Grandfather Mountain

We had our first real family vacation this month after Todd and Amanda's Wedding (Todd is Kevin's youngest brother). Since we were in SC, we decided to head up to the Blue Ridge Mountains in NC for some cool weather. We stayed in a cabin just outside of Boone NC for 3 days. It was wonderful, just not long enough!


Here is the view from our cabin's deck. This is Grandfather Mountain. You can see that it looks like an old, bearded grandfather taking a nap on top of the mountain.



Soon after arriving, the kids discovered that the cabin had a jacuzzi. Andrew was especially excited about this. He spent almost half an hour running around shouting, "We gonna go in the coozie!" It was hilarious.



On our first day full day of adventuring, we headed up to Grandfather Mountain to do some sight seeing. It was only 60 degrees out (cold for us Floridians) and the wind was gusting up to 40 mph at the top of the mountain, so we were pretty chilly in our sweatshirts.











We spent a couple of hours in the visitor's center hoping the weather would warm up. The highlight for our kids was the gift shop. They spent a long time trying to figure out how to get Mom and Dad to buy them something, anything. Here are Maggie and Matthew in front of that wonderland of useless trinkets.

After exhausting the possibilities of the Visitor's Center, we ventured outside to the animal habitats. Here they had some eagles, otters, deer, eastern mountain lions, bears, and goofy little boys.










We had a picnic lunch at a picnic area about halfway up the mountain. It was so windy that only Kevin and his brother Ryan stuck it out at the table. The rest of us just sat in the car. Then, we made our way up to the top of the mountain and the Mile High Swinging Bridge. I was too chicken to go across with the wind blowing. I was holding Matthew's hand and we only got about 10 feet onto it before I had to turn around.




Kevin and Maggie made it across, though. And they spent their time on the other side climbing rocks and taking pictures. I was really better off not seeing them take some of those pictures.

Maggie is really standing on another ledge--even her Daddy wouldn't let her hang off the side like that.

On our drive down the mountain we stopped to explore some more rocks. Maggie climbed up one called Sphinx Rock. It has a split down the middle of it and she started to climb down inside, but she got stuck, so I had to go in and rescue her.

After stopping to look at the rocks, we got in the car and started it up, but it immediately stalled. Kevin tried 6 or 7 more times, but it just kept stalling. Finally he and his brother, Ryan, got out and pushed the car out of the parking space. I got the car stated and could keep it going as long as I had my foot on the gas pedal. So I was trying to use the brake with my left foot while I kept the rpm's up with the gas. Needless to say, that didn't work very well. The brake pedal is not a clutch and I kept stomping on it like it was. I ended up coasting downhill once the engine died again. As I got to the first curve, I realized there was no power steering, and that was a little stressful, but ok as long as we went slow. By the time I got to the third curve I realized that we have power brakes and they weren't working! By this time I was telling Kevin through clenched teeth that he needed to say a prayer in our behalf. I made it into a parking lot and managed to stop just before hitting a tree. Then Kevin got in the driver's seat and revved up the engine really high for a few minutes. We figured there must have been something clogging the fuel pump because after that, the engine worked just fine.

On our second day, we spent the morning driving up to a little town that had the first Mast General Store. It's a fun little store with locations throughout Western NC and SC. We've gone shopping there before to get stocking stuffers and unique candies for the kids. This particular store was the original, built in the 1880's. It was fun to go and look at all the old-timey toys and kitchen supplies. They also had an annex to the store, which had a whole room full of candy barrels. Of course, we spent way more than we planned at "The Candy Barrel" I gave the kids a limit of 1/2 lb of candy each. Maggie was the only one who managed to keep under her limit. Kevin went way over his and so did Andrew, who was being supervised by Kevin.

That afternoon, we went to a trout farm to catch some fish for dinner. For the last several months, Matthew has been begging me to take him fishing. Every time we go to Wal-Mart he sees fishing rods in the sporting goods section and tells me we have to buy one. So this was their big chance. It was hot out, the worms were slimy and wriggly and so were the fish. Kevin hooked a couple of fish, then Andrew got one later on. We tried to get him to pose with his fish, but it was still alive and all the wiggling scared him, so he would have nothing to do with it. This picture is Matthew with Andrew's fish. Kevin and Maggie tried to catch a couple more fish, but they kept getting away after being hooked. Afterwards, Kevin asked Maggie if she ever wanted to go fishing again. She said, "Yeah. . . If somebody forced me."

For our final day of vacation, we checked out of the cabin, then took the scenic route back to SC. We got on the Blue Ridge Parkway and took it back to Asheville. It was just such a beautiful drive with lots of green trees having over the road and no billboards or commercial districts. We stopped at a place that displayed crafts by local artisans. There was lots of beautiful pottery, woodworking, and quilts that I wished I could afford to buy.

We kept on going down the road and spent the bulk of our afternoon at an orchard that was on the side of a mountain. They had more local crafts and jellies and we went on a hay ride where the owner of the orchard told stories of life in the area from the revolutionary war onward. It was really a fun trip and a good note to end on before coming home.