Magnolia Inn, Pinehurst, North Carolina 

In early May, Mary and I had the opportunity to get away from Killington for a few days for a vacation of our own. This is the third installment of a 4 part article on our experiences.

As most of our friends and repeat guests know, Mary and I usually get away from Killington during early May. Killington in early May can be rather messy. Snow melt off the mountains is in full swing. Muddy soil conditions, combined with running water and sunshine cause the area to erupt in small insects of many different varieties. Many local golf courses are open, but the surrounding countryside is still devoid of color, as most trees are barely in the bud stage, still hibernating from the winter cold. With all this in mind, our vacation planning each year starts with 1 requirement....How far do we have to travel so that we encounter "Leaves on the Trees". On most even years we tend to limit our travel to North America. On odd years, we have been known to wander outside the country to see other parts of the world. This year we focused our vacation into parts of North Carolina in search of leaves on the trees (and green on the fairways).

In writing this series of articles, I have divided our trip into 4 parts: Heading South; Asheville NC - The Biltmore Estate; Pinehurst NC - A little golf; and Heading North via Washington DC.

As Mary is into flowers, I am really into golf. I started playing the game while I was 9. My father had this old set of random wooden shafted clubs in the basement. I would go to a local field and hit old golf balls around for hours. I was a pretty good player in high school. You may remember from prior blogs that I worked as a caddy for years at Belmont County Club just outside of Boston Ma. Because of that, I got a Francis Ouimet Golf Scholarship to go to college. By the time I met Mary later in life, my golf handicap had drifted up to 7. I had an unfortunate accident skiing years ago, resulting is a separated right shoulder. My handicap frustratingly ballooned up to the low 20's as I litterally had trouble holding the club in my hands for several years. But I worked through that. Now it's down to about a 15. There are still moments of brilliance...but when your swing mechanics are not quite right...well let's just say I mostly know where the ball is going these days. At any rate, my personal roots in the game go pretty deep. Hurt or healthy, golf to me is much more than just a walk in the woods.

As most golfers know, Pinehurst NC is a golf Mecca. From the championship Pinehurst Number 2 course, to the hundred or so other courses in the area, when you visit Pinehurst, you play golf. Needless to say, I was excited that we would have a chance to visit and play some of the courses in the area.

Pinehurst itself is a nice little village set in the sand hills of southern North Carolina. Most of the named accommodations in the area, other than chain hotels, are owned and operated by the Pinehurst Resort. Mary and I, preferring smaller, independently owned properties like our inn, choose to stay in Pinehurst Village at the Magnolia Inn. The Magnolia Inn is located in the center of Pinehurst Village. It has 11 guest rooms, a fine dining restaurant, and a nice bar/pub (sound familiar). It is owned and operated by Jackie and Dan Berry, refugees from the Northeast who fled to the south to get away from the snow. They, together with golf coordinator Maggie Sager and executive chef Ryan Payne delighted us during our weather shortened stay in Pinehurst.

The dizzying array of golf courses in Pinehurst presented a challenge for us in planning our trip. Fortunately, a fellow Killington innkeeper, Paul Steel of the Grey Bonnet Inn, provided us with course advice. Paul's brother recently sold an inn he operated in Aberdeen NC, just outside of Pinehurst. Paul recommended several courses including Legacy in Aberdeen, and Bayonett at Puppy Creek south of Pinehurst in Raeford NC.

Mary hitting a tee shot on Legacy (Click to enlarge.)

Legacy is a Jack Nicklaus designed course cut into the sand hills and pine forest of North Carolina. At a par 72, from the blue tees it's rating is similar to Killington's Green Mountain National Golf Course with a rating of 70.8 and a slope of 124. (Green Mountain for comparison purposes is rated at 70.2 with a slope of 133 from the blue tees.) I actually found Legacy to play a little easier than Green Mountain. The fairways were somewhat wider. The pine forest (I know..I am not supposed to hit it into the woods...) was reasonably forgiving as there was minimal vegetation underneath the pine trees.

