Mountains!!!
EDIT - So the pictures are huge. I got ahead of myself and forgot to resize them on Photobucket. I will probably not be able to fix them until tomorrow evening so you might want to wait.
We got to the mountains on Friday evening. We weren’t ready to go to our campsite so we went to Elk Knob State Park. It was pretty foggy but I wanted to walk on the trail anyway. It was 1.3 miles but the sign didn’t say that the second half was pretty much straight up. Every time I came around a corner I expected to be at the top and I just couldn’t give up. I made it to the top 5560 ft above sea level. But since it was getting late and it was already foggy the clouds were moving in and I couldn’t see a thing.
We checked into our campground and put up our tent in the mist. There was a nice little stream running right through the camp behind our tent. Then we went to get some dinner and buy a lantern. We found a country place where we got huge plates of food and we closed the place down.
The next morning we went to App State and picked up Dianna who used to work at Party City with me. We went and drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway for the majority of the day. We went to the Moses Cone Manor House that sells crafts, the Linn Cove Viaduct Visitor Center, and the Linville Falls Visitor Center. We got four stamps for our National Park Passport!
Then we had to buy some smores fixins and then we headed back to camp for dinner. The next day we dropped Dianna off back at App State and headed out for our second day of mountain fun. The first stop was the Woolly Worm Festival in Banner Elk. It was awesome. We didn’t participate in the races but I borrowed a worm to play with for a few minutes. They had strings tied vertically and then you put your caterpillar on the rope and whichever one made it to the top won. You could win $1,000 if you won both days. Then we went to a limestone cavern for a guided tour. The tour guide kept adding “today” onto her sentences for no apparent reason. Saying things like “That’s why we don’t want you to touch the cave walls today” or “There are three levels of the cave and the third level’s floor is only inches thick in places so that’s why we can’t take you up there today.” Like if we came back tomorrow these things would be different? After that we hopped on the Blue Ridge Parkway for some more mountainy goodness. We got another stamp for our book at the Museum of North Carolina Minerals, drove through two tunnels, and found a great spot to sit until the sunset. Then back to the camp for dinner and another fire.
We left out the next morning and stopped at the original Mast General Store in Valle Crucis, NC. On the way home we stopped at a dam and reservoir and got another stamp for our passport by accident. And now we’re back!
Elk Knob State Park
This was some weirdo fungus that looked like the nets army guys use for camouflage.
I made it!
This was the view:
App State
The Rock
Yosef
Yosef’s bootprints
Blue Ridge Parkway - Day 1
A tree farm
The Cone Manor House
The view from the porch
Caterpillar
Dew on leaves
Grandfather Mountain obscured by clouds
Linville River
Rhododendron trail
Linville Falls
Upper Falls
Flintlock Campground
Curtis says this outfit is like “a little kid who got to wear all his favorite stuff, I like X-Men, I like G.I. Joe, and I like the Eagles.”
The cute little stream that passes through the camp
Grandfather Mountain from a different angle, the view from which its name comes from.
Woolly Worm Festival
The “racetrack”
A Woolly Worm Festival Official
Look at them go!
I borrowed one from someone so I could play with it
These flowers were made out of clay
Linville Caverns - it wasn’t very photogenic
The “Walmart Special” bat
Curtis in a skinny corridor that was over the bottomless pool
Blind fish in the cave
Blue Ridge Parkway - Day 2
Tablerock Mountain
Us at the awesome view
One of my favorite shots
The sunset
If it’s in a Klutz book, it must be true! Proof that my favorite knock knock joke really is the best one ever.
Aren’t you guys proud of me? I got something posted soon after I did it!
We got to the mountains on Friday evening. We weren’t ready to go to our campsite so we went to Elk Knob State Park. It was pretty foggy but I wanted to walk on the trail anyway. It was 1.3 miles but the sign didn’t say that the second half was pretty much straight up. Every time I came around a corner I expected to be at the top and I just couldn’t give up. I made it to the top 5560 ft above sea level. But since it was getting late and it was already foggy the clouds were moving in and I couldn’t see a thing.
We checked into our campground and put up our tent in the mist. There was a nice little stream running right through the camp behind our tent. Then we went to get some dinner and buy a lantern. We found a country place where we got huge plates of food and we closed the place down.
The next morning we went to App State and picked up Dianna who used to work at Party City with me. We went and drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway for the majority of the day. We went to the Moses Cone Manor House that sells crafts, the Linn Cove Viaduct Visitor Center, and the Linville Falls Visitor Center. We got four stamps for our National Park Passport!
Then we had to buy some smores fixins and then we headed back to camp for dinner. The next day we dropped Dianna off back at App State and headed out for our second day of mountain fun. The first stop was the Woolly Worm Festival in Banner Elk. It was awesome. We didn’t participate in the races but I borrowed a worm to play with for a few minutes. They had strings tied vertically and then you put your caterpillar on the rope and whichever one made it to the top won. You could win $1,000 if you won both days. Then we went to a limestone cavern for a guided tour. The tour guide kept adding “today” onto her sentences for no apparent reason. Saying things like “That’s why we don’t want you to touch the cave walls today” or “There are three levels of the cave and the third level’s floor is only inches thick in places so that’s why we can’t take you up there today.” Like if we came back tomorrow these things would be different? After that we hopped on the Blue Ridge Parkway for some more mountainy goodness. We got another stamp for our book at the Museum of North Carolina Minerals, drove through two tunnels, and found a great spot to sit until the sunset. Then back to the camp for dinner and another fire.
We left out the next morning and stopped at the original Mast General Store in Valle Crucis, NC. On the way home we stopped at a dam and reservoir and got another stamp for our passport by accident. And now we’re back!
Elk Knob State Park
This was some weirdo fungus that looked like the nets army guys use for camouflage.
I made it!
This was the view:
App State
The Rock
Yosef
Yosef’s bootprints
Blue Ridge Parkway - Day 1
A tree farm
The Cone Manor House
The view from the porch
Caterpillar
Dew on leaves
Grandfather Mountain obscured by clouds
Linville River
Rhododendron trail
Linville Falls
Upper Falls
Flintlock Campground
Curtis says this outfit is like “a little kid who got to wear all his favorite stuff, I like X-Men, I like G.I. Joe, and I like the Eagles.”
The cute little stream that passes through the camp
Grandfather Mountain from a different angle, the view from which its name comes from.
Woolly Worm Festival
The “racetrack”
A Woolly Worm Festival Official
Look at them go!
I borrowed one from someone so I could play with it
These flowers were made out of clay
Linville Caverns - it wasn’t very photogenic
The “Walmart Special” bat
Curtis in a skinny corridor that was over the bottomless pool
Blind fish in the cave
Blue Ridge Parkway - Day 2
Tablerock Mountain
Us at the awesome view
One of my favorite shots
The sunset
If it’s in a Klutz book, it must be true! Proof that my favorite knock knock joke really is the best one ever.
Aren’t you guys proud of me? I got something posted soon after I did it!