Chimney Rock NC

We needed to make a trip to Asheville to get some gardening supplies. I'll post more about that later. Friday was also our 11 year anniversary. So we turned the trip into a little sight-seeing vacation.

As you can see from the picture above, there was not much of a view when we first got to Chimney Rock. We posed on Vista Rock but we were laughing because it was literally surrounded by a cloud. There could have been anything (we were imagining a beach, aliens, big city) on the other side of the fence. We couldn't see anything.

We stopped for a rest in the Opera Box to get another view of the cloud.

We hiked our way up to the highest point and it was beginning to clear up. We posed for an anniversary picture:) Photo by Ellen.

On our way down the mountain we stopped at the Chimney again and we were excited to see the clouds had parted a bit and we could see Lake Lure and the village.

We hiked down another trail over to the waterfalls.

Arianna found a baby salamander. Ellen caught it and wanted a picture for our nature journal.

Looking up at the falls. They were so tall I couldn't get a good picture of it from the bottom.

They found a crawfish eating a dead snake.

They were on the edge of the falls. We had a great view from this point--huge waterfall on one side and the valley on the other.

Here's another view of the mountains on the other side of the valley from the trail on our way back.

 

Here is a view of Chimney Rock from the gift shop and parking lot.

 

The view of the lake from the same spot.

 

 On our way home we made a wrong turn and instead of going back through Hendersonville we realized we were on the way to Black Mountain (which is the opposite direction). So to make the best of our mistake, we stopped in downtown Asheville to eat at one of our favorite restaurants The Laughing Seed.