Off the Mountain Top

After the baptism and a day of family time, we packed it up and headed out to Maggie Valley, NC to visit with friends.  The plan was that the guys would go “Mountain Golfing” and the gals would go to Biltmore Estates for the day.  We found a little RV Park on the Pigeon River.  This park was quiant with about 10-15 sites and only 4 or 5 RV’s in the park.  When we arrived, I walked across the little driveway to the river where I saw a fly fisherman plying his craft pursuing rainbow trout.  What a welcome that was.

Mountain Golf, how hard could that be?  I wasn’t really sure what it was, but assumed all that meant was golfing at a higher elevation.  Yikes, was I wrong!   We showed up at the Smoky Mountain Country Club to find a golf course built on a mountain.  Imagine teeing off from a mountain top with the green below in the valley.  How can I calculate that yardage.  That’s the way the day went, up and down in golfcarts that I’m sure have a useable life of maybe one season.  I scored the worst in our foursome with a 104 and honestly, I was happy to have scored that well.

That evening we sat with our friends and talked about the unbelievable views and impossible  golf shots while listening to the ladies expound on the excesses of life for the Vanderbilt family.  The Biltmore Estate is set on 8000 acres of beautiful gardens, winery, an amazingly extravagent 250-room French Renaissance chateau built in 1889.