ISOC takes a road trip, The Carlisle Chronicles, Chapter 5
Lynn D Carlisle DDS
Days 11, 12, 13 & 14 Charleston, SC to Asheville, NC We made the turn for home at 2200 miles when we pulled out of Charleston and headed west towards Asheville. I kept looking for Pat Conroy's characters as we traveled along the low country of Georgia and South Carolina. Conroy is my favorite author. The terrain around Charleston is well named as “the low country” or in the local lingo “frog level country”. There is truth to calling the way southerners relate to you “Southern Hospitality”. It could also be called civility, openness, friendliness, and courtesy. It is real. Prior to this trip, I would have said it is a fantasy. Unfailingly, we have been treated to “Southern Hospitality” from the moment we entered Hot Springs, Arkansas. My Tulsa twang has returned and Kirsten could be a mockingbird as she has become very adept at a southern accent. (The locals would probably die laughing at what we consider our southern accent.) While southern hospitality does not build relationships, it is excellent at building rapport – the first step in building caring doctor/patient relationships. People of the south do this better than anyone I have met. Visit the south by car and see if this is true. The flatness of the low country became ripples then hills as we drove to Asheville. The Asheville area is our favorite outside of the West. It is the “Rockies of the South” with its steep hills and scenic vistas. Asheville is home to our top pick in historic resort hotels – The Grove Park Inn. We stayed in a room that Franklin Roosevelt stayed in 1936 (room 221 in the old wing of the hotel if you ever stay there). There is a quality to these old resort hotels that makes the current generation of new hotels seem like fast food versions in the hospitality industry. We also had the most amazing experience of our trip in Asheville – a trip through the Biltmore Estate. Biltmore was built (couldn't pass this up) in the late 1890's by George Vanderbilt at 24 years of age. Vanderbilt was the great grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt who made the family fortune in shipping and railroads in the early to mid 1800's. Cornelius's son William doubled the family fortune in 10 years to a modern day equivilant of 93 billion dollars. This was prior to income tax. It started out to be his summer cottage, but didn't quite turn out this way. It is a 254 room French Renaissance château. Vanderbilt bought 254,000 acres of land so he owned everything he could see from his chateau. It defies description, so I won't try. If you visit Asheville (I highly recommend it) – see George's summer cottage and take the guided tour. It will exponentially expand your horizons and alter your perception as L.D. Pankey and Harold Wirth recommended The chateau remains in the Vanderbilt family and has shrunk to a paltry 8,000 acres today. After making the turn in Charleston, we are starting to talk about the next phase of our process of retiring - a sure sign of looking forward to home.
| 
Testimonials
