Day Seven - Chimney Rock, NC
Day one of exploring western North Carolina
Chimney Rock, North Carolina
One of the highlights of the trip, despite the weather
It was another day when we woke up relatively early, thankful for the kindness of my cousin once removed, Adam, for letting us use his place to rest for the night. I knew that the Western portion of North Carolina was beautiful. I knew about the Blue Ridge Parkway, the mountains, and Ashville. But I needed to attend to a family matter back home in a matter of days and I had a flight booked from Atlanta to Boston, so we chose to spend some time in the Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina. Without having much of a clue about what to do, I started with an early morning Google search for “things to do near Ashville”. Chimney Rock State Park came up, looked like it had breathtaking views, and became the plan for the day.
After visiting an Aldi in Denver, NC, and meeting up with an old friend who moved down to North Carolina a few years back at a Waffle House in the Charlotte suburbs, we prepared to visit Chimney Rock. even though there was a great deal of rain that day, we all were excited to go see it. When we got to the parking lot, we all put on ponchos, filled up our water bottles, and prepared to go visit Chimney Rock.
First, came a walk through an old mine, that eventually lead to an elevator, lifting us up to the guest services area on the ledge where you can access Chimney Rock. After going up the elevator, and into the building, we explored the ledge that we we’re standing on, with the following pictures being taken along our hike to the waterfall in the furthest accessible part of the park.
A view out of the guest facilities in the park.
“Chimney Rock” itself.
Dylan in front of Colin taking pictures.
A view of Chimney Rock from the top.
A waterfall in the state park
A view from the top of Chimney Rock
A picture of the cliff face that you walked next to throughout the park.
A picture of me in the mineshaft that you walk through to get to the elevator that lifts you up to Chimney Rock.
Colin pretending to take a picture.
A picture of me on top of Chimney Rock.
Elias and Colin under a small overhang.
Dylan and I at a bench underneath the cliff face.
A picture of me in a poncho on the top of Chimney Rock.
A good picture of the river valley below Chimney Rock.
The two videos above showcase the weather of the day, as if you listen to them with the sound on, you can hear the wind ripping, and see the raindrops falling.
Overall, even though it was very wet, our visit to Chimney Rock was very enjoyable, and we loved it thoroughly. Now, as I’m sure many of you are aware, this area of our country has been hit especially hard by the remnants of Hurricane Helene just this year. There are to this day, people that do not have permanent housing, electricity, and much, much more. This disaster ruined the lives of many people throughout the Appalachian Mountains, but the town of Chimney Rock below this park in particular was hit especially hard.
Above is a picture of the damage that had taken place in this quaint little tourist town.
Cypress Grove Lane Sign
I don’t know why, but he wanted to see it.
We all made concessions in daily planning, as long as it didn’t take us too far off of the general path that we were following. To go take time to see far away places that we’d always individually wanted to see. Now, Colin wanted to see this sign, it had something to do with a music album, I’m not exactly sure. Anyway, we visited this sign, and Colin seemed to really enjoy it, so it was worth it in the end.
Two pictures of Colin in front of the sign.
Ending the Day
Trying Cookout for the first time, and family coming up big for us again!
Now, during the last post, we essentially dedicated a day to visiting Dylan’s sister. But while in North Carolina, and facing the same problem of there being rain all day. I reached out to my Grandmother about family that she mentioned us potentially being able to stay the night in Western North Carolina. Thankfully, my Grandmothers niece, Pamela, was kind enough to let us stay in her home outside of Boone, North Carolina. This meant that yet again, we would be able to have a night without needing to set up our camping gear and wake up wet.
We drove up through the mountains of North Carolina, hungry and ready to try the fast food restaurant, Cookout, for the first time. Now North Carolina is known for many things, college basketball, the outer banks, the mountains, being the state where the airplane was invented, etc. But what I had been excited to see in North Carolina the most was the existence of Cookout. Now Cookout is open nearly all day, and all night, with the specific cookout that we visited closing at 3:30 in the morning.
As we walked up to the windows of the small establishment, well into the night, we looked at the menu deciding on what to order. The menu of this place is huge, with so many options, that it took a significant amount of time to come to an order.
The image above is an example of the Cookout menu.
We ran into a group of around six college-aged-looking men while waiting to order, all with the stereotypical Southern accent. One of the first times on the trip out of many, we were reminded of where exactly in the world we were, as when a trailer went by, the college-aged people started cheering on the trailer driver. Now, I look at this with no disrespect at all, but this is definitely a behavior that I had never seen before in my life living in New England. With the Cookout experience out of the way and some of the best fast food I’ve ever tasted in my life at a very reasonable price, we returned to where we would be spending the night.
Thank you again for the generosity of all of the people who helped us along this trip, but on this day in particular, my grandmother’s niece Pamela and her husband. As we dozed off that night on our sleeping gear that lay upon the floor of their three seasons room, our first week of many of being out on the road had come to a close. Thank you all for taking a little piece out of your day to read this, and have a great day.
The distance map of where we ended our night as the crow flies.
Map of the route that we drove that day, with the black arrows pointing to the roads we took from chimney rock to the road sign. Google Maps was not able to load our actual route as we have documented because of the road closures on US Highway 64 through Chimney Rock.
Cookout was the highlight of the entire road trip.
Wow so cool!