Family Adventures

On our family trips to the NC mountains, we always enjoy hiking along a creek or river.  A few years ago, we were staying at a campsite near Bat Cave, NC (awesome name, right?) along a swift moving stream.  My girls and I dressed in old shoes or sandals and …

Hiddenite, NC is a tiny town with a sparkling history.  Back in the late 1800s, Thomas Edison hired a mineralogist named William Earl Hidden to look for platinum in the foot hills of Alexander County, NC.  Hidden found an intriguing green gemstone instead.  Named for Hidden, the gemstone was soon …

If food is sealed up and left on the picnic table it should be safe, right? Well, this is the story of a devious racoon and how he proved us wrong.  One of our first camping trips as a family was to Linville Falls, North Carolina.  We had the car …

  Amicalola Falls In May of 2017, my wife Denita and I started our first section hike of the Appalachian Trail.  We decided to hike the approach trail starting at Amicalola Falls State Park.  At the time, we talked about how much we wanted to bring the kids back with …

As part of our family’s Appalachian Trail backpacking trip, my wife and I took our daughters camping at Vogel State Park in Georgia.  Apart from the terribly twisty road that gave my wife and one daughter motion sickness, the park was beautiful and well worth the trip.  It has a …

Have you ever seen an elephant take a mud bath or fed a 16 feet tall giraffe named Jack a piece of lettuce?  If not, you should take a trip to the NC Zoo.  Boasting the greatest acreage of natural habitat of any zoo in the world, the NC Zoo is a …