The Legacy course was a good find, relatively inexpensive for a resort course, with a nice club house and practice range. If we travel back to Pinehurst in the future, I would definitely consider playing another round on Legacy.

The following day we decided to play Bayonet at Puppy Creek. It was a little bit of a ride from Pinehurst; about 45 minutes south around Fort Bragg (hence the name Bayonet). And yes there is a Puppy Creek which winds it's way around and through many of the holes. Unlike the resort courses in Pinehurst, Bayonet at Puppy Creak had a decidely local flavor. From the blue tees it checks in as a 6472 yard par 72 with a rating of 71.1 and a slope of 134. Because of the creek, the course was tighter than Legacy. You also did not want to chase your golf balls too hard either. On one shot, Mary failed to clear a small pond. When the ball hit the far bank, it triggered a very large snake to jump into the water and head towards the sound of the ball landing. Needless to say, Mary let the snake keep that ball.

Being a local course away from the resort, Bayonet was less expensive than Legacy. But while the drive through the North Carolina country side was interesting, if we travel to Pinehurst in the future, we would probably try a different course nearer to the center of town.

Mary on Bayonet at Puppy Creek (Click to enlarge.)

While Pinehurst in the day is all golf, in the evening it is still a lot of fun. One night we decided to "stay in" and ate at the Pub at the Magnolia Inn. We then wandered off to the legendary Pinecrest Inn a half a block from the Magnolia inn for a night cap. The Pinecrest Inn was wild with a bar full of golfers being entertained by a piano player. The following night, we went back with some friends who have a home in Pinehurst to the Pinecrest for dinner. It is a grand old dining room with nice food and excellent service.

On what turned out to be our final night in Pinehurst, although we did not know it at the time, we dined in the formal dining room of the Magnolia Inn. The meal was very nice. If you visit Pinehurst and don't stay at the Magnolia Inn, I do recommended that you try it one evening for dinner.

On what was supposed to be our fourth and final day in Pinehurst, we had tee times with some friends at the Forest Creek Golf Club. Basically a private course, we were looking forward to playing on the Tom Fazio designed loop. But it was not meant to be. Early in the morning a very heavy band of thunderstorms moved into the area. You may remember in the news about tornado's hitting parts of North Carolina...well that was the storm we were in. We wound up canceling the tee times, (we would not have been allowed to play anyway) and packing the car to head north a day early. Because we were still in vacation mode, and were not looking forward to the trek back to Vermont, we decided to stop in Washington DC for a couple of nights, which I will write about in the next installment about our vacation.

In the mean time, keep it in the fairway...and don't forget your sunscreen!

New IMac running Windows Vista on a Virtualization Window at the Birch Ridge Inn 

Between seasons, Mary and I do a number of projects around the inn. They range from simple maintenance, to major investments. This posting discusses one of the improvement projects recently completed at the inn. Warning...contains geek speak.

Running a modern inn these days takes a surprising amount of technology. Some of it is very visible to guests and is designed to enhance their experience while visiting with us. My blog a couple of weeks ago on the inn's WiFi system is an example. A lot of technology, and computer horsepower, is dedicated to support back office functions. From the "glam" side of the software industry including web development and photo/video editing production suites, to databases with customer information, the pbx to provide inn guest telephone service and calling records, to accounting programs to track business performance, to payroll processing, to tax reporting to Uncle Sam (don't forget your uncle... he wants his due!)...all of it requires computer platforms which need to be kept up to date with equipment and software from a myriad of technology companies.

Early on at the inn, we had settled upon an Apple environment. For years before the inn while at Motorola, I had used Apple Mac's. I lugged Apple laptops hundreds of thousand of miles in my travels around the world. Even in 1997, when Apple was a shell of it's once and future self, Mac's just worked. And, at the time, all of the software packages we needed ran perfectly on the Mac....

Our compute environment has been fairly stable since we began. We have been cycling new computers into the mix at fairly regular intervals as one would expect. I have a PowerMAC G5DP at my desk for web, graphics and video work. We have an IMac in the lobby for inn guests and staff. And then there is the machine on Mary's desk for the finance side of the business. When we started in 1997, this machine was also a Mac. And now it is again...but we did have a little diversion in the intervening years.

