The Biltmore house was amazing, the weather was perfect, the gardens were beautiful and blooming with lots of spring flowers, and we had a terrific day out of work. I took some pictures, and I’ll try to post at least some of them later.

Here’s a list of things seen and heard during the day:

• Prisoners working on the side of the interstate collecting trash. They were followed by a trailer carrying a porta-potty.
• A song by the band Man Man called “The Ballad of the Butter Beans”
• A hiker walking along I-40 with a backpack; he was 119 miles from Asheville
• A sign for the “Iredell” county-line. I find this name memorable for some reason. I think it is the fusing of the disparate words “Ire” and “Dell” into one word that attracts me.
• More prisoners
• Cows sleeping, or at least lying down, in a dirt field.
• A water tower with a little roof. (I sketched this quickly in my notepad)
• A trailer loaded with canoes
• A sign at exit 133 labeled “Attractions” with no attractions listed, just an empty field of blue
• A girl driving a Prius with a bouquet of yellow flowers sprouting from her dashboard
• Marcella said, “I always like a band that has a xylophone” while listening to some more of Man Man
• A junkyard full of cars on a dirt hillside, the cars were gleaming with dented and smashed chrome
• The Eastern Continental Divide
• Lots and lots of blooming, greening trees
• A great big house with some very cool rooms, such as…

• Library
• Banquet
• Halloween (yes, there is a room they call the Halloween room—awesome)
• Stone hallway in the basement
• Main hallway with the waist high bookshelves filled with cool books and the seemingly endless parade of engravings of people
• Observatory
• Indoor pool

• Many engravings by Albrecht Dürer
• Paintings by John Singer Sargent
• A chess set once owned by Napoleon
• Bicyclists on trails crisscrossing the landscape
• Blue Sky
• Five different wines tasted…

• Pinot Grigio (white)
• Century (white)
• Festival of Flowers (rosé)
• Pinot Noir (red) (my favorite of the five)
• Syrah (red)

• A sign for “Old Fort” which we promptly misread as “Old Fart.” This sign was above another one labeled simply “Bed and Breakfast.” So we giggled for a while about the prospect of staying the night at Old Fart’s B & B.
• An auto dealership amusingly and confusingly named “Rooster Bush”