Happy belated July 4th!

Hope everyone enjoyed their Fourth of July! It hardly felt like a holiday to me because it fell during the middle of the week and I'm off all summer anyway (for the most part).

Eric and his dad were going to a Yankees game yesterday and his mom and I had plans to tour Duke Farms. We had three different tours booked, starting with an 11:30 tour of the Japanese Gardens.

At 11:06, after locking the front door and shutting all the windows, I grabbed jackets because it was chilly out, said goodbye to my Norton and locked the back door behind me. It was then that I realized I left my keys hanging on the hook in the kitchen.

Oops. Thanks so much to Liz, Eric's mother, for hightailing it from Duke Farms to Eric's townhouse in record speed. We actually just made it on time for our first tour!!!

Liz and I enjoyed three tours--the Japanese Garden tour, the Country Manor tour and the tour of the 4 mile square property.

Duke Farms was first developed by James Buchanan Duke, a man who made fortunes from the tobacco industry. Duke built himself a "modest" 11 room bachelor pad on the lush farmland. He brought in 2 million shrubs and plants for his property, drained swampland and built 9 lakes! Duke married and added onto his home. Later, Duke Farms was passed onto his daughter, Doris Duke. Doris was an animal lover and had many dogs. They drank out of a beautiful indoor fountain and had an elaborate dog house which contained ramps to a private entranceway to Ms. Duke's bedroom on the second level! Doris even had camels--two of them!

Today, the house contains 55 rooms! It houses indoor tennis courts, a theatre, an indoor pool (and an outdoor one too), and a lounge.

Anyway, its an interesting place to tour if you're ever in the Hillsborough, NJ area.