Covid Tripping to NC

 Last spring I had a trip planned to go hiking in the Asheville area of NC with my childhood friend, Leslie.  (Okay, it seems really weird to call her a childhood friend since I'm sure we much more mature than mere children even if we were like 11 and 12 years old...). She is also one of the few people who actually read my blog. HA!  But that trip got canceled due to the Covid pandemic and we waited and waited...finally tentatively rescheduling for just after Labor Day.  And actually went!!  

Most reports were showing the airports were empty (true enough illustrated in the first pic below in Detroit), Delta wasn't filling all the seats and we were going to be hiking - so not exactly in the thick of the population.  We took all the necessary precautions including plenty of hand sanitizer, Clorox wipes, masks, etc.

First stop was Charlotte since that's where we flew in.  Not much open there so we walked around a mostly deserted city on a Tuesday.

That included a really old cemetery with some ancient headstones.

The next day we headed up towards Brevard where we had a cabin booked for a few nights.  In looking for a breakfast place, we ironically ended up at Tryon - the huge new horse park that I had wanted to go to for a show!!  The place is amazing.

There are cool horse sculptures and more arenas than I could count.  There is one in the background behind this horse statue.

This is the main grandstand arena.  Unbelievable!  There are stands and ringside tables and suites and oh my it's so nice!

Next stop was the famous Chimney Rock.  It doesn't look like all that much from this angle but we had already driven a good way up the mountain then took a shuttle up some more followed by a 7 story elevator ride!

The view was pretty amazing.  And Leslie was a good sport about modeling for me!

This angel gives a much better perspective of how crazy Chimney Rock is just jutting out of the side of this mountain.  I still want to know how people got up there before they put the stairs in...

This rock formation isn't as big but it's still pretty cool - called Devil's Head.

As we climbed up the clouds started to break up giving us some blue sky!

The flag wasn't up when we were actually on the rock but they put it up when we were up higher - so it was kinda cool to look down to see it going up!

Looking back up at the rock is kinda scary to see it just sort of perched on top like that!  

Next stop, in a sprinkle of rain, was the Lake Lure Flower Bridge. It's an old bridge over a narrow part of the lake alongside the NEW bridge that has been turned into a garden. It's pretty cool!

After this, we headed to our little cabin which would be home for the next 3 nights!