Fasting and Fires

Colorado has been consumed with fires this summer. Our stake fasted for moisture on October 18 and on October 26th, snow dumped on us. Apparently, that doesn't put the fires completely out, but it sure did help in the containment. I am grateful that God hears and answers prayers.

Happy Birthday Chris Part 2

Chris had his birthday while we were in North Carolina. We wanted to be able to celebrate as a family and the first open moment when we would all be together was Saturday morning October 24th for brunch at Le Peep. He even held off opening his presents until after we returned home. 

We are so grateful for Christopher. Life would be incredibly dull without him.

Her Braces are Gonna Be on for Awhile

It is always hard when your daughter walks out of the orthodontist's office and starts crying. Crying because the work they did hurt so much and crying because you were just told you would have braces for at least another year and were expecting to have them off in April. Neither made Kristen happy.

Our dentist retired or something and a new dentist coming in said that the bands Kristen was wearing on her teeth weren't working and she needed an "appliance" similar to the Herbst appliance (check it out here). She would likely have to wear it for another year. Not happy at all.

Boone - Day 6

Going home day. We tried to get out of the hotel earlier but weren’t too successful. We drove up toward the college and visited the Mast General Store. It was definitely geared toward tourists.

Chris surprised Kristen with a Krispy Kreme doughnut. She had been begging all weekend long.

From Boone we drove to a little town called Blowing Rock. The demographic for this small tourist town was about twenty to thirty years older than Chris and I. Kristen had hoped to find a t-shirt but most clothing items where in the $100 plus range. 

We had a little time before we needed to drive back to Charlotte, and walked around Bass Lake just outside of Blowing Rock. 

We thought we took an offshoot path toward an Apple Barn, but turns out we found the maze instead.

The Maze road would have taken us to the Apple Barn eventually, we just didn't have the map to reference our location and we didn't have the time to explore before we needed to drive to Charlotte for our flight.

Our flight home would get us in to Denver around 6 pm and Amy came to pick us up at the airport.

Hikes Along the Parkway - Day 5

We packed up our stuff and left Heavenly Way on Sunday morning for another day of exploring, listening to the Sunday Afternoon session of General Conference as we drove. 

Our first stop was a short half-mile hike at Craggy Gardens through rhododendron bushes to an overlook. We imagine it would be pretty awesome in the Spring when the flowers are blossoming. Already the tourist count was way up for this beautiful Sunday morning. 

Our second hike of the day was at Crabtree Falls. It was a 1.3 mile hike down to the falls and then another 1.3 miles back up. The trail was riddled with tree roots, so you pretty much had to keep an eye on the path at all times. Combine that with some mud-soaked areas as water trickled down the side of the mountain; we tried to be careful. 

We were fortunate to have such great weather. The falls were beautiful, definitely worthy of a name such as Bridal Veil or Majestic instead of Crabtree Falls. We tried to be patient with the people climbing on the rocks under the falls and getting in the frame of our shots. 

We lunched at one of the overlooks gazing over the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

Our third hike of the day at Linville Falls was quite busy with tourists. We wore masks more than we wanted to as we hiked up to a viewing area for the falls, hiked back down to a second overlook, and then down some more to the final viewing area. 

Chris had wanted to stop at the Viaduct and a hanging bridge on our way to Boone, NC but the roadway was lined with cars for miles in either direction. 

We continued on to Boone, home of Appalachian (pronounced App-a-latch-en) State College. Boone was a cute little town, but again, getting dinner was an exercise in patience. The waits at most places were extreme. We ended up at Chili’s, but not for the lack of trying to find someplace better.

Black Mountain - Day 4

Breakfast at the Airbnb was nice as we could spread out, keep milk and stuff in the fridge, and use the microwave. 

We weren’t too successful at leaving the hotel or Airbnb much before 10 am each day, but hopefully that would just help us stay on our Colorado time better when we returned home. 

Today we planned to explore Black Mountain, a cute little tourist town about ten minutes from the townhome. 

An old gas station.

The shops were cute and I even found a t-shirt to buy. Kristen and Chris sprung for some fudge. A sign advertised a Farmer’s market, so we walked a couple of blocks to check it out. Our big purchase there was some German pretzel knots. 

The quaint college town of Montreat merged with Black Mountain with a stone entrance that signified the beginning of one and the end of the other. 