In simple terms, one very important software vendor, Intuit, maker of Quickbooks, decided in 1999 that they did not need to provide full support for Apple products. Quickbooks, if you don't know, is is pretty much the universal accounting software package used by small businesses. Their are other programs on the market, but Quickbooks is the dominant program. Intuit still sells Quickbooks for the Mac, but in 1999 they stripped out payroll processing from it, farming out that function to third party programs. Quickbooks on Windows still had, and continues to have, integrated payroll processing. And for a small business like ours, that is important.

I know I am rambling, but a little historical perspective is important. For the second time in 8 years, our small business has wound up purchasing new computer equipment in order to meet Intuit's changing requirements. In 1999, we migrated Quickbooks from a Mac environment to a Windows 98 - then Windows 2000 environment on a Dell desktop. In 2007, we were notified that Intuit would no longer support Windows 2000 and only support Windows XP or Visit. Since the 7 year old Dell on Mary's desk would not run either, a new computer purchase was in the cards for 2008.

I can bore you with payback analysis of purchasing new computer systems versus outsourcing to outside accounting services. But I won't. Suffice to say, it's cheaper for our small business to keep it in house. Which brings us to the adventure of the last couple of weeks.

Just prior to our vacation, I looked at a variety of computer systems. It would have been very easy to purchase a new Dell, or and HP platform, and stick with a full Windows genre for the new computer. But 18 months ago, Apple made the transition to Intel hardware as the underpinnings of their new platforms. This opened up some new and interesting opportunities as well.

The system we eventually got was a new Apple IMac with a Core 2 Duo processor, a 20 inch screen, 250 M hard drive, and 3.5G of memory running Apple's Leopard (OSX 10.5) operating system. Like our other Apple machines....It just works! To handle Windows programs we need to run the inn, I have loaded virtualization software (VMWare Fusion) on to the IMac. Inside the virtual environment, we run Windowss Vista and Intuit's Quickbooks. Again....It just works! Of course, doing all of this is not for the faint of heart. I have a strong technology background so I can set all of this stuff up without spending extra money hiring outside contractors to maintain our systems. And I like to do it too!

My experiences in migrating platforms and transitioning programs between operating systems, has reinforced my belief that our choice of an Apple environment 11 years ago is still valid. In migrating Windows programs from a Dell PC running Windows 2000 to a IMac with a virtual environment running Windows Vista, I can understand some of the trash talking that has gone on in the market about Vista. Some of the decisions made by Microsoft which resulted in gratuitous changes in the user interface for Vista without marked operating improvements over Windows 2000 or XP were somewhat daunting to get through for a couple of days. But now that the system is set up, it is actually quite stable. Of course, it's all quite comical when you think about it... Windows Vista being basically reduced to another program operating on a Mac under OSX. But then again... Mac's just work.

As we get ready to enter the summer, where ever you may be remember, keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sunscreen.

Biltmore Estate, Asheville, North Carolina 

In early May, Mary and I had the opportunity to get away from Killington for a few days for a vacation of our own. This is the second installment of a 4 part article on our experiences.

As most of our friends and repeat guests know, Mary and I usually get away from Killington during early May. Killington in early May can be rather messy. Snow melt off the mountains is in full swing. Muddy soil conditions, combined with running water and sunshine cause the area to erupt in small insects of many different varieties. Many local golf courses are open, but the surrounding countryside is still devoid of color, as most trees are barely in the bud stage, still hibernating from the winter cold. With all this in mind, our vacation planning each year starts with 1 requirement....How far do we have to travel so that we encounter "Leaves on the Trees". On most even years we tend to limit our travel to North America. On odd years, we have been known to wander outside the country to see other parts of the world. This year we focused our vacation into parts of North Carolina in search of leaves on the trees (and green on the fairways).

In writing this series of articles, I have divided our trip into 4 parts: Heading South; Asheville NC - The Biltmore Estate; Pinehurst NC - A little golf; and Heading North via Washington DC.

