A Weekend in the Mountains - Part 2

If you haven't read the first part of this, you might want to start here.

There isn't a lot open in small towns on Sunday, so Sunday morning we drove up to Grandfather Mountain.  Growing up in North Carolina, I had been there several times, but not in years, and Rob had never been. 

He actually smiled for this one!

They have several types of wild animals who for various reasons can no longer live in the wild.  We timed our visit right because we were able to see "enrichment" activities for several of the animals and that means they came up close where you could really see them.

Bald eagles

Male bear

Female bear

Female cougar

Male cougar

We drove on up to the top of the mountain to the swinging bridge.  The bridge is not nearly the frightening thing that it was when I was a kid.  It seems to me that it's been stabilized a great deal since then, but maybe it's just my imagination.  It was extremely windy on top of the mountain.  I mean push you around the parking lot, hang on to the rails so you don't get blown off, windy, so we decided not to cross the bridge.  We were worried less about the bridge than we were about the open rocks on the other side where there's nothing to hold on to.  So we were cautious adults.  Hey, we live in NC, it's not like we can't ever go back!

Yeah some people were crazy enough to hang out on top of that big rock in the wind, but not me!

After a stop for lunch, we drove out to Penland to check out the school.  Classes had just ended last week, so we just drove around and checked things out.  The school has a little different focus than the John C. Campbell Folk School, which we've been to a couple of times, but it seems like a nice place.

We stopped at Barking Spider Pottery near the school and bought a new piece for our ledge.  I didn't think to take a picture of it before I put it up on the ledge, so sorry for the crappy picture. 

It's the one on the right.

We drove in to Burnsville for an early dinner at a restaurant we like there, which doesn't seem to have a website, but it's called In the Garden. Then we made our way back to the Inn for the night.

Monday morning we got up and headed home.  All in all it was a nice weekend away and I look forward to going back to the area again and hopefully someday calling it home.