Country Roads

For the Labor Day holiday, we decided to pack up and head for the hills. On the advice of some good friends, we headed for Dupont State Forest and Pisgah National Forest, just over the North Carolina border in Transylvania County (about 2 1/2 hours from Columbia). It is known as the land of the waterfalls and is truly beautiful. It is significantly cooler than Columbia, but still warm. It rained most of the time we were there, but we were never cold.

Jalen was very excited to help his daddy put up the tent.

Baylie was a great helper this trip. She was happy to help her dad with anything and everything he needed done.

Hot dogs and Cheetos for dinner.

Muffins for breakfast.

We spent Saturday in Dupont State Forest. We hiked to three different waterfalls: Triple Falls, High Falls and Hooker Falls. Later we learned we could have made a loop, but I think we took the longest way possible.

Over the river...

...and through the woods.

 

Triple Falls and High Falls are fairly close to each other and the hike was pretty easy. It was just slightly harder than what the kids wanted to do. Jalen in particular had a hard time near the end.

This is him refusing to go any farther.

We saw TONS of mushrooms. This one was as big as Baylie's hand.

This one made me think of a storybook mushroom - red with white dots.

Cool little solitary one.

Mushroom love.

This must have been some kind of fungus. It looked like cotton.

Prior to the meltdown.

I wanted a picture of one of the kids nestled back in this hollow tree, but the spiders made them a little leery.

Triple Falls. These falls can be seen in The Hunger Games and in Last of the Mohicans. You can hike right down to the falls, but the kids were already showing signs of weariness and these were our first falls, so we decided to just continue on to High Falls.

This could look like a cute little picture of a family hiking, but I must confess that it's where I made my family walk on ahead of me so I could have a few whine-free hiking moments.

High Falls, also featured in Last of the Mohicans. You can hike to the bottom of High Falls as well, but again we decided to continue on without going to the bottom.

Rock dancer.

We saw this awesome butterfly, which was also featured in The Hunger Games. (I don't know if it was this exact same butterfly or not.)

Bridge to Hooker Falls.

Hooker Falls.

This time we plunged into the FREEZING water! It was a refreshing way to cool off after our hike.

Next, we went back to our campground to swim in the "heated" pool, which was cold, but not as cold as the river.

Later in the day they had a "build your own sundae" bar. We had a heck of a time explaining to Baylie the difference between Sunday and sundae.

On Sunday, we went into Brevard for church. David and I both fell in love with this quaint little town. David especially loved the Brevard Music Center where they have a huge festival every summer. He was ready to move there and even started asking around about job opportunities while we were at church. After church, we returned to the music center to have a picnic and look for the white squirrels, which are supposed to be prevalent in Brevard. We didn't see any squirrels, but we loved spending time in this beautiful place.

David felt right at home.

We went to Pisgah National Forest where you can see awesome waterfalls without having to hike at all. The first one we visited was Sliding Rock. Jalen was too little to slide down, so just Baylie and David went. (Even if I wasn't still recovering from the tailbone injury, this is NOT something I would have done.)

Listen for Baylie screaming.

Jalen found his own little sliding rock.

I made a new friend. This butterfly landed on my feet a couple of times. It was ticklish and very cool.

Our last stop was Looking Glass Falls. By the time we got here, it was pouring rain. We had planned to hike to the bottom of this one and swim, but we got drenched just getting out to take a picture.

On the way home, we had to stop and take a picture of Uncle Buck's trout fishing pond.

We didn't take a picture of the sign that offered "Produce and Notary," but figured this one was pretty good too.

After dining on cold chili beans and chips in our tent (it was too rainy to cook outside), we went down to check out the magician and balloon man in the campground common area. He was great. Jalen got a sword and Baylie got a mermaid and David found a fallback career. He really wants to do that for a living now. (He'd probably be very good at it.)

When we got back to camp, we built our first fire (David has instructed me to leave out the details) and roasted marshmallows. Jalen had fallen asleep by then and missed everything.

It had stopped raining by morning, but everything was still soaking wet. We ended up breaking camp and packing everything up damp. We dried out when we got home to Columbia.

Is this a perfect spider web or what??!! 

We had a fantastic time. Our kids love to camp and I loved the fact that we could be damp without getting cold. North Carolina has got to be one of the prettiest places on Earth.