So, I know its Tuesday, and this post should have come out Sunday or Monday, but oh well. With summer drawing to a close and fall quickly approaching, we're trying to take every advantage of the season.
Friday we decided to take a last minute camping trip with some friends to Gragg Prong Falls. This was my first official backpacking trip, since we had to hike about a mile into the campsite. Matt and I ended up not getting to the trail head until about 8 pm, and it was already starting to get dark in the woods. We heard it would be a short hike to the campsite, but the combination of the near darkness, unfamiliar territory, and the backpacks didn't bode well. By 8:45 we were ready to give up, and I was holding back tears. It was completely dark, and despite our headlamps, we were having a hard time making our way. We couldn't find the campsite, and decided to turn around and hike out. Believe me when I say that I was totally dreading the hike out - I was exhausted and it was sooo dark. As it turns out, once we turned around and hiked a bit, we found three of our friends who were hiking in and able to lead us to the site.
We set up our tent and camped at the bottom of this waterfall - it really was a nice location.
It started raining in the morning, so we ended up eating breakfast, taking down camp, and hiking out.
The trail goes over a stream quite a few times - this was a small crossing, but there were also several crossings up to my knees.
We were soaking wet, but the hike was still nice.
We thought about going to Asheville for a little fun and adventure after camping, but we decided to just take a trip to The Orchard at Altapass instead. We came home with a bunch of early apples, apple butter, local honey, and plums. I got 4 pounds of plums for only $1.90! The icing on the cake was that they were having a bluegrass festival that we were able to enjoy for a while.
The orchard is right off of the parkway in Altapass, NC, and is over 102 years old! You should definitely check out the history section on their website - it has fabulous information about the land before the orchard and its early days of operation. Apparently, in the 1800s, prior to becoming an orchard, the area was home to a railroad station that gave the land above the railway to become an orchard. At it's peak, it used to produce 125,000 bushels of apples!
They have many varieties of apples, ripening from July - November, so you have plenty of time to check out the orchard and get your apples!
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