Waterfalls and Hiking in NC

We had a very cool waterfall at the bottom of our hill.

We went to Chimney Rock on a great and hot day. We scored with the elevator actually working, from one point to another. You do a fair amount of walking and hiking to explore all this park has to offer.

Actually, after we parked we took a shuttle up a good portion of the mountain. That was nice. :-) Once at your first stop, there is a gift shop, restrooms, and refreshments. Then you walk along a tunnel to an elevator, when operating, and go up 26 stories to the next level, which is the bottom of the stairs to the chimney of Chimney Rock. There's also another cafe and restrooms and gift shop. . . .

You can go farther up the mt, to Exclamation Point and the Opera Box. Then you can continue the almost 2-mile hike along the top of the mountain to the top of Hickory Nut Falls. I'm not a fan of going to the top of waterfalls unless the situation is pretty secured. So after doing Exclamation Point and the Opera Box, we hiked back down to the lower level gift shop area and then hiked 1.7 miles to the base of Hickory Nut Falls, the location for the end of The Last of the Mohicans. It was some work but it was nice to experience the payoffs.

While hiking back Hendrix almost rolled right off of Adam's shoulders because he fell asleep up there. Scary, but he made it. :-)

On Tuesday we ventured to some unmarked waterfalls within about 9 miles of our cabin. We weren't confident to proceed once we arrived but we figured it out and were so happy we did. It was a fun and short hike back to these falls, Big Bradley Falls.

On Wednesday we checked out Looking Glass Falls. This area boasts a few different waterfalls, locations for parts of Hunger Games, so I hear. When there it becomes evident as to why it's called "Looking Glass" Falls -- there are small layers from rocks, flaked off and they float in the pools of water. . . . shining reflections of light. These falls are located in Pisgah National Forest.

We got rained out of doing Sliding Rock, so we trekked back to the cabin only to be about 1 mile from the cabin and to turned around to go back 20 miles because trees had fallen and knocked down power lines over the road. So we drove another 40-50 minutes around to Rt. 9 to come out by the base of the hill to our cabin and to be detoured AGAIN! And 20-25 minutes later of driving, we came up to another closure due to more trees and power lines down. BUT as we pulled up to the closure, the city worker informed us that they had just finished clearing the road and they were opening the road back up. 

We got to the cabin about 6:30 and the power was out. We weren't sure how long to expect it to be out, being in the middle of nowhere, so we settled in for the evening and started to tell stories and visit by candlelight when the power came back on around 9:30. The kids were slightly disappointed when the power came back on. :-) Our crazy day for sure!