Back on the road and into the mountains! North Carolina has a wide range of elevations, from sea level on the coast to 2,037m (6,684 feet) at Mount Mitchell - the highest point in the Eastern US and in the general direction we were heading.

This here is Becky, Kristina's father's cousin, making her Kristina's first cousin once removed (I think that's right).

And this is Becky and her husband's amazing house perched way up in the hills overlooking...

...the city of Asheville way down below. Asheville is the largest city in Western North Carolina (the state's mountain region) with a population of around 85,000 and is nestled between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Great Smoky Mountains - both part of the larger Appalachian Mountains range. One of its claims to fame is as the home of the United States National Climatic Data Center - the world's largest active archive of weather data. Its other claim to fame is its unique architecture for which it is nationally renowned, especially here in its downtown. The city suffered greatly during the Great Depression, and consequently little development happened during that time. As such, the city's famous Art Deco Architecture of that era was saved from destruction, and today Asheville boasts the nation's most complete collection of Art Deco structures.

It also has a lot of random shops selling random little thing from belt buckles...

...to wigs...

...and even the Queen.

Asheville is a popular tourist destination and is known as a liberal, artsy community.

There are also a lot of buskers here, which kind of ties in with the artsy feel of the city.

And that's pretty much little Asheville in a nutshell which, like Charlotte, has seen a lot of change in recent times. It was Monday today and the place seemed fairly tame, but come the weekend it really goes nuts apparently as weekend trippers and drunken youths descend on it.

This guy stumbled past me ranting and raving to nobody in particular, but seemed to stop when he noticed me taking his photo here hehe. Never a shortage of crazies.

Asheville apparently prides itself on having no chain restaurants in its downtown. No Maccas, no Starbucks, nothing. Except this. When Subway opened its doors here a short while back there was an almighty furore by the locals hahaha, but it's still here.

And feed our heads we did.

Remember what I said before about hoping to own a big house with a big porch (and/or Porsche) some day? Well I've changed my mind. This is the almighty Biltmore Estate just outside of Asheville. The Vanderbilt family amassed a huge fortune through steamboats, railroads, and various business enterprises during the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 1880s, Geroge Vanderbilt began to make regular visits with his mother to the Asheville area and fell in love with the place, so much so that he decided to create his own summer estate in the area which he called his "little mountain escape" - and this is it.

Today the estate covers some 8,000 acres (32 square kilometres) and it is stunning! When Vanderbilt was done buying land however, it covered a whopping 125,000 acres (about 500 square kilometres). Imagine having this as your back yard.

The house is the largest privately-owned home in the US at 175,000 square feet and featuring 250 rooms. It was constructed between 1889 and 1895, and is still owned by one of Vanderbilt's descendants. George Vanderbilt himself died in 1914 at the age of just 51, after which George's widow sold much of the land. Family members continued to live in the house until 1956 when it was permanently opened to the public as a house museum, and it remains a major tourist attraction to this day.

We toured the house but photography was forbidden, which sucks but is not surprising. Camera flashes cause surfaces to fade over time, and although I'm perfectly capable of not using my flash, most folk with their little point-and-shoots aren't and hence all photography is simply banned. I don't think that's ever stopped me before though hahaha!

This is a little atrium as you walk through the (massive) front doors.

And this is the banquet hall with its seven-storey-high ceiling and tapestries from the 1500s - bloody hell! The things you can do with money huh.

George and his wife would regularly host family and friends at the estate including English royalty and American presidents, and there was no shortage of entertainment for them both in the house itself and around the estate.

After checking out the music room, the two-storey library, the tapestry gallery, and a myriad of other rooms that left us stunned, we headed down into the basement.

Here we found an indoor bowling alley, an indoor swimming pool, and a gymnasium. The guy thought of everything! Back in the day there was obviously no machine to set the pins and return your bowling balls, so the servants of the house were tasked with that.

The grounds include 75 acres of formal gardens, which are also stunning. We really couldn't believe this place at all. Incidentally it took ten minutes just to drive in from the main road out of Asheville.

During the ten-minute drive back out of the estate we stopped here at The Lagoon out the back of the house. Again, imagine if this was your back yard.

From one amazing vista to another. We left Asheville and headed deep into this - the Great Smoky Mountains National Park! This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the most visited national park in the United States. It encompasses over 500,000 acres (2,000 square kilometres) making it also one of the largest protected areas in the eastern United States.

This was our beast for the trip by the way - a Volkswagen Jetta. With a 2.5-litre 5-cylinder engine under the hood it was a pretty grunty little thing!

And this is the road we stayed on which took us right through the national park - the incredible Blue Ridge Parkway. The parkway runs for 755km (469 miles) from Virginia in the north to North Carolina in the south, so we were only covering a small section of it.

I wouldn't mind coming back to do the rest of it someday!

There are literally dozens of these overlooks throughout the national park, all of them offering stunning vistas of the Great Smokys. We had a long drive ahead of us into Kentucky but it was bloody hard not to stop at every single one of these along the way

Damn!

In short, it was absolutely amazin'!

Even the butterflies were loving it.

Despite the cooler temperatures I think we were here at the perfect time of year, with autumn (or fall) fast approaching and the leaves turning.

Eventually we arrived here - Cherokee, the centre of Cherokee culture in North Carolina and indeed the eastern United States. Many natives call this area home, and the Cherokee language is also spoken by many here. The town was established by the Cherokee who stayed behind and hid in the mountains while the US Government forced them west in the Trail of Tears. Kristina is actually a 16th Cherokee, so I'm sure she was a 16th curious to see this place. Unfortunately, there's not a lot to it, and it's something of a tourist trap.

And this is the Cherokee casino, owned by the local Cherokee tribe. There's a South Park episode about casinos run by Native American tribes, so I felt the need to see this ;)

Just outside of Cherokee is the state line. I'm standing in Tennessee :)

We were only passing through a small chunk of Tennessee before crossing into Kentucky later on, but what an impressive chunk it was!

The Blue Ridge Parkway ladies and gents - add it to your bucket list.