Wednesday was Noah's birthday. We spent the morning, as usual, feeding chickens and went to feed the cow. The boys were scared of the cow. We picked up, packed up, bought a souvenir hat and shirt and tried honeycomb and started our drive on the last part of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We drove from Asheville to Cherokee on the Blue Ridge with a short detour to see Soco Falls, right near the end of the parkway. The parkway was beautiful and this was also the highest part. We kept thinking we would get to the highest point, until we realized it was actually near the end. And it went up and down several times, so it was quite a drive - a little nerve wracking. We got out for a brief pitstop at Mt. Pisgah. We hiked on the trail a little ways but didn't plan on hiking the whole thing because it was quite rocky and we weren't sure if the boys could handle the length. Then, we got out at Waterknob Rock. Andrew worked on finishing his Junior Ranger booklet and then we did the hike. Boy, was it a lot more strenuous than I was expecting! But it was fun and beautiful. The first couple switchbacks were paved and we were huffing and puffing on those, but not as much as some other people - they must have quit because we never passed them again. Noah made me carry him most of the first half, but when it got to the rocky steps, he liked it much better. A big chunk of the path was lined with wildflowers that the bees LOVED, so there were bees everywhere. Tried to go faster on that part. There were quite a few gnats at the top, but not as bad as other part of the mountains that we went on. Noah, Andrew and I hiked together and Katsu and Seth & Logan hiked in front of us and much faster. I really enjoyed this hike - 11th highest mountain on the east coast. Afterwards, we went to the visitor center and Andrew got his Junior Ranger badge and we got a swiss army knife for Andrew to learn whittling in Cub Scouts this year.
The rest of the drive was lots of up and down with the kids napping and watching movies. We stopped at Soco Falls - Katsu and the Logan and Seth went and saw it. He took them down pretty far holding onto ropes! It looked kind of scary. Andrew and I stayed in the car with sleeping Noah. We went and looked at the falls second, but quickly as it was starting to rain. It rained pretty hard the last 5 miles or so of the Parkway. But Katsu was a champ and drove well and we got to the end in Cherokee and went up to the visitor center for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Right there, we saw lots of elk - all over by the visitor center. We couldn't figure out why all the cars were stopped, but then we saw them. There was like 20 or so. Lots of wild turkey, too. We stopped at the visitor center and got a junior ranger book and some maps and took pictures of the elk and then drove to our rental with a stop at the grocery store on the way (Noah screamed his head off so much I had to take him out). The rental was great - two bedrooms, a huge screened in porch and a little kitchen. Just a 5 minute drive to the Fontana Lake, which we went to every day. And a firepit that we loved to cook marshmallows and smores in.
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