Mary is really big into flower gardens. When she is not on the golf course during the summer months, much of her outdoor time is spent building/tending the gardens around our inn. On many of our vacation, we try to stop at a place with unique architecture and gardens. This year, that place was the Biltmore Estate in Asheville North Carolina.

Biltmore Estate from the grounds (Click to enlarge.)

Billed as North America's largest private home, the 125,000 acre estate (8000 acres are open to the public) was commissioned by George Vanderbilt in 1889 as a home for he and his new bride Edith Stuyvesant Dresser. Architect Richard Morris Hunt designed the home in the style of a royal French chateaux. In touring the property, you see many similarities with the Chateau de Versailles in Paris, or the Powerscourt Estate in Wicklow Ireland. The main house on the Biltmore Estate is laid out on 4 acres and contains 250 rooms.

The grounds of the Biltmore Estate were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Considered by many to be the father of modern American landscape architecture, Olmsted's other famous works include New York's Central Park, and the Emerald Necklace in Boston.

The grounds around the Biltmore Estate are truly impressive. Huge gardens surround the main house. Mary and I walked for several hours in the "Walled" and "Azalea" gardens among others.

Mary in the Azalea Garden (Click to enlarge.)

During our stay in Asheville, we stayed at the Inn on the Biltmore Estate. The Inn on the Biltmore Estate is a contemporary "Grand Hotel" in every sense of the word. The room we had was beautifully appointed. The service and attention to detail was very good. The restaurant at the Inn was as good as many we have dined at over the years. We definitely paid more than if we had stayed at a chain hotel in Asheville. But being innkeepers, we appreciate the value of the product offered by the Inn on the Biltmore Estate. It was a very nice place to stay.

The Inn on the Biltmore Estate (Click to enlarge.)

After departing the Biltmore Estate, we set out for Pinehurst North Carolina for some golf. Mary was happy....she got to see lots of flower gardens. I was happy...we had had a nice time in Asheville and we were heading to a great golfing destination..

I'll write about Pinehurst in the next installment. In the mean time, keep it in the fairway...and don't forget your sunscreen!

802.n WiFi at Birch Ridge Inn 

Between seasons, Mary and I do a number of projects around the inn. They range from simple maintenance, to major investments. This posting discusses one of the improvement projects recently completed at the inn. Warning...contains geek speak.

Since getting back from vacation, Mary and I have had a full list of projects around the inn. Maintenance is a huge part of running an inn. The goal, of course, is that is all done transparently as far as our guests are concerned. Things just happen... as if little elves are scurrying around in the dark (and I do stay up late at night when some stuff gets done). But the reality of it all is that Mary and I, together with staff, do most of the work when guests are not around.

One of the features an inn MUST HAVE these days is WiFi internet access. Guests walk through our door with a myriad of electronic devices, many of them thirsty for a drink from the internet. 11 years ago when we started, bulky laptops with modem connections were de-riguer. I fondly remember (not) configuring laptop modem strings for guests at midnight as they struggled with the concept of a second dial tone through our PBX to get an outside line.

Today, of course, there are Powerbooks, Macbook Air's, Old IBM and new Lenova Thinkpads, Dell and HP Laptops...just too many kinds to keep up with. Then there are the smart phones with WiFI interfaces... the Crack-er- Blackberries, the IPhone, and countless Symbian and Windows Mobile (yuk) devices. Wireless tablet devices are starting to be used by guests. The Apple ITouch is a good early example. The connection via a telephone cord to our PBX has now been replaced by a wireless connection to our DSL service. The good news is that most of the time it all just works. The bad news, of course, is that sometimes it doesn't...And thats when your friendly innkeeper has to get involved.

About 5 years ago we started our first foray into WiFi with a Linksys 802.11b router donated by a friend. It had a theoretical data rate of 11Mbs, but in practice connections speeds hit several hundred kilobits per second at best. It worked ok, as long as you stayed near the front desk. Of course it was eminently hackable, which someone did less that 2 weeks after it was installed. Enabling WEP (Wireless Encryption Protocol) took care of that problem, but created a whole host of other problems as many devices implemented WEP passwords using different schemes.

