Brenda and Harlan's Trip Blog

Brenda was not feeling great this morning, so we got a later than expected start. We spent the entire afternoon at Biltmore, and decided to spend another night here so we could see Chimney whatever tomorrow.

Biltmore is an interesting place – we think we understand where Microsoft learned its pricing policies. The entrance fee was only $39 apiece, and the cafe sold a ham and cheese sandwich for about $11. If we would have signed up for the tours that sounded interesting we could have probably gotten out of there for under $500. After we spent nearly 4 hours touring the main house we stopped off for a snack and Brenda had a cup of soup and something simple to drink and it was under $10 before the tip. Harlan almost bought a burger but wouldn’t pay $12 for something that had to be cooked at least medium-well.

After “lunch” we tried to tour the garden and conservatory, but the garden was dead and the conservatory had enough mold growing everywhere that neither of use could stand it. We also drove by the winery thinking maybe we should take them up on their free wine tasting coupon (a glass of wine with lunch costs $7) but we just couldn’t muster the needed energy.

We left the estate, filled the beast with gas again (what an appetite!), then headed to the grocery store for water and fruit.

Dinner was at the Little Pigs. Great hushpuppies, and their pulled pork, ribs, and chicken are OK too.

Back at the hotel, we watched TV and did more work on the photo album (thanks for the comments, Eddie and Gary!).

We woke up and headed for the massage sessions. Brenda’s was first, and during the 30 minutes before Harlan’s session started he visited a photography supply store for some archival sheets to hold the exposed film and slides. After the massages (Brenda’s worker seemed to be sick and didn’t do a great job), we headed over to the museums at Pack Square. Brenda just didn’t like most of the stuff in the Art museum, except for a maquette oil on wood and the photo of Christine on the second floor. She thought that everything at the (free) high school student art exhibit was better than most everything else in the art museum.

We next visited the gem and dinosaur museum in the basement. Neat stuff!

Then, off to lunch at the “Noodle Bowl”, and then back to the museums for the Health Adventure museum. It was cool – it was designed for little kids. Harlan left about 2:45 for his Bowen appointment, and Brenda stayed to visit more of the museums and do some shopping.

Returning to the hotel, Brenda got a foot and leg massage from Harlan and she took a nap. We ate dinner at the Psomething 620, which was pretty good except for the Tiramisu which was too sweet.

Back at the hotel, we did a bunch of work on the picture gallery – at least they are uploaded now, but we have to reorganize 3 albums so their pictures end up in the right places.

Tomorrow we plan to visit Biltmore and Chimney Rock (or something), and then head to Pinehurst. There’s a chance we may not get all the way to Pinehurst tomorrow – it depends on how long we take with the other visits. But we are looking forward to seeing Brenda’s parents in Pinehurst!

We woke up in the new timezone and moved Slow. We can use a rest day soon.

We were out of the hotel around noon and started the drive to Asheville. Stopped for breakfast at a WaffleHouse. It was a cloudy day, and we probably checked in to the hotel around 3pm.

From there we headed over to the Botanical Garden for a walk, and then we located the Museums in the center of town (which were closed as it was Monday). We did stop in at the local massage school and signed up for sessions with students in the morning. We also shared ice cream from the Marble Slab, and let’s just say that sometimes Harlan has more difficulty with dairy than others. We did a bit more walking and shopping around the downtown area.

We went back to the hotel for a bit, Harlan discovered a Bowen practitioner in the area and left a call (Bowen Technique has a really good rotator-cuff procedure and that would be Useful for Harlan) then headed out again to visit the Malaprop(?) bookstore that Gary suggested. Very unusual bookstore that we enjoyed very much. We bought a book and a magnet. From there we came back to the hotel, and on the way to the Texas Roadhouse (Brenda really likes their chili and the cinnamon honey butter with their rolls) Harlan got a return phone call and a Bowen session was set up for Tuesday around 3pm.

Dinner was tasty, and the waitress had interesting things to talk about with us (she came over from Bosnia when she was 12, and she just graduated from college).

The pictures are still waiting to be uploaded, and as we need to be up relatively early tomorrow and we still haven’t adjusted to Eastern Time that will have to wait a bit longer.

We were up and out of the house by 10pm. We went to the WaffleHouse near the airport, and had the sort of food Harlan expected. Brenda “got” the experience and now knows that we can go to any WaffleHouse at any time of the day or night and get pretty much the same thing.

