The Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina

With a little bit of help from American Airlines and Budget Rent a Car, we found ourselves teleported from rural Oklahoma to the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. The trip started with a nostalgic tour of Chapel Hill, home of the University of North Carolina, where Fernne has lived for five years and Garth was born. But though the sign said "Chapel Hill", the crowded, over-built, and unlovely city that had swallowed the once charming southern city looked nothing like the place that Fernne had lived. We fled.

Our original destination was Asheville, a popular tourist and retirement destination at the western edge of the state, deep in the Appalachian Mountains where both the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Appalachian Trail inter-twine. But when our trusty iphone disclosed that Asheville has itself metamorphosed into a megalopolis, we followed our instincts and pulled off in the still rural town of Black Mountain. We found a delightful funky cabin built on the banks of the Flat River, and used this as a base to explore some of the peaks and trails that penetrate into these gentle but relatively high mountain ranges - topping out at about 6500 feet. The deciduous forests and dense rhododendron under-story are quite a contrast to the gnarly Cascades, and the signs of 500 years of European exploration and exploitation are refklected in the remnants of ancient logging railroads and mining operations.

On our last day in this part of the Blue Ridge, we found a waterfall - Linville Falls - that almost rivaled Palouse Falls from the first day of our explorations. And then we finally got to walk up to a small peak on the Appalachian Trail itself, that 2000 + mile trail that runs up to Maine and is the eastern companion to the Pacific Crest Trail that has been such an important part of our lives for decades. These three days have been a very calming and peaceful interlude in what at times has felt like a bit of a frenetic escapade. And these gentle, old mountains suit our current stage of life.