Road trip to the mountains!

We decided to take a day trip to the mountains to visit some neat small towns, lounge in a waterfall, and enjoy the Blue Ridge Parkway. We started by loading out two dogs in our CRV and heading up to Boone, NC, a unique little town up in the mountains. The downtown is actually a busy, hopping place. It was a nice surprise to see so many stores, shops, artists, street performers, etc. It probably helps that there is a major college (Appalachain State University) in the town. Anyway, we had lunch at a streetside cafe and tied the dogs to the chairs while we ate:
We then headed over a series of waterfalls. At the lower end of the falls, Kylie jumped right in and started swimming like a crazy dog! She stirred up all the water and had fun fetching sticks in the current under the little fall:

After we all got wet in the falls, we headed towards Blowing Rock, a town with lots of B&Bs, and a downtown so crowded we had no chance of finding parking and just kept driving. Some other time we'll stop there though! We headed up towards the Blue Ridge Parkway and passed a neat sign:

What's wierd is that we kept driving much higher, the Blue Ridge Parkway had elevations of over 5000'.

We pulled off and got some nice pictures at some overlooks:

We then found a cave off the side of the road and check it out. Here is Jim before he went in:

It is amazing how many watefalls there are, we passed some and decided to pull over at one and check it out: Then some storms blew in out of nowhere in and it started raining! It was neat seeing the clouds from the overlooks:

Later on we passed a lake and Kylie took some time to stare out over the water and imagining splashing around! (Or contemplating her life). Notice the canoe out there on the lake, I think Kylie really just wanted to swim out and jump in the boat!

Amber enjoyed the scenery too!

Then we headed home! It was a fun day trip!