We left St.Louis before noon, and headed off to the Blue Springs Cafe, open daily from 11am to 9pm on Interstate 70 at exit 30, in Highland IL (with free WiFi access) for a piece of their “foot high pie” (we didn’t have lunch there as we just finished eating breakfast). Harlan ordered the coconut cream pie (which was just a bit too sweet for him) and Brenda ordered a cup of coffee which got a sip and was pronounced undrinkable.

The weather was a bit rainy, but we headed toward Asheville nonetheless.

Harlan pointed out some inventive landmarks as we drove past the Nashville skyline (the most notable being the National Hall of Grits). It started raining, and we decided to stop at Newport TN for the night, just outside of Asheville.

We have crossed into Eastern Time, so Harlan is gonna try and get an early start relative to Central time in the morning.

It’s getting tougher to find inexpensive restaurants that use real butter.

Brenda has noticed that “We are in the SOUTH!”

We left Dave’s house around noon and headed over to Llewellyn’s Pub for lunch. We learned that unlike O’Connells, the food had changed and was not what Harlan remembered (although they now have Double Dragon on tap, and that tasted the same). Specifically, “Mrs. Llewellyn’s Chicken Sandwich” was slightly renamed, and the fried onion strings are now breaded and not as crisp, they don’t make their chips to order anymore (they make them in larger batches and “do something” to them when they need to be served). Sigh.

After lunch we strolled around the neighborhood, visiting Dressel’s Pub (where we learned that the awesome grilled pork sandwich was off the menu except as a rare special item, and sometimes for early lunch on Wednesday as the Tuesday night special is pork loin).

We also visited Left Bank Books, which does not have the Pinkwater collection it used to have (although Harlan found a used copy of “Wallpaper from Space” to add to his collection).

Form there we gassed the car and headed over to Ted Drewes, which was closed for the season. So it was on to the site of Triple H farms to see if they were still selling their frozen custard. Alas, their small shopping center was still there, but both their butcher store and the neighboring frozen custard store have been gone for at least 5 years or so (we learned this from the folks at BJ’s Crystal Rock shop, which has been there for over 25 years).

Heading back north we picked up the developed slides and went back to Dave’s place, expecting Dave to be off to the theatre. Unfortunately, he was feeling a bit under the weather and stayed home. We chatted and were forced to order more food from Mai Lee, which meant we got to try another of their excellent soups, along with shrimp wrapped around sugar cane (and then grilled) and their crispy whole fish (I believe we had the Tilapia). Major yum.

More chats, then folks started falling asleep.

In the morning we plan to have breakfast at a Waffle House, then come back and pack up the car and head out. If we’re lucky, we’ll find the mile high pie place just outside of town and then head toward Nashville.

Oh, we have the slides uploaded and almost ready to be posted; Harlan wants to see if he can get the film type added to the picture information so it’s easier to figure out what type of film to use in the future.

We woke up and planned the day. We first went to Creve Coeur Camera because they can develop slide film and scan it to a CD at about the same resolution as the folks who did the print film. The stuff should be ready on Saturday by 2pm.

Next it was off to lunch, O’Connells Pub. Harlan forgot the place allowed smoking, and it was pretty tough. We ordered the food and ate most of it, wrapping the remainder. Harlan suspects Brenda would have been happier and more impressed if the place had been smoke-free. (Harlan would have preferred this too, but the food was just as he remembered). Great hamburger, they didn’t bat an eye when he ordered it rare. Brenda was impressed by the size of the roast beef sandwich, but she thought it was a little bit tough (but she did order it medium/meduim well).

Brenda says it was also a learning experience – if she ever smells smoking in a restaurant in the future she plans to simply turn around and leave.

Next on the list was Whole Foods, which seriously impressed Brenda – she said it was the best grocery store she had ever been in, and was much better than the other Whole Foods stores she has visited.

From there we went to the post office to mail in the 80 cents to the Illinois Tollway folks (sigh – boring story), and from there we went off to find a place to replace the battery in Brenda’s watch.

Then back to Dave’s so Brenda could take a bath and have a nap.

