Brooke Tyson Photography: Black Mountain, North Carolina

Last summer, Justin's sister, Meredith, and her boyfriend, Steve, moved to North Carolina with Steve's white German Shepherd, Asia (and not long after, were joined by Meredith's German Shepherd, Apollo). Ever since then, the two have posted picture after beautiful picture of Black Mountain and the surrounding area. So when Justin signed up to run the Asheville marathon around the Biltmore property, I was so excited for a weekend in North Carolina. Unfortunately, he injured his knee and couldn't run, but since we already had a bed and breakfast booked (the lovely Arbor House), it was still a great excuse to go visit. So on Friday, we made the 8+ hour drive (with an added one hour stop for a unintentionally leisurely dinner near Virginia Tech). When we finally arrived, my camera battery was nearly dead, so I pulled out my charger and discovered I had brought the wrong one... so I got out my backup charger and it was the wrong one too! How is that possible? I don't even recognize one of the chargers! The next morning, I made a quick trip to Best Buy, met a guy who worked there and was from Ellicott City, MD (small world!), and quickly charged the battery before we set off for Max Patch Mountain, which was about an hour away.

We were nearly there when it started to snow. No problem, right? It is March and the snow seemed pretty light, so we started up the six mile dirt road to the start of the trail. As we drove, the snow became thicker and thicker, and soon we realized it was covering the road. It wasn't long before our tires were spinning on the side of a very steep, treacherous-looking hill and we had to turn around (I decided to stand on the side and direct for this part... it was scary!). We took a few pictures, but it was snowing SO much that we could hardly see anything, so we headed back to Black Mountain for a much tamer, snow-free hike. The next morning, we took a series of crazy hairpin turns (can you tell I was not a fan of these mountain roads at all?) to Chimney Rock. 12 years ago, I visited Chimney Rock on spring break with my mother and sister; we took the trip to adopt a Chihuahua my mother found on PetFinder: my parent's dog, Paco! Chimney Rock was much as I remembered it (minus the cute Chihuahua): 26 flights of stairs to a very pretty lookout. I took some pictures, we walked back down, and then we set off for the long trip home. It was great visiting Meredith and Steve, and I am looking forward to our next warm-weather trip when we can see more of beautiful North Carolina... but we are already looking into taking the train there. It is way too long of a drive for a weekend!