Our Blue Ridge Mountain Tales & Adventures
I have so many fond childhood memories of our many, many Blue Ridge mountain "adventures"...
It all started with Parkway road trip adventures with Mawmaw and Pawpaw... Saturday morning breakfast, and then we hopped onto the parkway in Blowing Rock (after seeing the Blowing Rock and talking about the legend first of course). I still remember the giddy feeling. Wearing our moccasins, our maps and toy film cameras in hand, we stopped at almost every overlook or scenic view. I remember the awe and wonder (and a bit of nervous thrill) of driving over the Linn Cove Viaduct and then hiking the trails below it. We headed northward to see the breathtakingly beautiful Shenandoah Valley..... talked about the haunting and mysterious Brown Mountain Lights...then we went up to Ghost Town in the Sky over toward Maggie Valley...
As we grew older, got our licences, we made regular visits to Blowing Rock, and of course Chimney Rock Park....
Funny story about Chimney Rock.... when I was younger, my cousin, sister, and I saw a recorded for TV version of The Last of the Mohicans that was recorded to VCR tape. We became OBSESSED with this movie, watched it over and over and over... and of course... obsessed with Daniel Day Lewis (okay, I admit I did have a large poster of him in my bedroom LOL)....
And so... when we found out that the movie was filmed in Chimney Rock, NC we were beyond excited. I can still hear the soundtrack music that we played on repeat as we pulled into the town of Chimney Rock. We had some fun (and rather silly times) up at Chimney Rock!
The three of us, my cousin, sister, and I, were always venturing up to the Blue Ridge Mountains in my old Jeep Cherokee, blasting our mountain road trip music... always hitting up the roadside gift shops, buying new moccasins, getting candy from the historic Mast General Store in Valle Crucis, NC, going on hikes, and had a little too much fun at Mystery Hill. Of course, can't forget memories of the Woolly Worm Festival in Banner Elk, NC. People would come from all over to enter their pet Woolly Worms into the race... yes, I said race...
"So since 1978, the residents of the village nestled between the Carolina’s largest ski resorts have celebrated the coming of the snow season with a Woolly Worm Festival. They set aside the third weekend in October to determine which one worm will have the honor of predicting the severity of the coming winter; and they make that worm earn the honor by winning heat after heat of hard-fought races – up a three-foot length of string." - Woollyworm.com
Mom used to have a booth there when she did wood working and tole painting art. I still remember all of the people carrying around their pet Woolly Worms in their cute little cages. It was hilarious and so much fun!
I actually have ancestors who are from the Blowing Rock/Boone area, pretty close to where Tweetsie Railroad is. This is the grave of Green Harstin, one of my ancestors, who is buried up on the hill across from Tweetsie...
And then when I met Jason, of course we always loved spending the day in the high country...
I'll never forget how relaxing it was to just sit on these rocks together at Grandfather Mountain...
(Look how different we looked back then!!)
....and I remember telling Jason about how we used to come up to Chimney Rock as kids and how we looked for the places where Daniel Day Lewis stood when The Last of the Mohicans was filmed there. LOL
We have always loved the town of Blowing Rock and also the Flat Top Manor, or "Moses Cone" as we call it...
Can't forget our day trips to the lovely Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC....
And our adventures in Valle Crucis and discovery of the legendary Mast Farm Inn....
Here's a great video from Visit North Carolina on "America's Favorite Drive", the Blue Ridge Parkway...