Where I've been continued...

I had a great birthday. I had been thinking that the weather was going to be ugly, but it turned out to be a beautiful day. So the whole fam damiley and I went out to Linville North Carolina to Grandfather Mountain State Park.

We started out on hwy 421 headed toward Boone from Statesville. That's where we picked up the Blue Ridge Pkwy and we headed to Linville. Parts of the Pkwy have been closed due to dangerous road conditions, as is usual this time of year. The picture in top left corner of this blog is the most beautiful, most advertised, and most closed section of the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was warm, and I was hopeful that this section would be open today, but it wasn't. Oh well. We made a photo op of that same piece of roadway, but from the bottom side.
Grandfather Mountain costs $30 dollars to get in to. I'm not a fan of things I have to pay for, but this place does have some great things to offer. The views were some of the most amazing that I've seen in that area.
Another bit of bang for your buck is the CD tour that you are given upon entry to the park. As you drive forward they tell you where to start your disc. It was cool.
We made our way up the mountain through hairpin turns, past cliff side views. We had one objective. Mile High Suspension Bridge. When we finally reached the top, and to say that it was windy was an understatement. The wind was insane! They clock the winds on the bridge (the one that we were about to walk across) every hour and today they clocked at 57 mph. We intended to take the kids with us on the bridge, but after we went across the parking lot we decided to go one at a time while one person stayed in the gift shop with the kids.











In the above picture I'm showing the bridge who's boss. It was awesome. It's high, super windy, cold... it could have more swingy and unstable, but it was still really cool.

Two cool "Did you knows?" about Grandfather Mountain-

• Many car commercials have been filmed on the hairpin turns leading to the top of the mountain.
• One of the turns is named after Forest Gump. You know the running scene when people first begin to fallow forest? Well, that 's Grandfather Mountain.

• The mountain facilities run on solar power and re distribute the excess back out into the grid.

We did hit one sour note on our little day trip. As we were getting back into the car after our adventure on the bridge, a big gust of 50+ mph wind ripped the car door out of my husbands hands, causing it to pop as it flung backwards. We now have one business day for a claims adjuster to let us know if Nationwide really is on our side.

All in all, it was a great day.