Vacation in Blowing Rock

Our very relaxing mountain-top vacation was well-timed. In the last week of July, we spent five nights sleeping under blankets with the windows open. Now, home again, it is sweaty, sizzling, sweltering, stifling hot! What are we going to do to get through August?

We had a condo at the lovely Chetola Resort at Blowing Rock. None of us had been in that part of the mountains in more than 10 years! Everything in Watagua County looks pretty upscale and prosperous compared to what we all remember. Especially in Blowing Rock, flowers were nearly as lush and pretty as they were in Victoria and Vancouver last year.

Driving 421 and 321 out of Winston-Salem, we took the Parkway into Blowing Rock and the Blue Ridge was living up to its name.

In the 80s, Duncan worked at Blue Ridge Parkway National Park and spent quite a bit of his time around the Moses Cone Memorial Park. As a park ranger, Duncan used to take visitors on a hike from the house up to the grave site of Moses & Bertha Cone and tell them ghost stories. He very much wanted us to walk up there with him, but we never made it. We spent too much time in the wonderful Crafts Showroom that fills the lower floor of Flattop Manor now.

From our deck at Chetola we could see this vast house way in the distance filling the entire mountainside. At first we were unaware it was the Cone House and we grumbled about the poor taste of whoever ruined the view with such a monstrosity. But when looking at a picture in a brochure, we realized that this mostrosity had not been built by "new money" but was Flattop Manor and had been on the mountaintop for quite awhile

We went shopping in Blowing rock, everyone bought shoes at the Tanger Outlet, and we went over to Boone and took a look at the campus of Appalachian before stopping at the Daniel Boone Inn for a blow-out meal. We had great kitchen facilities in our condo and mostly fixed our own meals and ate outside on the patio. That felt like such a luxury!

I had never been to Grandfather Mountain so we did another drive down the Parkway to see that. Very pretty and now I can say I have walked across the swinging bridge.

Truly my daddy's child, I don't think I would make it on the bridge on a windy day, but this was pretty tame -- and wonderfully cool at that elevation. We climbed around on some of the rocks, took in the views, and just enjoyed being there on a nearly perfect day.

This was one of those great relaxing vacations where we did things at our own pace and sometimes it wasn't much.

We went for walks.

 We watched the ducks on the pond. The swans at Chetola were raising babies -- (learned that baby swans are called cygnets. I am sure I will continue to call them baby swans.)

Relaxing for everyone except Duncan maybe. He did a lot of driving.

In the evenings, we laughed through episode after episode of The Vicar of Dibley. Sitting on the couch with your mother and laughing at a Priest tell almost dirty jokes is satisfying on so many different levels!