Back to Black Mountain

About a week after AMA my husband and I decided we needed a change of pace and scenery, so we decided to spend a couple of days in Black Mountain, NC. I grew up in Black Mountain. It's a fairly small town in the mountains of western NC. It has a fairly artsy-craftsy feel down town. It is now home to my favorite fabric store in NC--Carolina Fabric Outlet--which used to be located Swannanoa. I'll have to post pics one week of the new fabric gems I found on this last visit there. It has a great selection of quilting fabrics, and their satin is amazing quality and very well priced. Anyways, I digress.

Aside from lazing around, playing video games, reading, and visiting (my brother and grandmother still live in that area), one of the more fun things we did on this trip was go hiking. Hiking used to be one of my favorite hobbies. In high school, I would be out in the woods most every day I wasn't at drama or band practice after school. The Black Mountain/Asheville area has some amazing places to hike. Here are the very few pictures I got from the hike--I totally meant to get a lot more pictures and share them on Tumblr, but that didn't really work the way I'd planned it.

This was at the start of the trip. You can see my dad here. The picture doesn't really do justice to how pretty the environment was. This area looks very similar to where The Hunger Games movie was filmed. Watching the movie was a little weird because so much of it looked like my old back yard. This is the start of the Graybeard trail in Montreat.

 

This is Ty and Logan (Luke wouldn't get in the picture, and Sophie was riding on my back in a back pack carrier and I was taking the picture, so...). This was maybe 1/3 of the way through with the hike? At least getting up the mountain. 

 This is the picture I got at the end of the hike. Again, the photo does not do justice to the view at all. The hike was generally fun. We got rained on a little bit on the way down; it didn't last long, but it was enough to soak everyone pretty thoroughly. Logan had to stop to pet every mushroom on (and off) the trail from the 1/3 mark (2nd picture) to the top and again going back down. XD He was absolutely fascinated by their texture. All told the hike was just shy of 10 miles round trip.