North Carolina Part 1...

Last weekend Jim had a wilderness medicine course out in western North Carolina. We were excited to head out there to the mountains as we hadn't visited that area yet. While Jim went to class each day the girls and I played. Unfortunately the first day it poured all day long and I began to seriously doubt my decision about coming along for the trip after being stuck in a hotel room all day with the girls. We did find a nearby ChicFilA with an indoor playground for lunch but were unable to find any other fun indoor activities in the area for kids. Luckily by the next day the rain had cleared and we had a great rest of the weekend. The next morning we headed out to a local apple orchard for a tractor tour of the orchard and then headed out to pick our own apples.

The girls had a blast running up and down the rows of apple trees. I think I've found my new favorite kind of apple: Honeycrisp. It is a relatively new type of apple, try one if you can find one.

After the apple orchard we met up with my buddy Tiffany that had driven up from Charlotte and headed out to Chimney Rock Park. It was a cool park with lots of fun rock formations to hike around using numerous sets of stairs with the highlight being going to the top of Chimney Rock. The girls both loved scrambling around on the rock.

The park is built up the side of the mountain so it provided great views of the mountains and nearby lake and river.

We also hiked out to a beautiful waterfall before heading home.