A day trip with friends!

 I wanted to see the Vance birthplace and museum. I honestly didn't care about his politics (a governor and senator in NC before and during, and maybe after the Civil War. I just wanted to see the way families lived in early North Carolina. 

Reems Creek is a nice long valley on the western slope of the Blue Ridge mountains...and can be reached from my home on the eastern side by going up to the Blue Ridge Parkway and then wiggling down the other side through the many twists and curves.  I chose to go down through Asheville and up an interstate, which so generously had signs leading to the Vance Birthplace.

As an aside, the Vance Monument (a monolith) was removed from the center of Asheville just a few years ago, as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Many Confederate monuments have been removed, and still are being changed (as a few military posts have just been renamed.)

Here friends Susan and Helen are looking at one of the descriptive plaques learning about the Vance buildings we were about to visit. That's the museum in the background.

First, I must mention this interesting black snake which was in this strange pose for quite a while right outside the museum door. Fortunately there were 2 doors, and we were able to sneak past her quietly while she continued gazing at whatever she had in mind.

This early photo of the house described it as belonging to the Hemphill family during the Civil War. It says it was one of the largest ones in the area.

I admit to skipping several of the descriptive plaques, but this one about Elizabeth Hemphill reminded me immediately of another blogger, Vicki Lane's book "And The Crows Took Their Eyes."

I felt that letter from Shelton Laurel must have been the same that was posted to Governor Vance, without much result. The plaque mentions that the women left behind had to have salt for their families to preserve their meat and not starve during the wintertimes. This was a pivitol point of Vicki's book.

But this house was built before the Civil War.

Looking uphill towards the Vance house, there's no path. But the grass had been mowed fairly recently. I had to stop at the Mulberry Tree, with it's interesting trunk and berries.

I was sure romantic notes were passed somehow in these wonderful crevases.

And while I was enjoying that someone's app on their phone could identify it, my friend J. made it to check out the first window into the house! 

There were only windows to look through to see inside, but very nice signboards with descriptions of some details.  

The kitchen area was open to the roof...which may have helped cool it off on summer days when cooking still needed to be done.

This fireplace may look huge, but I think that all meals were cooked here, every day of the year!

All of these buildings were built with hand tools...unless there was a lumber mill that they carted some of the beams from, perhaps in Asheville.

This kitchen may have been an addition, but it has that huge fireplace, which shares the chimney with the fireplace in the main room, an excellent plan. I'll take you through the rest of the house tomorrow!

This hallway leads along side of the big chimney to the parlor.

Today's quotes:

H.L. Mencken, ( 1880-1956) writer, editor, and critic wrote: "Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." 

also, "The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. The objection to it is not that it is predominantly painful, but that it is lacking in sense."