This week we traveled from up-state New York, to Myrtle Beach, SC on to Asheville, NC and ended in Virginia before heading home. The highlight of this week's trip for me was performing at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. I have visited the estate before but it's beauty never fails to take my breath. After visiting castles in France recently, I have a whole new appreciation for it.

In 1954, the father of our bass guitar player, Jimmy Fulbright, asked his then girlfriend, who is now Jimmy's mother, to go steady while visiting the Biltmore on a class trip. Fifty five years later they are happily married and have four children including Jimmy.

George and Edith Vanderbilt's 250-room family home and country retreat in Asheville, NC was finished and opened to friends on Christmas Eve 1895. There are original art from masters such as Renoir, magnificent 16th-century tapestries, Napoleon's chess set, a library with 10,000 volumes, a Banquet Hall with a 70-foot ceiling, 65 fireplaces, an indoor pool, bowling alley, and priceless antiques. The Biltmore Mansion remains America's largest privately owned home.

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