It’s almost time for the kids to go back to school and I remember getting the same assignment every year – Tell the class about what you did on your summer vacation.

Well, summer’s not over but we did take a week’s vacation and went South. We’d not been south so screw the cost of gas, we went!

First stop was Cass WV at the Cass Scenic Railroad. In case you don’t know, I like trains. real ones, new ones, old ones, model ones. (I also like cars, motorcycles, horses – things that go places). Cass is home to a unique tourist railroad and one of the things you can do is rent a caboose to stay in over night.

I know of a few places that do this, but this is different. It’s, um, rustic. We stayed at Camp Whittaker, an old logging camp just a few miles out of Cass. The directions for camping comes with a warning about bears. See, you’re in the wilds of West Virginia. We were the only people on the entire mountain and when the train left about 3 pm no one was coming back till noon the next day.

No phones, no electric – just stars, darkness and bears. Well, we didn’t see any bears, but we did have a visitor. It started out with Jill waking  me up with “Did you hear that?”  “Um, dear, no, I was sleeping.” After two or three of these she managed to keep me awake with “The noise is coming from INSIDE the caboose!” yeah, that got my attention. Just about every horror movie I’d ever seen started running thru my mind. It turned out to be a field mouse in the trash can but she didn’t fall asleep till dawn anyway.

We then went further south to Asheville, NC to see Biltmore Estate. It’s America’s largest house – and it’s still owned by the Biltmore family although they’re not currently living there. How big is big you ask? 255 rooms big. 43 bathrooms. That’s got extra significance because the place was designed in the 1880’s and indoor plumber was rare.  How big is big? The dining room could hold my house – 3 times on the floor and I could stack a couple of layers too – so it’s more than 6 times the volume of my house! It measures out at 70×40 feet with a ceiling 70 feet high! Of course they don’t allow photos from inside, but here’s a shot of the front facade.

We also toured the farm and winery. It was my first visit to a winery and wine tasting. I know more than I did about wine, but I need my cheat sheet to remember any of it! Jill didn’t buy any souvenirs. She refused to buy any souvenirs ‘made in china’ so we didn’t get much from the trip but a few fridge magnets and a bottle of wine. The wine was made in the US but we’re not sure about the magnets.

We spent a few days camping and of course had to visit McDonalds – the fanciest Mickey D’s is right outside the Biltmore’s front gate. Same prices as any other one we’ve been to.

On the way back we visited Natural Bridge Virginia, a cave and an animal safari park. I was kissed by a camel and bitten by an ostrich. The bridge is cool. One has to ask what’s on top? Umm..the hiway you came in on was the answer. I guess it’s pretty solid then.  Evie didn’t like the cave too much but she didn’t run screaming out of the place either. Jill loved the safari park the most. It was like huge petting zoo.

And the last thing we saw was Skyline Drive Va. and Shenandoah National Park. They don’t call them the Blue Ridge Mountains for nothing!

Coming home was fun. We arrived in our driveway at about 10 at night to find no power. There had been a nasty storm earlier in the evening and power didn’t return til nnearly 3 am. It was just like on Cheat Mountain in WV – dark and quiet. We arose the next morning to find a tree had taken out the internet to the house, some of the house had blown off, and it just kept raining and raining and the already too long grass was growing and growing. It was tempting to turn around and leave – we were still packed and all…

Lots of wonderful memories from the trip.