Day 9 – North Carolina

Well rested and ready for action! Today’s adventures saw us head up and down some very windy roads to a place called Grandfather Mountain. We had planned to go to the very top at 5945 ft. The weather however, had other plans, with bitter winds and a crisp layer of ice and snow all around, the top was closed after they recorded 70mph winds. This little hiccup in the plan did not stop us and we had a fabulous day none the less. About halfway up the mountain is a small museum, housing information about the local plants and animals found all around the mountain. Alongside this was information of the gemstones also found here and legendary explorers of the area.

Also at this point, is a huge wedge of rock aptly named Split Rock, due to the massive (you guessed it) split in the rock. We stopped to take some very finger numbing pictures before heading to see the animals!

I was rather intrigued to see if any of the animals were out in this weather. The bears were hibernating (clever bears!) so unfortunately we did not get to see them, but we did get to see a good few others. We saw some eagles, who gracefully flew around their enclosure for us, a couple of elegant deers and two very playful otters.

The otters dived into the water, at which point we both commented on how we’d rather them than us, given that it’s still -6 out. These temperatures seem hard to understand as it’s such a bright day today, it’s actually the first time since arriving, that we’ve really seen much past the clouds. The highest temperature we’ve seen recently is 3c. As you can imagine we are looking forward to heading down towards the warmer southern states!
Enough of me rambling on about the weather!

We decided to head back down the mountain, on our decent we had a spectacular encounter with wild deer (no jokes about Ben and the deer in Texas ;-P ).  About six or so deer sprang out of the bushes and bounced across the road in front of us! A majestic moment that I managed to capture on film!

A fabulous ending to the visit! Now just the terrifying and spectacular windy journey back down the mountain in search of a place to rest for the night.