Out of Town Teaser!

Well, I am out of town, yet again...this time, locally though...well relatively speaking! 

I have brought with me my Underground Railroad project! It's time for me to get caught up with all the lovely ladies who are participating from Lisa's Quilt Circle! I am feeling especially inspired after being out in North Carolina and visiting a church that was a congregation of freed African Americans back in the Civil War days. I also read through the entire meaning of the URR quilts on the drive home. It was so intriguing and inspiring that I can't wait to get my hands in my fabric!

I have several days to do almost nothing but sew! HOW GREAT IS THAT!

Last weekend our lil family had an absolutely AMAZING time in the mountains of North Carolina with friends of ours, Regina and Gary Bushee.

Regina and I went to the "Airing of the Quilts" festival in Franklin, NC while Ronnie, Kyle and Gary went gem mining! They got a TON of gems! The largest one, when cut, is worth about $800! Kyle found one that when cut is worth $500! And they found LOTS of different types of gems. They had planned on doing a couple of other things that day but were enjoying the gem mining so much that they ended up playing in the dirt ALL DAY :o)

Regina and I enjoyed browsing the quilts in the lovely mountain air of downtown Franklin. We stopped in at this shop and that...including a book shop that had 4 cats in it!
We were also blessed to meet the author of the book 'Barn Quilts', Suzi Paron, (and get it signed!) and see several along the mountain roads! (I got lots of pics!) You can read Suzi's blog HERE if you are interested! I LOVE this concept and am planning on starting a quilt trail in Mount Dora! The hard part is choosing which block to put on my home!

You can check out details about the Airing of the Quilts festival HERE if you'd like to see what it's all about!

Sunday we all went together to see a BUNCH of waterfalls....we had a picnic lunch outside and the weather was PERFECT!

I will be breaking our trip into multiple blog posts...but unfortunately my pics are all on my pc at home :/ So....all I can do for now is post this teaser!!

Trip to North Carolina, Part 3! Triple Falls!

While in North Carolina we visited many waterfalls! I LOVE waterfalls! But, by far, my favorite was Triple Falls. This is where the Hunger Games was filmed.
My step brother had come here with Mom and John a couple of years before this, so it was bittersweet to hear the stories from when they were here.

Pictures truly cannot do justice to the majesty of these falls. They are awe-ing.

Once we parked, we had to hike A LONG WAY to get to the actual falls.

see? over a mile!

 

And it was FREEZING..............

SO PRETTY in the forest

Then we finally came to the board walk that goes down to the falls....it was LONG too.

 And FINALLY we were there!

 These falls are AMAZING....Kyle and I climbed way up them!

 It was a bit harry in a few spots but we made it! (I kept thinking to myself "if Ronnie was here he would have an absolute FIT...this would NOT be happening"!)

looking down to where we were! Can you see my Mom and John way over there? Those teeny tiny people?

 

 Here's what the falls sounded like from up there! This doesn't even come close to doing it actual justice...it was deafening!

Looking up from where we were...this is the very top fall. John was telling me that when Joshy was there with them, it was all iced over and they climbed all the way up THERE!

looking back down

 Time to head back down!

 Coming back down was MUCH more difficult than going up was.

 My pics have only shown you the top two falls....here is a video in which I panned from the lowest fall all the way across. BEAUTIFUL.

We weren't done yet though! As we headed back up the boardwalk, instead of going back on the trail that would take us to the car, we took a right and headed a bit downstream to play! 

It was really fun...pics in another post!

Trip to North Carolina, Part 2! Connestee Falls & Looking Glass Falls.

The next morning we got up and had a busy agenda planned! Our first stop, as we headed down the mountain was at Connestee Falls!

This was a cute little wooden bridge that was there.

 My Mom and John have come to these falls every year for the past ten or so years. Until a year or two ago there was not a boardwalk that you had to stay on. It was a dirt path that you followed all the way down. The boardwalk stayed farther away from the falls, but it was still beautiful!
Joshy came with them to North Carolina a few years ago and they had memories from being here. Hearing those memories was awesome. :)

The really nice thing about Connestee Falls is that there was NO ONE else there! :)

Later we went to Looking Glass Falls...it was SO much fun! We had a great time crawling around and climbing out on the rocks!

heading down to the Falls

 Even though it's sideways (does anyone know how to fix that!??) here is some video of Looking Glass Falls. I was trying to capture the sound for Ronnie!

 And here is a video of Kyle climbing out across a huge fallen tree to a rock. It's hard to tell how steep it is from the pics ;)

Papa had to stay up top because of his knee :( He got to see everything we did though :)

I climbed out there too

and so did Nana!

 It's so beautiful!!

We had to wait for almost 30 mins to get to this spot for a great pic! There was a LINE of people waiting to go out onto this specific rock to get a pic with the Falls directly behind them.

 

the climb back up ;)

  The falls were a really awesome experience. But....Triple Falls...where the Hunger Games were filmed are by far my favorite ones that we visited while there. Stay tuned for an upcoming blog about our time at Triple Falls.