We had lunch at Phil’s BBQ Pit. 

The plan was to drive through the mountain to Chimney Rock. Much to our dismay, there was hordes of traffic. We found each day that most of the tourists came out to play around noon and backed up traffic for hours in all directions. Chris didn’t want to be bothered with the traffic so we skipped the attractions and found and alternate route back to Asheville. 

We did a lot of wandering around by car for the rest of the day. What we should have done was a scavenger hunt in downtown Asheville, but we didn’t think of that until too late. Chris did find this cool artist area with many graffiti'd buildings.

Much to Kristen's dismay, I spotted two bears as we were driving through the hilly neighborhoods above Asheville. I about gave Chris a heart attack as he was driving along and I suddenly shouted. "Bear. Two Bears!"

Before dinner, we walked along the Reed Creek Parkway, skirting the University of North Carolina at Asheville. 

Since we knew the wait for popular restaurants would again be long, we ordered food to go from Outback Steakhouse. Even then, we waited almost an hour for our food to be ready. We drove back to the townhome and enjoyed a delicious meal. Followed by a couple loads of laundry for me.

Blue Ridge Parkway - Day 3

Happy birthday to Christopher! 

We left the hotel around 10 am to begin a day of exploring. We planned to drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway toward Asheville, but wanted to make a quick stop at the Mingus Mill just past the visitor center into the National Park. 

We noticed a number of elk in the field next to the visitor center today. Mingus Mill did not feature a water wheel but worked on water power to grind corn into meal.

Chris backtracked a little to get to the exit for the Blue Ridge Parkway and we were off for a day of sight seeing and leaf peeping with a hike or two along the way. 

Chris was so good to pull off at the Overlook Pullouts, the side of the road, by a tunnel...anywhere that was safe. 

As I was taking pictures at one of the overlooks, an older gentleman stopped and gave some suggestions for great places to go for some good Fall color in the area. Since we were just driving and enjoying the view today, we followed his advice and headed over to the Cataloochee Ski Resort above Maggie’s Village. 

We followed a steep road up the side of the mountain until we topped off at the resort. Kristen had lots of homework to keep her busy, and dutifully worked on it throughout the day. I got a few shots at the ski resort and the lodge a short way down the hill.

We had hoped for a warmer day, but similar to yesterday, the clouds descended around us and obscured our view. We stopped for a chilly lunch at Waterrock Knob and then took off on a hike on the Waterrock Knob Trail. Kristen opted out and stayed in the car to keep working on homework. 

The hike took off immediately up and up and up. It was a workout. Chris and I hiked first to a lookout, though there wasn’t much to see as we were in the clouds. 

From there, he wanted to go “off the beaten path” and find a plane crash he had read about online. I wasn’t thrilled about the muddy conditions nor the slippery roots we had to carefully climb over and around. After about a half an hour of descending into the forest, AND when people said it was just going to get muddier, I told Chris he could go on without me. He kept on going to the crash site and got some cool pictures. 

I hiked back to the lookout and was rewarded with the clouds receding and some pretty awesome photographs. This is what puts the “Smoky” in Great Smoky Mountains! 

I waited for Chris for a half an hour or so. We hiked back down to the parking lot to find Kristen happy to see us. She would NOT have enjoyed that hike. 

We continued on along the parkway until we arrived at Swannanoa, a small suburb outside of Asheville, North Carolina, where we would be staying. Chris had found a cute townhome in a cluster of four—Martin Valley Townhomes. Each unit was characterized by a color—red, blue, orange, and green. Ours was red and so tastefully decorated inside with black, white, and red colors. We settled in for a two-night stay and then headed out to explore and find dinner. 

Since it was Chris’ birthday, we gave him the option of choosing where to eat. We tried a couple of chain steak houses only to find that the wait was an hour and half long. Yikes! Too long. We drove around until we found a little Mexican place in a strip mall that looked good. We were hungry by then and ready to be done looking as well. Ay Caramba was the name. 

We were seated next to a large group also celebrating a birthday. They were the twangiest bunch of people. We had fun listening to them. Chris opted not to tell the waiter it was his birthday after he watched them sing to a lady and then push the cake in her face. Instead, we stopped at Ingles grocery chain and found him a piece of German chocolate cake. We needed groceries for the next couple of days as well. We FaceTimed with Misha for a short time. Both she and Amy were at home being adults and working.