The One with Grandfather Mountain

Today we met outside the LLC (we being a group of internationals and INTAPP (International Appalachian, Americans who help out with the international students). We were taking three vans up to Grandfather mountain, which is above a town called Linville which is where they filmed a lot of Last of the Mohicans, and also where Forrest Gump was shown running (they have a corner called Forrest Gump corner to commemorate this). The drive took about 25 minutes from Boone, and we drove up to the visitor's center where we met a nice guy who introduced us to the mountain and told us that his family were some of the original shepherds of the mountain dating back to the 1880s.

We then had some food and looked around the gem museum, where they had BIG rocks including gold nuggets the size of my palm and an amethyst the size of a coffee table. The nature exhibit was good, we saw a bald eagle, two otters and four black bears. They were extremely cute, my favourite was the one who had streaks of red along his back and ears. You could feed them a special food, and they sat there on the ground looking just like Yogi bear.

We then drove up the mountain a little bit more to the Black Rock Trail parking lot. We then walked the Black Rock Nature Trail, which was about a two hour round trip, although we actually walked one hour there and had to come back the same way. It was rocky and hard going at certain points, but a very enjoyable, if muddy, walk. The internationals all returned muddy and tired but happy, and then we got back in the vans to head home. We drove a different way, along the Blue Ridge Parkway which is one of the most scenic drives in America. It was beautiful, green and lush. I can tell that in the Fall it's going to be even more spectacular.