NORTH CAROLINA

We had a great time visiting our family at my cousin Johnny's wedding near Asheville, NC on the weekend of Oct 11-13! Since I am a State worker, I had monday of Columbus Day off. We flew out Friday evening, went to the wedding on Saturday, explored western North Carolina on Sunday and Monday, and flew back Tuesday moring and went to work. What a whirl wind weekend!!!


We were so busy at our own wedding in August that we didn't get to spend much time visitng our family, so we were really excited to spend time, gossip, have some drinks, etc! Grandpa Harper thinks so highly of Colleen, he even asked her for a dance!



After the wedding, we went camping for a few days and explored around the moutains and foliage. We camped in Pisgah National Forest

We hiked up a trail to Looking Glass Peak. Here is the trail head, a view from the trail, and a view at the peak:

After we hiked the trail, we stopped by this waterfall. We spotted a koala bear dressed in red in the tree on the left:



















We drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway and saw foliage in the mountains, here are some pics from it:
















Here is Colleen running on a trail!!!

On Monday we went white water rafting on the French Broad River. Normally they have Class III rapids but due to the 2-year drought the water level was low and the rapids were tame. When the guide pulled us off to stop for a break, there was a 12' rock to jump off of into a slow part of the river, the water felt really good! It was very rural on this river, it was about 30 minutes north of Asheville and very little development visible at all from the river. Since we couldn't bring our digital camera on the raft because it obviously isn't waterproof, we don't have any pictures of it, just this picture of the river as we drove away from Hot Springs, NC. Our rafting guide had lived in the San Diego area. And of the 6 people on the raft, 5 of the 6 were from southern California.

After rafing we had dinner, dessert, and coffee in downtown Asheville. It is quite the little artsy liberal mountain town for being in the south. We had a great time on the trip and we were sad to fly back to work on Tuesday morning! We woke up at our campsite at 5:15 am to catch our 7am flight back to San Diego. Unfortunatley we were at work in San Diego by 2pm and we worked 6 hours. Uggg. We had fun visiting our family and exploring around such a beautiful part of the country!