Category: Grandfather Mountain

Orange, Blue and Grey

Dmitrii5 Comments

Weekend is here and I’m trying to decide what to do. One option is to drive up to the mountains and see what’s going on up there, but I’m afraid by now all colors are gone and it does not look anything like todays photo. Another option is potentially take an overnight trip to the coast, longer drive and will require hotel expense. The third option is to stay home, chill, process some photos, rake some leaves in the yard and go to the Y. Hmm. What its gonna be.

This photo was taken from the “hikers” hike at the Grandfather  mountain. If you drive up to the top of the mountain and plan to hike then they want you to park at the hikers parking lot. From there you can take one of the two routes – to the left and  it will take you to the bridge or to the right and it will take you on the real hike all the way up and to the McRae peak and profile hike. So here we are at fairly high altitude, high for NC, looking East into the lower country. Blue Ridge Parkway is somewhere below us, not visible from this spot.

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Pretty Fall

Dmitrii2 Comments

It is Monday, early evening, I’m sleepy. Mondays are always like that. Very long days with sleepy evenings. Doesn’t mean I will go to bed early, still probably not going to sleep till close to midnight, but, man I’m getting sleepy.

Anyway, I have a few more Fall pictures, which I’ll try to push out before real Winter comes around.

We are back to Linn Cove Viaduct at Blue Ridge parkway. This time we are looking south. Taken from the tip of the rock as low as I could get there to the road, but still have a long view over it.

Viaduct1-LookingSouth-small

Panorama over Grandfather Mountain area

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A few weeks ago we went to hike around Grandfather Mountain. There are a few ways to get up here with spectacular views. There are couple free choices which require a lot of strenuous hiking, with about 3 hours to get here. One is from Profile hike parking area on HW105 and the other one is from I believe “Daniel Boone” hike parking area on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We done both of those in the past, it takes you about 2 to 2.5 hours just to get to the ridge. you can then hike on the ridge for another couple hours and enjoy some spectacular views, some with 360 access. This time we actually drove into the Grandfather park, paid $15 each, it is pricey, but it saved us at least 4 hours of hiking from the Blue Ridge or from the 105 parking.
Below photo is 180 Panorama View over Grandfather Mountain “Valley”. My first try at making panoramas. It is not bad as long as you can see it on a huge screen with details shown. On the left is the main Grandfather mountain with all attractions and their bridge. Down in the middle is the Grandfather Country Club, then Linville Ridge with its multimillion dollar estates, then Sugar mountain with that ugly white apartment building on top of it, then is Banner Elk and the Beach Mountain. To the right is the next peak we hiked after taking this photo(s). Click on the photo to see it large.

Click to open in my photo gallery

Hazy Day in the Mountains

Dmitrii3 Comments

It was hazy day. We hiked a lot but the views were not that great. So far this summer in NC is not very good for long range views. Every time we go to the mountains it is hazy. Maybe it will clear in October, November time frame.

HazyDay-Click to see it my Photo Gallery

There was a plane crash

Dmitrii3 Comments

Today we went for a hike to the Calloway Peak via Daniel Boone trail. You start on the Blue Ridge Parkway and it takes you about 3.5 miles all the way to the top, fairly strenuous hike. Almost at the end of the hike if you pay attention you’ll see broken parts of the single engine plane. It crashed here in 1978. I’m not sure if pilot survived or not, if you like to know you can Bing it and find out. It was interesting to see the wreckage pattern. We saw the parts in the dense forest and went to look at it, we found two airplane wings. Each wing had a big dent, from impact of the trees. We saw some other smaller aluminum parts, but none looked big enough for the actual body. After some searching we came to discover fuselage of the plane. It was probably about 50-70 feet away from the wings. Pretty bad site and a lot of damage. Here you go, see it for yourself.

CrashedPlane - Click to see it in my Photo Gallery