Dinner was at Mai Lee’s, where we had great soup, spring rolls, roast chicken, and grilled beef, shrimp, and squid. We did not have the appetites to order crispy whole fish or the shrimp and sugar cane. As Brenda really wants to leave on Sunday, we’ll have to see what restaurants we can fit in tomorrow. We’ll probably pass on Dressel’s, as they have apparently taken the grilled pork sandwich off the menu (and Dave says folks smoke in there, too). This means lunch tomorrow will probably be at Llewellyn’s, followed by the picking up of the photos.

We spent the evening chatting again, perhaps tomorrow night we’ll rent “Team America, World Police” (assuming it is available).

That’s all I can remember at the moment…

We left Harlan’s parents’ place about 3:30 in the afternoon, and were out of Chicago about an hour later. 30 minutes after that the traffic had improved to the point where we could go the speed limit.

We made it to St. Louis just before 9pm, and went to dinner with Dave, a friend of Harlan’s from grad school. Good Chinese place, LuLu’s (near as we can remember).

After dinner we went back do Dave’s (he’s both putting up with us and putting us up) for conversation, the tour of his newly remodeled house, and getting acquainted with his cats.

Dave is quite a photographer – Harlan is hoping to learn something.

That’s about all we can remember at the moment, as it’s been a bit of a long day and it’s after 1am at the moment. If we remember more tomorrow we’ll update this note.

We tried a new way to make the oatmeal this morning. Better…

The plumber arrived and spent the afternoon fixing things in the kitchen and all 3 bathrooms. Harlan made a quick run to Home Depot for some parts.

Nancy was expected at 7:30 tonight, and at 6:30 we called the airline and learned the flight was expected to be about a half-hour early. We got in the car and Brenda was dropped off at the local Borders to do some reading. The trip to the airport was quicker than expected, and we were probably back at the house a little after 8.

Leftovers for dinner, then conversation.

Neither Brenda nor Harlan was real tired (we’re both still up and it’s after 1:30am now), but we are planning to wake up around 9am and be on our way to St. Louis before noon.

Harlan wants to see if a film developer in Chicago can develop the slides and scan them in to a CD – if they can we’ll drop the stuff off and they can mail the results to us. If Harlan is lucky he will remember to buy more Salerno Butter (flavored) cookies before leaving.

We woke up around 10 today to have enough time to cook steel-cut oatmeal for Harlan’s Dad, who was expected to be up by 10:30 and ready for breakfast around 11:30. He slept in, however. When we did wake up we started the oatmeal, and while we were told it should only need to cook on the stove for about 30 minutes’ time, after an hour we just gave up and went with it. It certainly has more interesting texture than quick oats, and while Harlan and Brenda definitely preferred it, and Harlan’s Mom said it was good, it was clear that Harlan’s Dad prefers the stuff he’s used to.

We otherwise ran some errands and took care of stuff (scheduled the plumber to come out and check some faucets and stuff, oil change for the car, post office stuff for Brenda, and the rebate for Harlan’s new cell phone). We picked up a snack at the Woodfire Chicken place and headed home.

Oh, the new airbed+pad thing worked out pretty well (certainly much better than the mattress on the sofabed).

We both woke up around 3am – a combination of being a bit cold and the mattress of many contours. The good news is that we fell asleep again until after 10. There was unanimous consent to spend a part of the day finding a better sleep surface.

Other mundane tasks were also explored – the features and costs of Harlan’s parents’ phone service, what Comcast offers for internet access, where we might get some slide film developed, and where we could get some phone books from the current century (OK, that was a slight exaggeration, but it sounds better than the even more boring truth).

Brenda had a hankerin’ for a good grilled polish sausage from Stash’s Restaurant so we went there first. Next we picked up a newer phone book for a nearby city, then we went to Bed Bath and Beyond for a thick quilted bed pad. Of course, the day would not have been complete without a trip to the grocery store for some snacks and steel-cut oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow.

Harlan’s sister Nancy was due to arrive tonight from her vacation in Austin, but United said the plane would be delayed for at least 3-4 hours. Being no fool, she took this as a sign to extend her vacation until Wednesday. This, of course, means that the pork loin cooked for tonight will be eaten tomorrow instead of being served to Nancy.

Tonight was freezer pizza, some Birdseye green beans with spaetzle, two of the Moose Drool brown ales from the stock we are bringing to Tom (with his permisison, of course, as Harlan’s Dad wanted some beer with dinner and this saved us another trip to the store).

We spent the evening with Mom and Dad, looking at some of the pictures we’ve taken.