Roan Mt. Park....... from top to bot, L to R

   What a wonderful day.......   The sky was clear (most of the day)  the temp was in the low 70's, a cool breeze,  and wonderful hiking.   We started out at a memorial park in Newland to a young man who had died in service to our country.  There were trees, bridges, waterfalls, greens.  A wonderful place to go for a picnic, let the kids play in the shallow stream.

   The second top, L pic is of a water wheel that was used to power what I think, was a saw mill.

    The bottom, Rt is a pic of purple pines, emerging from tips of a pine tree. It looks like this will be the year for a bumper crop of pine cones.  Everywhere's we looked, the pines are making cones.  These are the first purple pine cones that I have ever seen...

    The last picture is of the post marking the Appalachian Trail.  We hike a portion of the trail and found it to be a challenging experience.  We talked to people who had already been out for 2-3 days.  The going was rough, rocky, steep up and downs, but....  extremely well marked.  The posts were tall and very visible, the trees were marked with fresh paint, closely together.  The post had the name of the trail on them and which way to turn for north or south.

   For lunch, we stopped at a park on the mountain, parked the car under a large tree in the shade, ate sandwiches we had bought at Ingles store and drank water, some chips, an apple and took our sweet time.   For dinner, we ate at Boone's Hotel in Boone, NC and had a family style dinner where all the food was brought in serving bowls,  including chicken, meat loaf, a salad, corn, green beans, mashed potatoes, stewed apples, coleslaw, gravy, biscuits, ice tea, and biscuits with home cured sliced ham on them.   We topped all of that off with a strawberry shortcake!!!!    After all the walking today, we were starved!!!!!!!

   And, I was able to drive the mountain roads without tensing up and grinding my teeth from terror.........     
IT WAS A WONDERFUL, FUN, EXHAUSTING, TASTY, ENERGETIC, SUCCESSFUL DAY!      And now, to a hot shower. :-)))))))