For fans of the television series Downton Abbey, there’s an awesome exhibition coming to the beautiful Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, which, let’s be honest, is the perfect place for a Downton Abbey exhibit.
Happy 2015! Our guests rang in a relaxing and quiet New Year at the Inn on Mill Creek B&B, and we continue that theme with our Quiet Season B&B getaway special: discounted rates on stays of two nights or more from January through March.
Traveling to the Asheville/Black Mountain, NC, area over the holidays? Here are a few of the restaurants in our neck of the woods that will be open on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
‘Tis the season for Biltmore Estate in Asheville to celebrate Christmas…and do they ever. This year, there are 56 trees decorated for the holidays, including a gorgeously decorated tree in the Banquet Hall that reaches high toward the seven-story barrel-vaulted ceiling.
| The Inn on Mill Creek B&B in late October |
“Peak week” for fall color has arrived in our neck of the woods, between Black Mountain and Old Fort, NC (2,300 feet in elevation). The Inn on Mill Creek B&B is situated two miles inside Pisgah National Forest, and with so many different tree types, we are seeing large bursts of varying color all around!
| Fall colors are beginning to show at the Inn on Mill Creek B&B |
We’re in the second week of the “fall foliage” season here in Western North Carolina near Asheville, and the best color so far remains at high elevations, including peaks along the Blue Ridge Parkway. In particular, we recommend checking out Graveyard Fields, a valley that’s more than 5,000 feet above sea level, surrounded by tree-covered mountains. It’s a neat landscape that’s unique to the area. Graveyard Fields is named for tree stumps that dotted the valley after a devastating storm many, many years ago. The tree stumps are no longer there, but the fields are covered in early-changing shrubs, which you can traverse using boardwalks. The trails, which underwent upgrades this year, are pretty awesome at Graveyard Fields, with a waterfall hike included.
| Exploring the outdoors at Biltmore |
We know that most people who visit Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, can’t wait to go through the 175,000 square-foot, fully furnished and ornate, Downton Abbey-esque house, but we tend to recommend heading outdoors at Biltmore, especially in late summer/early fall.
Last month, we featured one of our sparrows as part of our 12 Months of Birding at the Inn series on the blog in 2014. This month, our sparrow love continues, with our July pick: the Eastern Towhee.
About 20 minutes east of the Inn on Mill Creek B&B is Historic Biltmore Village, a cluster of shops, art galleries and restaurants in what was a planned community of English-style homes built in the 1890s. Biltmore Village is just across the street from the entrance to Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, where George Washington Vanderbilt and his family lived. Mr. Vanderbilt played an integral role in the construction of Biltmore Village, which includes a church – the Cathedral of All Souls – that he had built and where his daughter, Cornelia, was married.
| Song Sparrow at the Inn on Mill Creek B&B |
Summer is here and that means a myriad of songs are brought to us each day by nature here at the Inn on Mill Creek B&B inside Pisgah National Forest: bullfrogs, crickets and of course, birds, to name a few. And you know if something has “song” in its name, you can count on it being part of nature’s summer live concert series. Thus, we’ve given the Song Sparrow our June entry in our 12 Months of Birding at the Inn series on the blog for 2014.
