We had chosen Flat Rock because of its proximity to Asheville--a place SheM has been wanting to visit. The area offers quite a few attractions and loads of outdoor recreation options. It would be a really fun place to spend the summer, which is exactly what the early settlers of Charleston did in order to escape the heat and humidity of the coast. There are many of their large homes and estates in the area that date back to the 1800's. During our bus tour of Charleston, the tour guide had mentioned the annual summer migration to the cooler clime of Flat Rock, but we're sure they didn't make the move as early as March like we did. The park was nice, and we had it almost all to ourselves for the first couple of weeks--neighboring RV'ers usually stopping only for the night before moving on elsewhere.
On the last Sunday in March, Spartanburg hosted a kite festival. It was a windy day--great for kites, and a bit chillier than we'd like, but we were ready to get out so we made the trip. An exhibit hall displayed a large collection of kites.
At a neighboring park, families gathered to try their kite-flying skills. We stood for a few minutes watching before deciding that we were just too cold to enjoy it. We found a very good Asian restaurant on Main Street, and enjoyed the scenery as well as the food.
Flat Rock is home to an active theater community. The Flat Rock Playhouse is in its 62nd season. We went to see their production of Laughter on the 23rd Floor, a Neil Simon play, on their opening day. It was well done, and we enjoyed it.
The Flat Rock Playhouse is right across the street from the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, part of the National Park Service. The Historic Site includes the house, the goat farm run by Carl's wife, and the surrounding 264 acres including several hiking trails. There are still resident goats there and they are all descendants of Lilian Sandburg's herds.
Access to the outdoor facilities is free of charge, and its hiking trails are popular with the locals. We took the 3-mile round trip, 653' climb to Glassy Mountain.
The homesite was donated to the Park Service when Sandburg died in 1967. The family stipulated that everything inside the house was to remain just as it was left--nothing to be replaced with furniture, books, dishes, etc, that was not part of their everyday household. The Sandburg's lived very simply and comfortably. The guided tour through the house was reminiscent of a walk through our grandparents' homes, only with a lot more books--Carl's library consisted of over 14,000 volumes.
One of our favorite days was spent hiking in DuPont State Recreational Forest. It is managed by the NC Forest Service. It contains 4 major waterfalls, five lakes, and 82 miles of trails and roads. We enjoyed hiking to 2 of the waterfalls--High Falls and Bridal Veil Falls--and a covered bridge.
Parts of the movies Last of the Mohicans and Hunger Games were filmed in this forest. We are fans of the movie Last of the Mohicans, and could clearly imagine the scenes around Bridal Veil Falls as we sat there eating our PB&J lunch. Interestingly, we had not seen the movie in years but ran across it while channel-surfing a couple of weeks after our visit. Naturally we studied the scenes a bit closer this time. We are sure we saw the spot where we ate our PB&J!
Biltmore Estate was a must-see on our list. We waited as long as we could, hoping to give their famous gardens a chance to bloom as much as possible. On one of the last good-weather days we made the drive. The house was as we imagined--huge and clearly built with wealth.
A horse stable has been transformed into a café where we had lunch.
The gardens were full of blooming spring bulbs.
Pictures are not allowed inside the house, so we can't share anything we saw inside. We can imagine that being a visitor there 'back in the day' would have truly been a treat with the lovely rooms, excellent food and pampering, beautiful views, facilities such as indoor pool, bowling alley, gymnasium. Suffice it to say this was nothing like the Sandburg house.
It's hard to tell where Flat Rock ends and its neighbor Hendersonville begins. Hendersonville has more of the everyday conveniences we've come to depend on--Walmart, Walgreens, etc. It also has a very avid model train organization. The Apple Valley Model RR Club has converted the old railroad depot into a very elaborate interconnected 4-room display of the local historical train system. It's hard to capture it's expanse and level of detail with pictures, but here are a few examples of the display.
Another activity that we didn't want to miss was to take a small hike along the Appalachian Trail. We found an easy access point in the town of Hot Springs, NC and grabbed our backpack. We walked about 3 miles on the trail, climbing about 600'. It was a gorgeous day, and we had a lot of company on the trail. The trail was actually rougher and narrower than we had expected, but nothing that we couldn't handle. We're rather proud of what we old folks are able to do, but we wouldn't want to tackle a long hike with 65 pounds on our backs like many of the young folks we saw along the way. Much better left to the younger set!
We had hoped to make a long drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, but that just didn't happen. We did take a short drive the day before we left, but were quickly faced with a detour due to a closure for roadwork. That will wait for another time.
We said goodbye to the Appalachians, and have moved to the Winston-Salem area. The elevation is lower and it's later on the calendar--both should work in our favor for some nice weather.
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