A couple of years ago, when our internet service provider offered us a higher, multi-megabit per speed DSL circuit, I upgraded the network to a faster interface, supporting 802.11g. I attempted to install a 802.11g repeater (Linksys WRE54G) in one corner of the inn to increase signal coverage beyond the sitting room, great room, and front desk area, but WEP encryption created some interface issues resulting in spotty performance. Conceptually it was a good idea...but this winter I found most of our guests with their wireless devices in the bar or sitting room. Not necessarily bad from an inn revenue standpoint (email with a beer anyone?)..but from a service standpoint we should be able to do better.

With the change in seasons, I purchased an Apple Airport Extreme 802.11n router just before heading off on vacation. 802.11n is the latest draft wireless standard with a theoretical data rate of 248Mbs and a practical throughput limit of 74Mbs when driven by data from a local server. More importantly, it maintains compatibility with wireless B and G devices, while increasing range. With the new router, I have also upgraded security protocols to WiFi Protected Access (WPA/WPA2) from the earlier WEP, much to the delight of the Linksys repeater in the back building.

Speeds and feeds are nice, and email with a beer is pretty good too, but from a practical standpoint the whole exercise is to improve our guests experiences while they are staying with us at Birch Ridge. With the new system in place, inn guests connected to the inn's wireless network should be able to take advantage of nearly the full speed of the inn's DSL service. I have measured transfer rates higher than 2Mbs to the DSL side of the internet in my testing (using an ITouch) in every room at the inn. Inter-device communication is much faster, although I have not seen inn guests set up their own network of multiple devices yet...but I am sure it is coming to a room at the inn sometime soon. Of course, individual guests connections speeds will vary based upon the equipment in their quiver... So it goes.

Mary and I hope you are enjoying your Memorial Day weekend. And remember, keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sunscreen.

Birch Ridge Inn Logo and Covered Carriageway 

Today, Mary and I begin our 11th season in Killington as Innkeepers. On Memorial Day weekend in 1998, the Birch Ridge Inn at Killington opened and began receiving guests. It has been a very quick 10 years.

Without much fanfare a few minutes ago, when our first guests of the new season arrived, the 2008-2009 season at Birch Ridge began. We are re-opening the inn for lodging this weekend. Our restaurant will re-open for dinner service starting on Friday June 27th.

Have a good Memorial Day weekend, keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sunscreen.

Liberty Hill Inn, Yarmouthport, Cape Cod, Massachusetts 

In early May, Mary and I had the opportunity to get away from Killington for a few days for a vacation of our own. This is the first installment of a 4 part article on our experiences.

As most of our friends and repeat guests know, Mary and I usually get away from Killington during early May. Killington in early May can be rather messy. Snow melt off the mountains is in full swing. Muddy soil conditions, combined with running water and sunshine cause the area to erupt in small insects of many different varieties. Many local golf courses are open, but the surrounding countryside is still devoid of color, as most trees are barely in the bud stage, still hibernating from the winter cold. With all this in mind, our vacation planning each year starts with 1 requirement....How far do we have to travel so that we encounter "Leaves on the Trees". On most even years we tend to limit our travel to North America. On odd years, we have been known to wander outside the country to see other parts of the world. This year we focused our vacation into parts of North Carolina in search of leaves on the trees (and green on the fairways).

In writing this series of articles, I have divided our trip into 4 parts: Heading South (this article); Asheville NC - The Biltmore Estate; Pinehurst NC - A little golf; and Heading North via Washington DC.

All of our vacations usually include visiting with our parents in Massachusetts. As we left Vermont, we stopped first for an afternoon with Mary's parents in Easton MA. In what has now become a right os spring, Mary and I installed her parents window air conditioner in the living room. Mary had spent some time with her parents prior to heading off on vacation, so there were not many other chores to do. With the air conditioner installed, we pointed the car further south to visit with my parents on Cape Cod.

