70 Days: Adding To The List, Pisgah Inn Edition

This trip was in reality a business trip for the lovely and talented Lisa. The North Carolina Association of Municipal Clerks held its summer conference in Asheville, and since Lisa had a room anyhow, she wanted John and me to tag along. This was great for John and me as we got a vacation in Asheville, but we didn't get to see as much of Lisa as we'd have liked. Nor did Lisa get as much time to tour around as she's have liked. But Saturday afternoon afforded us time between lunch and a dinner reception to go adventuring as a family, so off we went.

Finally together on an adventure

Since John and I drove north on the Parkway on Thursday, we decided to take mom south, somewhere none of had yet been. It was raining as we left, but we were undaunted, because, I mean, why worry about something you can't change? We found a very nice visitor center, which everyone enjoyed despite my family mocking me on the way in over my love of informational signage and maps. Oh, and speaking of maps, I was woefully unprepared for this trip as I felt miserable the night before and didn't study my books or maps before we left. We survived.

Not only did we survive, we made a new discovery, the Pisgah Inn, the Peak of the Parkway. Well, it wasn't completely a surprise. I may have a little bit of a fascination with maps and my have (as John predicted on the way in) found one I didn't have in the visitor center. I saw on that map, while the boy drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway (how cool is THAT!!??!!) and I was in the back seat, the little dude-in-a-bed symbol on the Parkway and hoped we'd make it that far before having to turn around.

The clouds made it even more beautiful

The ride up was awesome. The rain stopped, or we drove above it, and we were treated to cloud-covered mountain views to the east and clear as a bell mountain views to the west. It was a pretty package and quite a treat to get such different views on one short trip. And there were tunnels, which are always fun.

Lisa took a few tunnel photos....

We finally did make it all the way to the Pisgah Inn, which sits plop on the side of the mountain at nearly 5,000 feet. All the rooms have porches or balconies looking out over the Pisgah National Forest, there's a restaurant and a general store. Rooms are not cheap, but nothing in Asheville or the vicinity is and at $155/night, it is really pretty reasonable considering the view.

So now we have unspecific yet very real plans to go stay there for at least a long weekend. Turns out the drive to the Asheville area isn't as long as we thought. We could leave here in the morning and be in Asheville by early afternoon. It's a totally do-able long weekend.

So, one more destination added to the list :-)

74 Days: Adventuring At Home, Town Creek Kayaking edition

I began a 4-day vacation today but don't leave for Asheville until tomorrow, so John and I took the opportunity to have a little adventure at home. We had planned to take the kayaks across the river and paddle out to Shark Tooth Island, but the marching band scheduled a practice for this afternoon, so with our time cut short we decided to stay in Brunswick County. The Brunswick Nature Park offers a great kayak launch on Town Creek and we'd never been there so off we went.

Brunswick Nature Park is a wonderful little spot with minimal facilities and a focus on the "nature" more than the "park." The park borders Town Creek, a smallish river that runs from Brunswick County's northern interior into the Cape Fear River, and the kayak launch is a perfect access point for the lower reaches of the creek. We had intentions of paddling all the way to the NC133 bridge over the creek, but didn't quite get that far on our 3 1/2 mile round trip (band camp beckoned, ya know).

A good kayak launch takes some of the adventure out of setting off....

The scenery was gorgeous. The creek is bordered by wetlands with stark, bare trees sticking up throughout. We saw two osprey nests, a bunch of ospreys, crabs and an alligator. Yes, an alligator. We both hoped to spot one, but the reality was a bit of a shock. We say a "thing" moving up the creek against the current. At first I thought it was schooling fish but it soon became clear it was one critter swimming very close to the surface and sticking a nose up occasionally. We thought it was a turtle, so we went to get a closer look. We did get a closer look alright, especially John, and saw that what we thought was a largish turtle was in fact just the head of an alligator. I couldn't guess the size of the thing, we really only saw about half its nose, but it wasn't a baby.

An osprey nest

We decided we'd let Mr. Gator go his own way and carried on downstream excited and more than a little unnerved. We discovered a tide data collection station, a fallen tree making a fun little bridge to paddle under and lots more (less exciting) wildlife on the rest of our journey. The paddle back to the dock was a little more strenuous than we had anticipated (darned tide), but we made it back, packed up, stopped for Dippin' Dots and made it home in plenty of time for John to head to band practice.

Tidal Data Station

All in all, it was just the start to a vacation I had wished for. I'm looking forward to the rest. Hope you don't mind the break from Disney, Pooh Sticks is going on the road!

Happy boy :-)