Day 22 - Grandfather Mountain

 

Saturday, May 28, 2022

Weather - Cloudy, with a high of 76F and low of 54F up on the mountain

Steps - Shaun:  10,089, Shannon:  6,431 (Shan took her watch off half way through the day)

Varmints - more goats, more bunnies, a chipmunk, a Blue Jay (our first of the trip), a hummingbird (also our first), and some animals in a wildlife sanctuary (2 bull elks, 2 black bears, 1 cougar, 1 otter, and 2 bald eagles)

It ended up that today's only excursion was to Grandfather Mountain. Shannon is a bit under the weather, so we cut our day short in order to rest up, pack, and be ready for the 10-hour drive home.

Grandfather Mountain was quite a bit east of Asheville (as you can see on the map), but Shaun had read about it online and thought it would be a cool way to end our trip. From the park's website: "Grandfather Mountain is a place of amazing biodiversity and scenic beauty that towers 5,946 feet above northwest North Carolina. A part of the United Nations’ Southern Appalachian Biosphere Reserve, the mountain is estimated to be 300 million years old — with certain rock formations dating back 1.2 billion years."

It was interesting because we actually had to book tickets ahead of time to be allowed to go on the mountain. As a prize, we received a CD that guided us through all the sites on the mountain. The first place we stopped at was a picnic area (with bathrooms) and a 1/4-mile trail through the forest. They have very good signage that speaks to kids and suggests good ways to protect the environment, which I thought was very clever.

Next stop was a pair of rocks called Split Rock and The Sphinx which are over 600 million years old and actually predate the mountain. It's hard to tell from these pictures, but The Sphinx actually does look like the Sphinx in Egypt, but it was formed millions of years before the manmade one. Pretty cool, huh?

The parking lot we used for Split Rock and The Sphinx connected to the third stop on the tour, the nature center, café, and gift shop. We headed there for lunch and then visited the gift shop, where Shaun got another interesting jelly combination—Balsamic Basil Plum Jam. Doesn't that sound delicious?

We had originally decided not to visit the nature center since we both hate to see animals in captivity, but Shaun changed her mind and decided to see the few animals that had been rescued here. There were two bull elks with giant racks that were also molting their winter coat. Next were two cougars, only one of which we could see up in a tree (we didn't get a picture of him, though). Next was a river otter who was scratching himself on a log, so he thwarted Shannon's efforts to capture a picture of him at every turn. Next came an enclosure with two bald eagles, and finally were two enclosures for the bears. We happened to be at the rail for the bears when the keeper started a talk about them, so we had a front row seat. Unfortunately, only one of the four bears came out to eat her treat of walnuts hidden in gas cans (so that she had to work for it). Her name was Flower, and she was really roly-poly. She actually ate the walnuts in two of the bins and peed on the third one, so the missing bears are going to be bummed when they make it out of hiding. The last enclosure was their oldest bear (she is 28 years old), and she was just hanging out close to the wall, so we didn't get any pictures of her.

After leaving the nature center, we proceeded up the mountain, which was really steep with a couple of significant switchbacks. Also, they were controlling how many cars went up, so we had to wait for a few minutes to get to the top. Once we parked, we walked up a bunch of steps to the access point for the Mile-High Suspension Bridge. It is named this because it is actually 5,280 feet above sea level, but the bridge is actually "only" about 80 feet from the ground, but trust me, it was plenty high!

After crossing the bridge with a bunch of other people, we had the "opportunity" to climb over a bunch of rocks to get to a higher overlook that gave a 360-degree view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was cool, but Shaun got nervous around all the crazy people in their flip-flops with their phones held out not watching where they were going. She just knew that she was going to get pushed off the side of the mountain, so we didn't stay in that area long.

We worked our way back off the bridge, by which point the crowd had cleared significantly, so we checked out the Top Shop (the gift shop) and then left the way we came. We decided to go back to the cabin rather than going to Black Mountain, as we had intended, because Shannon wasn't feeling great, and we wouldn't have had a ton of time there. It was just as well because we had our packing to do, and we even got time for a little nappy-poo!

After dinner, we took one more set of pictures that showed the far mountain peaks with a bit of a pink tinge, so we decided that was the perfect way to end this blog entry. Tomorrow we'll be heading home, and with that, our trip will officially come to an end!