After some rain-shortened days during our stay at River Bend campground, we still had some really fun things left on our list of things to see--and we only had one more day! So we designed a loop drive that would encompass as many things as possible, and left bright and early towards Brevard, North Carolina. Our first stop was at the Brevard Community College, where we got our first look at the white squirrels. We have already written about them, but we include just one picture today. When we spotted that first white squirrel, we knew it was going to be a great day!
The Pisgah National Forest starts right outside of Brevard, and they have a nice Education Center. We got there in time for snake feeding this morning, The milk snake was just snacking on his breakfast of baby mice when we went through.
Next door is a North Carolina state fish hatchery. Mark is looking down at one of the large tanks where they raise the trout that will be released into the cold-water public streams and rivers.
The tanks are completely full of these nice-sized trout that will make fishermen happy all over the state of North Carolina.
Of course, today's itinerary will include waterfalls. This is Looking Glass Falls, with water flowing 60 feet over its sheer rock face. It is an easy stop right along Highway 276 that winds its way through the national forest. Because it is only a short walk from the road, the viewing area was packed with vacationers so we didn't stay long.
We prefer less crowded waterfalls, so we went up the road to Moore Cave Falls. This one takes a 1.4 mile round-trip hike that is steep and rocky. That tends to dissuade the majority of tourists, so that means that we had the place almost to ourselves.
You can still see Mark behind the flow of the waterfall. With the rains of this week, we are hoping that the drought in this area is subsiding. But the trickle of this fall seems to be an indicator that they still need more rain. But the reason to make this hike is not for the water, but for the fascinating cliff face behind the falls. We thought it was interesting to find that the 50 acres surrounding this fall was purchased by the Vanderbilts in 1891 for the whopping sum of $155.
Our next stop was "The Cradle of Forestry." Part of the national park system, this stop was free with our annual park pass. Established in 1898, it is the first forestry school in the United States, and young men came here to take classes to become our country's first forest rangers. They took classes including silviculture (whatever this is?), surveying, tree and plant identification, zoology, and law. Denisa is sitting in their classroom where they learned the new concept that "trees could be cut and the forest preserved at one and the same time."
The dorms the students lived in were abandoned cabins from families that had sold their land to George Vanderbilt. The dorms had nicknames like "Hell Hole," indicating they weren't ideally furnished. But this cute little cabin in the woods was the home of one of the rangers and his family.
The forestry school was started by the Vanderbilts, who began buying up thousands of acres of forest land around their famous property at Biltmore. They became concerned about the ugly results of over-cutting the natural forest, and saw a need for educating the public about conservation. So this first forestry school was founded and funded by the Vanderbilt family. On the Cradle of Forestry property was a typical garden of the 1800's, planted with heirloom seeds that would have been used in that era. One of the rangers was pulling weeds while we were visiting, and she invited us to sample the kale and lettuce that are abundant right now. (The hard-working young ranger bent over the weeds should not be confused with the overstuffed scare crow lounging at the fence in the background. Neither should be confused with Denisa in the foregroud.)
But Mark's favorite part of the day was not the one-mile Biltmore forestry campus trail, or the museum at this stop. We were wandering through the new forestry education center, where delicious smells were wafting from a classroom right around noon. Mark commented to one of the supervisors that they needed to close that door because it was making everyone hungry. That's when he invited us in to eat lunch. The group had just finished and left, and they were going to have to throw away all that delicious bar-b-q, baked beans, and cole slaw if it wasn't eaten. We were happy to help them "clean up," and the unexpected meal was great fuel for the hiking for the rest of the day.
We drove north through the rest of the Pisgah National Forest until it ran into our next destination of the day--the famous Blue Ridge Parkway.
The Blue Ridge Parkway stretches 469 miles along the ridge of the Southern Appalachian Mountains from Virginia to North Carolina. This day we drove from mile post 412 through 424, and took several hikes as the parkway took us to higher overlooks. This is a picture from the elevation of 4,700 feet, showing the many layers of the Blue Ridge Mountains around us.
