The tour ( only given on Thursdays and Fridays) was so great. We got to walk through the house pretty much the first two floors, into all the rooms. The guide was so knowledgeable and kept encouraging questions. The house is beyond gorgeous and what a setting it is! Highly recommend. I'd like to go back and walk the trails which look wonderful as well.Such interesting history.

This is now Auburn Valley State Park. Delaware's newest state park has trails, the Auburn Heights Mansion, a steam museum and a paper mill. We toured the house ($8 pp) and walked along the paper mill trail. There are many more things to do such as touring the paper mill, bike the trails with a guided tour, visit the steam museum and do more trails but due to time we could only do so much for this first visit. The house was easy to find using my garmin. The parking lot to the home is located in front of the house by the Program and event parking. We made reservations for 2 adults by phone for the tour. The website offered tours starting at 9a.m. When I called to make a tour reservation, the tour guide was available starting at 10:15a.m. since she was doing a bike tour at 9a.m. I made a reservation for 10:30a.m. and she was there ready for our tour. She took us inside the house to the two floors and provided a lot of information about the Marshall family. The tour took about 1 hour. After that you can walk the grounds. Bathrooms are open and there are picnic tables by the house. After that, we drove towards the Paper Mill ( closed during our visit). It is a short drive and you can certainly walk there. We parked at the Paper Mill parking lot on Benge Rd, crossed the Red Clay Creek Trail bridge and walked around. After a 5 minute walk, we arrived at the Yorklyn Bridge Trail parking lot on Yorklyn Rd. Covered picnic tables and a porta pottie here. There is certainly a lot to do here. I will return.

Spent a lovely afternoon walking along the paved and unpaved trails in Auburn Heights, walked the Woodlands and Meadow trails and did the paved loop twice. It was a pleasant walk and very pleasant view. Lovely way to get in some exercise while catching up with a friend!!

A family membership costs $65 for a family up to six members (2 adults and 4 kids living in the same household). It entitles you to a year's worth of Steaming Days and four rides per Day and access to the grounds and the Marshall Steam Museum. While the Steaming Days only take place once a month from Spring to Fall, it's definitely worth getting the membership. A one-day admission will run you about $10. For my family of four, the membership paid for itself after my second visit. We plan on going every first Sunday of the month (plus Halloween Sunday), so that we can get our money's worth. The popcorn is a nice touch because the kids love it, but there's not much food sold on the grounds (hot dogs, chips, soda, and water). I recommend you bring a picnic basket and make a day of it.

We went on an open house tour day otherwise we would have had to schedule a time and have at least 8 in our group. This was not a steamin' day so the trains were not running but we would love to go back when they do. The grounds are lovely with a decorative pond and fountain, grape arbor, mini train tunnel and train station. The house tour shows the first two floors. There were two eager : ) college students leading the tour. They made it a lot of fun and full of interesting info. The car museum tour was done by a senior citizen who was knowledgeable but hard to get to smile. It's a wonderful display of beautiful cars! They have a couple areas that are hands on for kids - really thoughtful. They even have a restored steam powered popcorn cart which they use on specific days to have popcorn for guests. The house and car building are air conditioned however it's still a bit warm but much much better than being outside. (It was around 90 or 92 outside the day we went.) There is plenty of parking directly across the country road. We told our GPS Hockessin DE rather than Yorklyn DE and it had no problem finding it. The day we went there were 5 cars not present in the collection as they were out on the road. There was a notice on the website about this which I appreciated. Once we were there they told us again about the 5 cars not present and also reduced the ticket cost for us. We will probably go back on one of the days that they have the trains running and popcorn popping. If we decide on the full package we can also have 4 rides in the antique cars! : ) This is a Delaware gem everyone should visit at least once.