North Carolina Family Trip

Happy Monday loves! I hope you all had a great weekend! We got back from our North Carolina trip on Saturday and then had a lazy Sunday since we were getting hit by Tropical Storm Inaias. The storm ended up being pretty much nothing besides a few light showers. I thought I would do a quick recap of our week in West North Carolina. This trip is just what I needed and it was great to feel a little normal again while being cooped up for months! We had so much fun, but I am exhausted!  I thought I would do something a little different and post only unedited iPhone pictures (the photographer in me is cringing haha) but I thought it would be a more personal look into our trip.

We arrived late Saturday and hung out at our amazing Airbnb in Franklin. It was up in the mountains and the view was absolutely to die for!

Sunday we headed to the Highlands area and hit up Dry Falls, which was my favorite waterfall of them all! It was absolutely gorgeous, it is a super easy hike/walk to do with littles, and you can walk behind the falls! We also stoped by Bridal Veil falls which is right off the street with no hike.

After Dry Falls we hit up Whiteside Brewing Company for lunch and some brews. I LOVED this place! They have lots of outside seating so we felt safe with the COVID situation (we basically ate outside everywhere and NC is mandatory masks so we felt much more safe eating out than here in FL). The also having an amazing outdoor grass area that the kids loved running around on! Also the food was yummy!

After lunch we hit up Silver Run Falls, which was another easy kids friendly hike before heading home. We either got take out or made dinner at the Airbnb every night to make sure the kids got to bed at a decent hour. No one wants tired kids on vacation!

Views from the drives!

Monday we headed to the Brevard area and hiked Triple and Hooker Falls. These were the toughest hikes we did. They were still relatively easy but got steep in some places so my 2 year old nephew had to be carried some (even though he wanted to go up and down himself haha). After the hikes we went into town and hit up this super cute Toy Store, OP Taylors, and then grabbed a late lunch at Square Root.

Tuesday we went gem mining, which was a ton of fun at Rose Creek Mine. The kids had so much fun, especially my 6 year old niece! They have seeded buckets for an extra $5 and there were so many gems in it and she got SO excited finding them all! Also I happened to find a large ruby and an over 600c sapphire which I confused as a rock at first and threw it out! The nice employee that cleaned up after we were done flagged us down to give it back! How sweet! Unfortunately they said once they get to that size they tend to not be worth much but to get it checked out anyways so we stopped by Artisian Jewelers in Franklin down the road. The owner was SO nice and looked at everything we found and was super honest! Right away he told us the sapphire wasn’t worth anything but he grinded down my ruby to get a better look at it and gave us examples of what it would look like if we had it made into something. And he told me he could tell by my taste I wouldn’t like it haha! I mean doesn’t get more honest than that haha! If you are ever in the area and want a super honest opinion on stones are jewelry I highly recommend him! After mining we grabbed lunch at Gazebo Creekside Cafe which was delicious and very reasonably priced! After lunch we went down the street for some drinks at Lazy Hiker Brewing Company, which I also highly recommend!

Sawyer had a blast putting rocks in the bucket haha!

Wednesday we headed down to Lake Glennville to rent a pontoon boat for the day from Signal Ridge Marina. We had a blast and the views were amazing! There are also 3 waterfalls you can see only from the water. We also parked at a little island where we got out a swam. We rented to boat for 3 hours in the morning and then got lunch at The Ugly Dog Pub.

Driving the boat with Papa!

Thursday we headed to Asheville for the day. We started to day at The North Carolina Arboretum. If you love gardens this place is beautiful and they had a lego exhibit going on which the kids loved! How cool is that lego peacock?! After the Arboretum we headed down to Sierra Nevada for lunch (which I was super excited for) to find out they were closed for COVID! We were so bummed! So we ended up driving back into town and hit up Wicked Weed brewing instead. This brewery had the largest and most interesting selections of beers and I got an Old Fashioned beer which was amazing! After lunch we swung by New Belgium for a quick drink to say we went haha.

The last day of our trip we drove down to Tiger, GA and went blackberry picking at Hillside Orchard Farms. I will post more pictures from this on Thursday! This place was super cute with a little country store too! We were also the only people out there blackberry picking! We had fun but it was HOT! After the farms we went and checked out Goats on the Roof. We saw a sign for it on the way in and had to see if there was really goats on the roof haha! Sure enough there was and they have a country store and nitro ice cream. This I wouldn’t really recommend. It was kind of stinky haha! The next morning we head back to Florida and back to reality! I hope you all have a great start to your week!