North Carolina, Part 2...

The following day was Sunday so we headed to church in the morning after dropping Jim at his class. Afterwards, I wasn't real keen on spending all afternoon in the hotel room with the girls so we had some lunch and then headed along the windy mountain roads to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Upon reaching the parkway, we followed it south to Mt. Mitchell State Park. The drive along the parkway and up the mountain were beautiful with excellent vistas of the mountains and the beginning of the fall colors.

We arrived near the top of Mt. Mitchell hoping to make the short hike up the last 100 or so feet to the summit but they were constructing a new observation deck at the summit so it was off-limits. So we almost reached the summit of the tallest US mountain east of the Mississippi but not quite.

That evening we enjoyed a great dinner outside along the banks of the Catawba River with the rest of Jim's classmates. The following morning we headed up the mountains to Linville Gorge to do some rock climbing before heading home. We spent a lot of time hiking trying to find specific climbs as the guidebook wasn't great but finally found some good routes just not what Jim was looking for. Whitney had a blast climbing but had difficulty coming down so instead hitched a ride down clipped in with Jim which she thought was great. The girls were both flithy from all their scrambling but had fun and we enjoyed getting some climbing in.