Pepper Sunrise

Most people who know me know that I'm not a morning person.

I have seen more sunrises now that the sun gets up later.

(Dwayne kindly reminds me that this is what a sunrise looks like.)

Lately, there has been more morning fog floating around above the crops.

The fog was golden nearest the sun.  

 

Absolutely beautiful.

After taking pictures of the sunrise, I turned and almost stepped on Pepper.

She was lying there as if to say, "Take pictures of me too!"

How could I resist such a cute little puppy?

A Puppy!

We finally found a new puppy!!!!

We are so excited to have her.

Her name is Pepper.

She is quite the active little gal.

She has some orneriness to her.

Definitely has some lab qualities.

She knows her place at the sliding glass door.

It's good to have a dog there again.

We've only had her a few days but we've really enjoyed her so far.

Vacation Part 7 - Falls

For the last part of our vacation we planned on camping at Cumberland Falls and

Clifty Falls but the weather didn't cooperate for both.

We still stopped at Cumberland Falls State Resort Park.

We really enjoy this park and would have loved to camp overnight.

Maybe next year.

A picture of the falls in between the rain showers.

If the weather had cooperated, we would have stayed the night.

It was one of the few nights of the month that a moonbow was visible.

We stayed for a short time and headed back down the road to Clifty Falls.

The weather did cooperate for us to camp at Clifty Falls State Park in Madison, Indiana.

This was the first time we camped at a state park.

We were able to pick the sight we wanted and pretty much had the entire area to ourselves.

The bathhouse was very clean and close by :).

We had the tent between the trees and picnic table.

It was cool but very good for sleeping.

We wanted to see the falls from the bottom but that was another trail.

One of us has a bum foot and the other trail would have killed the foot.

We came upon this rock and I said, "It looks like a piece of cake."

As we got closer we discovered the sign for the rock:

"cake rock"  how clever.

As you can see the weather in southern Indiana was a little cooler than Tennessee.

We may go back to this park when everyone has healthy feet so we can hike the other trails.

Vacation Part 6 - Appalachian Trail

We came across the Appalachian Trail on our way home from Mt. Mitchell.

We knew it was close to Erwin, but we were not sure exactly where.

(Dwayne's reading the trail sign.)

The sign is posted up high on a tree.

The caterpillar was a bonus.

Vacation Part 5 - Mount Mitchell

We drove a tiny bit on the Blue Ridge Parkway on our way to Mt. Mitchell.

That's supposed to be Mt. Mitchell between the trees in the middle.

The views were breathtaking at times.

At other times you couldn't see anything but clouds.

The clouds rolled around like smoke.

The road leading to the mountain top had several tunnels.

Another view of the cloud covered mountain.

Even the sign says it's there... somewhere behind the clouds.

These signs made better pictures than the GPS for keeping track of the elevation.

I think it was too foggy at this spot for mountain pictures.

This is a view of the lookout platform at the peak of the mountain.

There is a ranger station 2 miles before this spot.

You can drive or hike the last two miles.

We chose to drive :).

Path from the parking lot to the lookout.

It was quite steep.

On the platform they have these pictures telling you what you are looking at.

I'm glad they did this, otherwise I'd have no clue... especially since there were a lot of clouds.

(The names of these mountains made us chuckle!... who names a mountain butt?)

Erwin, where we stayed, is near Johnson City, on the left.

Spectacular view even with the clouds dropping down.

Looking at a restaurant and road to the top.

Through the opening in these clouds you can see the tops of lower clouds.

Just breathtaking!

According to Wunderground.com, the elevation of Rensselaer is 666 feet.

That's almost a mile higher than home!

You can kind of see the parking lot.

Typically the temperatures at the top are 20 degrees cooler than everywhere else.

That day it was 60.

It wasn't windy so it felt great.

The compass on the floor with a survey marker.

Connor asked me if we were going to take a picture of our feet.

Silly boy.

(We have a picture like this from the highest point in Ohio too.)

It's nice to have older children who are willing to take your picture.

We were fascinated to learn that the man who did the exploring of this mountain was a preacher.

No orneriness here.

The clouds were constantly changing.

Connor and I went back to the top for another view.

There was a small museum and gift shop by the parking lot.

They had these bible tracts as part of the exhibit on Rev. Mitchell.

They are dated 1858.

We also learned that they measured the elevation by

observing the change in barometric pressure.

They were fairly accurate considering it was the late 1800's!

I was all excited when we got to the ranger station and

noticed they had a recently posted bear warning.

I really wanted to see some (from the comfort of my van of course).

This was as close as I got, museum bears.

On our way down the mountain, the clouds continued to roll off the top.

This made it quite foggy at times.

Beautiful countryside.

On the way back to Erwin, we were on some less traveled roads.

This one happened to be gravel.

We kept checking the GPS and atlas to see if we were on the right road.

We were on the right "highway", it just happened to not be paved.

It was very narrow and had lots of sharp turns.

We ended up behind a school bus (which is better than a logging truck).

Thankfully we weren't behind it for long.

More beautiful countryside.