Visting Biltmore and Cherokees

There were suppose to be some pictures with this visit, but I can't seem to find them. We started off together, but got separated.
Mother's Day went to visit the Biltmore and it was worth every penny. What a beautiful place. The estate started off with 125,ooo acres and is now down to 8000 acres. The house took 6 years to build and George Vanderbilt only got to live in it for 19 years before he died. It was opened up in 1930 to the public. I don't know if the family continued living there or when they moved out. It is quite the commercial business now. Anywhere from renting Land Rovers for an "off-road experience" to renting Segways, fly-fishing school etc.
The gardens were beautiful and they had fresh flowers thru-out the house as it was fresh flower month.
The day starting out was rainy, cold and foggy. Temp:53 and didn't improve too much. You know us Flordians can't stand temps below 75. But we dug out coats, long pants and socks and had a good time.

Monday we went to the Cherokee Museum and enjoyed it. Was erected in 1974 and they have taken good care of it. When we went in an older gentleman greeted us and asked us where we were from etc. John told him we were from the Western Cherokee area near a town called Tahlequah, Ok. He corrected Johns pronouncement of it. Of course John said it the way it had been called our whole lives, the man said it was pronounced TA-lee-quah.
Finished up there about 11, took about 2 hours. Then drove on up to the Village. It is how the People lived in the 1700's. Very interesting, had a lot of artists doing pottery, hand weaving, weaving baskets, making arrow-heads, blow guns and darts. The end of the darts are made from thistles that have been dried. We went thru a village in Tahlequah similar to this one, but this one was much better. Also they had a huge log that was being burned to use as a dug out or a canoe.
That's it for the Lively explorations. What a great nation we live in and how priviledged we feel we are to be able to explore it.