Last week my sister and I spent several days in the Blue Ridge Mountains “recharging our batteries.” We had good weather. It was warm, but not hot like it is in the piedmont. It was great to get back to the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains!

I tend to over-plan a trip. I enjoy planning all the details of a vacation so we won’t miss anything. It tends to drive other people crazy that I do this. They encourage me to lighten up.

Despite my propensity for making plans, I think I did a little better than usual this time. We had three full days to fill. I built in one day with no plans whatsoever. Alarm clocks were not set, and no plans were made for the day. We each enjoyed the day just resting, reading, and watching some TV. I’ve never planned an entire day of rest before on a trip. It felt good. There is hope for me yet!

Waterfalls & Wildflowers!

We both love waterfalls, so our agendas the other days included stops at Looking Glass Falls, Bridal Veil Falls, Dry Falls, and Upper Cullasaja Falls.  Looking Glass is my favorite of the waterfalls I’ve seen in North Carolina.

Dry Falls is my sister’s favorite. It is called dry falls because you can walk behind it without getting wet. Since there was more water coming over the fall than other times we’ve visited Dry Falls, it was louder than usual and we did get a bit damp from the mist. It was quite refreshing!

Seeing Bridal Veil Falls brought back fond memories of when we were children. At that time, US Highway 64 actually went under the waterfall. It was exciting as a child to ride under a waterfall in the family car. A few hundred feet of the old highway is closed to vehicular traffic now, but this offers an equally enjoyable experience as the ones of my childhood. You can walk a few feet back under the overhanging rock, much like at Dry Falls.

 

Upper Cullasaja Falls is easily missed, especially if you’re the driver and can’t take your eyes off the narrow, curvy road in Cullasaja Gorge.

Joe Pye Weed, Coreopsis, and a multitude of other wildflowers were blooming in abundance along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The picture we took of the flowers and the waterfalls don’t do them justice, but I’ll include several here. There were a host of butterflies enjoying the flowers nearly everywhere we stopped.

Judaculla Rock

We’d seen the four waterfalls before, but we’d never had the opportunity to see Judaculla Rock, near Cullowhee, North Carolina. There is a wide range of speculation about the history of this petroglyph-covered rock. I’ve seen figures suggesting that the petroglyphs may date back 3,000 to 5,000 years.

The pictures don’t do it justice. Too bad they’re stuck in my cell phone. You’ll probably never see them. I’m as disappointed as you are that I can’t get the photos downloaded.

I love driving the twisty-curvy mountain roads, so getting to do that last week was a wonderful change of pace for me.

Since my last blog post

I hope you have also had some relaxation time and perhaps a change of scenery for a few days.

Thank you for reading my blog post from last Monday, and a special thanks to those of you who left comments. It was a difficult post to write. I probably “stepped on some toes,” but the readers who were offended did not let me know. I didn’t know how the post would be received. It was a bit of a risk for me. By nature I’m not a risk-taker, although I did walk behind Dry Falls just as I have numerous times before.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read.

If you’re a writer, I hope you have productive writing time.

Thank you for reading my blog. You could have spent the last few minutes doing something else, but you chose to read my blog. I appreciate it! I welcome your comments.

Janet