Flowering tree at Liberty Hill Inn (Click to enlarge.)

On the Cape, my folks had a short list of spring chores for us to accomplish. Mary had some spring planting to do. We both helped my father erect my parents back yard screen house. Being outside in the summer on Cape Cod is one of life's pleasures for my parents. They eat dinner often outside in the early evening in their screen house...so getting it up and ready to go is one of the primary chores of every spring visit.

While on Cape Cod, we stayed once again at the 9 room Liberty Hill Inn located in Yarmouthport. The innkeepers at Liberty Hill, John and Kris, always do a great job taking care of us on our visits. If you are traveling around New England this summer, after you have stayed with us in Killington Vermont at the Birch Ridge Inn of course, and your travels plans include Cape Cod, we heartily recommend the you include the Liberty Hill Inn in Yarmouthport Massachusetts on your itinerary.

Of course, Cape Cod in early May usually does not satisfy our overall vacation requirement calling for "Leaves on the Trees". In early May on the Cape, many of the flowering trees are showing off, but the normal trees are just slightly further along than what you would find in Killington. With that in mind, after a couple of days on the Cape, we pointed our car further south, to begin our vacation in North Carolina.

Piedmont Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway (Click to enlarge.)

From Cape Cod, trips to North Carolina are pretty straight forward, as long as you have a high tolerance for Route 95 through Connecticut and New York. We timed our get away from the Cape to pass through the New York City area in early afternoon, avoiding much of the traffic. Overall on the first day driving south, we traveled about 10 hours, winding up in Woodstock Virginia overnight. We had planned on driving just under 6 hours on the second day south with the plan to arrive in Asheville North Carolina in early afternoon. Little did I know that Mary had other plans which would make the drive significantly longer.

Linn Cove Viaduct on the Blue Ridge Parkway. No leaves on the trees there! (Click to enlarge.)

On leaving Woodstock Va, Mary announced that she wanted to take the Blue Ridge Parkway through the mountains to Asheville. The Blue Ridge Parway is one of the great scenic drives in North America, literally running down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. The parkway is a 2 lane road traversing mountain peaks and secluded valleys. In early May, the scenery changed dramatically with altitude. The mountain peaks, like the area around the Linn Cove Viaduct was still twigs and sticks. Lower elevations, like the Piedmont Overlook, had some greenery showing. In between, the mountain meadows were filled with spring flowers in bloom, taking advantage of warmer temperatures and May sunshine.

The one downside to taking the Blue Ridge Parkway on the second leg of our trip to Asheville, was that it changed a 6 hour ride into a 9 hour ride. So it goes... I for one would have been happier chasing a little white ball around for those 3 hours... but life is not all golf in the summer. And because Mary wanted to gawk at the scenery, I got to drive the twisty mountain roads...sometimes with a wee bit of speed reminiscent of our vacation last year across the little roads of Ireland.

In the next installment, I will talk about our visit to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville NC. In the mean time, keep it in the fairway...and don't forget your sunscreen!

Snow covers Superstar on May 19th, 2008 

We're back....at least physically.

Most vacations always seem too short. Innkeepers vacations suffer the same fate. Mary and I got back to Killington a few days ago after a trip to down south to take in some warmer weather. This year our trip took us on a swing through the Boston area and Cape Cod, both to see family, then off to North Carolina to take in some spring gardens and some golf. On the way back, we took a side trip to Washington DC (it was on the way and seemed like the right thing to do).

We are back at work at the inn, getting it ready for the summer season. Over the next couple of days, as I get back into writing, I will post some pictures from our vacation and post about some of the work we are doing around the inn to prepare for the new season.

Yesterday, in a strange twist of meteorology, Killington was graced with snow and sleet for most of the day. Around the inn there was no lasting accumulation, so I wont be resurrecting any more snow stake pictures for a while, but the mountain once again turned white as todays picture shows. Of course this happens on occasion at Killington this time of year. It is just one of natures oddities...and the reason we keep a pack of hot hands in our golf bags...

Keep it in the fairway...and hopefully where ever you are it is sunny enough to need sunscreen!