint!

We arrived at the Biltmore just before lunch and proceeded to the Deerpark Inn on the grounds for a wonderful buffet meal, complete with bread pudding for dessert. Our Kentucky VPG and I noted that it could only be improved with some good Kentucky Bourbon sauce!

We then took the next two hours to tour the main house, which was a treat for me, as I have never been there. The staff started decorating for Christmas last week, so we were able to see those decorations in a few of the rooms. The house will be in full Christmas décor between early November and early January for holiday tours.

After we left the Biltmore, we enjoyed driving through more of North Carolina and a brief visit to Tennessee and then Virginia, where we have stopped in Bristol for the evening. The trees in this part of the world have really started to put on their autumn show and we found ourselves exclaiming at their beauty as we climbed back into the mountains. After a wonderful dinner provided by the hotel, I got in a quick exercise session with the other “Healthy Heart DARlings” and am ready to call it a night! Home tomorrow!!

Title: America, the Beautiful