This is one of the more famous overlooks, that frames "Looking Glass Dome" with some of the spring wildflowers still blooming at this elevation.
Here's a closer look at Looking Glass Dome, which became a visual icon for pioneers in this area.
We knew that this was a popular overlook, but there was too many cars here for the number of overlookers. That's when we found out that this was the best place to park for the hike to Skinny Dip Falls. About a half-mile down a steep and rocky path we came to the multiple levels of waterfalls and pools. We were glad to see that everyone had swim suits on, and was not taking the name of the falls too literally.
We were about the only ones in hiking boots instead of barefoot at this stop. Since we weren't staying for the swimming and the diving, we took one more picture and hiked back to the parking lot.
It's 4:00 in the afternoon, and we have made it to yet another waterfall along the Blue Ridge Parkway. We stopped in at the Graveyard Fields Overlook, and hiked the mile to the Lower Falls and back. It's a 55-foot-wide cascading fall with stair steps between pools and boulder fields.
This is a local favorite, and we found that almost everyone else is wearing swim suits and enjoying the cool water coming off the falls. This waterfall also has a reputation for being especially beautiful in the fall when the trees around it turn their autumn colors.
Normally, we would have also taken the Graveyard Fields Trail hike, but we have one more item on our "things to do list" and this is our last day in this area. So we drove on down the Blue Ridge Parkway to the trail head for the Sam Knob trail.
After hiking through green tunnels underneath thick canopies of trees, it was almost startling for us to find ourselves in the middle of a tree-less valley with wildflowers.
We are hiking to the Sam Knob summit, looking over all the tree-covered Blue Ridge Mountains around us.
We thought it was curious that this mountain in the foreground had a definite line where the darker evergreens changed to the lighter green deciduous forest. Again, this is going to be a beautiful place to be in the fall.
We are at one of the higher elevations on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and we can tell it from the flowers that are blooming. We haven't seen mountain laurel blooming like this since we were in the Georgia mountains a month ago.
We also saw these flame azaleas that we thought only bloomed in the spring--certainly not in July!
The other sure sign of the higher altitude are the blueberries. After eating fully ripe blueberries just yesterday, we see that these bushes are just now blooming with tiny green berries still forming.
It's 5:30 p.m., and we have made it up the 2.2 mile hike to the summit of Sam Knob. Marge was right again, it was a great hike! This whole day has been filled with wandering into God's wonders!
From the top, we can see a 360-degree view, so this is the other 180 degrees of what we could see from the top.
After all the hiking we've done today, it seemed time to lay back and rest for a while. Mark got his worn hiking boots in the picture from his reclining position. We've put a lot of miles on those boots since we retired a year and a half ago! He is definitely due for a new pair.
We made it back to that lovely valley, with a shot of Sam Knob behind Denisa.
It's a great place to chase the butterflies enjoying the valley's wildflowers, so of course Denisa did just that.
We're now back on the Blue Ridge Parkway, going through some of its tunnels. There are 26 tunnels along the parkway, with 25 of those in North Carolina. We traveled through several of those today.
Next thing on the list is the Devil's Courthouse overlook over the Balsam Valley. We arrived at the viewpoint, and normally would jump out of the car to start the half-mile trail to the top. But that's when Denisa looked at her Vivo Smart that registers the number of her steps each day. By this time we had hiked over 11 miles, and we just couldn't talk our legs into making one more ascent.
So we had to settle for a zoomed-in picture of the Devil's Courthouse. Its sinister appearance has spawned folk lore tales that are centuries old, but for now we are leaving the devil behind and driving back to the motor home.
We left home at 9 a.m. and didn't get back until 8 p.m. We drove 85 miles in the car, and hiked 11 miles on our very tired legs. Our last day in this area truly felt like a marathon--we saw some of the best of the Blue Ridge Mountains and hiked our legs till they refused to go further. Who knew that retirement could be so beautiful and so exhausting?
Glad you got to "see" the Blue Ridge. We drove it a few years ago and the fog was so thick we could barely see the road. The pictures are beautiful. We are going to try it again this Fall.
ReplyDelete