The 1st half of our week in North Carolina was spent in the area I’ve affectionately called NASCARolina because it is the area where most of the NASCAR race shops are located.  For the 2nd half of the week, we headed west to the mountains.  We stayed in Boone, NC.  Appalachian State University is located in Boone.  (For those that follow NCAA football, App St stunned football fans by beating #7 Michigan last season.)

On our first full day in Boone, we went to Grandfather Mountain.  Grandfather Mountain is the tallest mountain in the Blue Ridge Mountain range.  Visitors (for a fee) can drive up to the top and then walk across a swinging mile high bridge.  We went up there first thing Thursday morning.

We had been in Charlotte for 3 days and was used to pretty hot weather.  Boone wasn’t so warm (almost chilly).  Then, we go up on Grandfather Mountain and just about freeze to death because the wind was blowing so hard.  (In one of the photos Mom took of me, Shelby, & Lindsey, you can tell the wind is blowing our hair pretty good.)

I am scared of heights.  I have been for as long as I can remember.  I was the driver for the rental car the week we were in NC so I’m the driver up the mountain.  The road gets rather narrow, steep, and contains several hairpin turns.  At first, that was no big deal.  The higher we got, the more my fear of heights kicked in as I started seeing how high we were.  If the road had been much longer, I’m not sure I would have made it to the top.  Seriously.  (Because of this, my mom drove back down the mountain with me in the backseat trying to forget what was out the window.)  My fear of heights prevented me from fully experiencing Grandfather Mountain.  As I previously mentioned, you can walk across a mile high swinging bridge at the top of the mountain.  As my photos display, I didn’t make it up there.  I stayed on “ground level” with the car, tried not to get too close to the edge, froze to death, and took photos of Mom, Lindsey, & Shelby up there.

While standing on top of the mountain, I took several photos of the scenery.  It was definitely a gorgeous sight.  On the way down, we stopped at some of the overlooks and took photos as well.  (As impressive as they were on the way up the mountain, they just weren’t as impressive on the way down because of where we had been.  They were gorgeous views, though.)

The photo above is a picture on the road up the mountain.  In the movie Forrest Gump, Forrest runs cross-country.  In one of these scenes, he is shown running on Grandfather Mountain.  (Click here to see a still from that scene.)  The photo above is the label they have put at that point on the mountain’s road.  This photo I took shows the corner from above.  (The corner in the movie is the one on the bottom right-hand side.  Forrest is running about the place the tree is blocking our view of the road in my photo.)

Click here to see my photo collection from Grandfather Mountain.