My Trip to Asheville, NC

This week I went on a mini vacation to Asheville, NC for my Birthday, which is about a 3 to 3 and a half hour drive from where I live. We visited the Biltmore Estate, which is one of America's largest homes and drove down the Blueridge Parkway where we saw the mountains from the overlook and went on a nice hike.






It was fantastic! The house is 4 stories and a basement and you get to take a tour of it. They have all types of tours - rooftop tour, room tour, audio tour, etc. We decided to take the audio tour because it was the cheapest one. The tour itself took about 2 hours or so to do and we had a little headset that told us a detailed descrpiton of every room. It's really neat because you get to see how they lived etc in this huge house and they have excellent views of the mountains from the balconies. There is also a place to eat and a ton of gift shops to visit as well. We tried samples of all kinds of food and drinks in the gift shops and I bought postcards for my mom. After we toured the house we walked down to the gardens and looked at all the pretty plants. There is a greenhouse and all kinds of trails around the gardens. We walked down to the bass pond and saw a cool waterfall. We only had time to visit the house and the gardens, but you can also go to the winery, farm, etc. Overall, it was a really fun day!




The next day we went and drove down the Blueridge Parkway. This is a long stretch of road with overlooks that you can park at and get good views of the mountains. I took a ton of pictures, but I'm only going to put a couple on here. It took us an hour or two to get up to a point where they had some trails. We saw one trail that went to Mount Pisgah. It said it was only a 1.5 mile trail so we decided to hike it. It was easy at first but about half way it kept getting more and more steep. We had to take several breaks, but when we reached the top it was awesome! We stayed up there for a while and took in the view, then headed back down. On the way back down we got drenched! By the time we made it back to the parking lot we were dripping wet and dirty lol. Even though we got rained on like crazy it was still an excellent hike. Just glad to say that I went on a mountain vacation and actually hiked a mountain lol. When we got back home I looked up the trail we went on and found out that it was considered a strenuous hike haha. I'm surprised my boyfriend and I even made it all the way up and back.




We decided to head back home after hiking the mountain and seeing a few other small attractions. Overall it was a good trip. Not too long and not too short, just the right amount of time and money spent to see something you don't normally see every day.