North Carolina pt. 2

Another time of taking way too long to complete a thought :)

   So, here we go, my (with a little of Graham’s input) overall thoughts of North Carolina. When planning this trip, the most minimal planning of a lifetime, Graham decided to keep it simple by visiting: Chimney Rock, Asheville and Linville. These cities are rather close together, about 45 minutes from CR-Ashe and Ashe-Lin, so it kept us on a easy quest.

    We left late Wednesday, the 22^nd of October, so we could wake up the morning of my birthday in Columbia, South Carolina. The 4 hour drive didn't put us off in the least as we listened to the audiobook of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. After waking the sleeping lobby-man, who apparently lives in the hotel, we were in for the night. Thursday morning Graham and I celebrated my birthday with my request to visit the Columbia LDS Temple! It was the first time either of us had ever seen it, and it was quite a surprise. Barely 10,000 feet, this is one of the smallest temples in the world  (but not the smallest). This little temple was nestled in a side street very close between a few homes. It was just so cute and tiny! Unfortunately, it was so small that we had a difficult time getting it into one picture, mostly due to the fact that if we stepped away we would be overtaken by trees. But still! Darling. (And one less temple off of our list!) 

    After we left the temple, we made a beeline for Chimney Rock, North Carolina. Since we had made our temple trip early enough, we had plenty of daylight when we arrived. We were given a map of all of the things to do and we selected 4 of the 5 walking trails and left. We really, really enjoyed our time here. At first we hiked up the rock and stared at the utterly magnificent view, seriously, check out the first picture below on the left, it was gorgeous! Then we followed the advice of a guide and walked to the most anticlimactic waterfall in all of existence, it took about 15 minutes of an uphill climb to get there and as right behind us a little boy reached the view of the waterfall and said incredulously, "this is it?" Kids, man, they're honest. The remainder of our time we trekked over everywhere else to enjoy the views provided by this place. In all, I would give it a solid 5/5 stars for having everything a good national park should: scenic destinations, wildlife and a variety of easy and more difficult trails.

       Leaving Chimney Rock we drove for, maybe, 40 minutes to get to Asheville, where we would be staying for two nights. As soon as we arrived we drove straight to the downtown area. There was no parking anywhere except for a parking garage, so we begrudgingly gave a man with a suit coat and camouflage shorts our $6 to actually get somewhere. We started off walking around for about 10 minutes until, at my insistence over the cold, we entered the Japanese steakhouse we planned to eat at. Our dinner was successful and as soon as it was finished Graham was just itching to see what was in downtown Asheville, so we wandered around for a little bit longer, but at this time we didn't have a jacket and the weather was about 50 degrees (keep in mind the night before we were in 80 degrees Florida weather). So we popped into a recommended French Broad Chocolates, after all it was my GOLDEN BIRTHDAY (23 on the 23rd), for a birthday treat! I snagged a caramel creme brulee and all was right with the world. After this delicious expedition we wrapped up our first day of vacation.

    Also, Listi sent me a message on my birthday, which I sadly didn't see until after my birthday! She just happened to have a training online for something to do with her missionary work, so she was slightly disobedient (she spelled it wrong in her message, ha) by emailing me!

That's it for now, time to wrap up some homework. :)