A Father's Day walk in the woods.....

We headed to the hills again, this time to another waterfall area off the Blue Ridge Parkway.    We use a  guide book which isn't always clear about the trails that we choose and we don't always agree with their ratings....but then, we aren't 16 or 25 or even 50 so we take their "easy" rating with a bit of skepticism.    

We walked down to Lower Falls on a loooong wooden steep stairway.   I guess it is popular enough so they want to make it accessible....but we found the stairs to be steep and narrow and didn't see anyone other than the young and energetic going up and down  (except for US of course) !  Then we decided to continue on towards Upper Falls, still considered "easy" in the guide book.      This was mainly a narrow, well worn trail with some areas requiring use of our 'new hiking poles' for assistance.   I thought they worked very well.....I think P considered them a nuisance or too reminiscent of needing a crutch to get around.  

The signage was pretty good altho there were many trails meandering off.    The trails were busy and it was good to see many many families and teenagers and young teen couples.    And, again, I heard many comments about my shoes......I just can't believe that I'm the only one wearing these....I see similar ones in the stores and didn't expect them to be such a novelty.....maybe its just the neon laces.

It was very green and mossy in places and much of the coverage was the rhodendrom  forests.....many blooming.

We never did get to Upper Falls....the trail got narrower and muddier and it began to rain and then it started a very steep ascent.    Two teen girls who had passed us earlier were on their way down and said "the falls weren't much"....that kind of sealed our decision to turn around......Granted, their opinion of the falls was probably waaaay different than ours would have been but they also weren't sweating like we were.       We ambled for about 2 miles over a couple of hours.    It's always good to get back to Mother Nature and we are thankful that we can still trudge along under our own power in the rarified air (5100 ft !!)

Driving back to Asheville, we passed Cold Mountain of the book and movie fame.....and you can see why this is called the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Here's my attempt to post a video taken at the falls today....You can click on the arrows on the corner to make it bigger but not necessarily better...........