Scenes From Hanging Rock

This past weekend, we went camping stayed in a rustic, air conditioned cabin at Hanging Rock State Park, in NW North Carolina. We held off until the last minute with deciding if we were going to be going or not, because of the hurricane, but once the weather reports started showing that the bad weather would be east of Raleigh (and we were going further inland), we hit the road.

This was our cute little 2 bedroom cabin, which was pretty nice for only $88 a night. Our favorite tent cabins back in California were $75 a night, and didn't even have real walls or bathrooms!

We spent a lot of time out on the screen porch, enjoying the view of the woods.

And of course, we had to BBQ. It's not "camping" without BBQ'd burgers!

(I was supervising the BBQ'ing)

 We had some pretty sunsets through the trees too.

The highlight, and whole reason for our weekend trip, happened on Saturday. We drove over to Dan River Adventures for a 3 hour trip floating down the Dan River. This is where we were dropped off to start the tubing, right after this little waterfall. I took my little point and shoot camera in it's underwater camera case, so I could safely take pictures along the river.

The rest of the group apparently didn't need to put on sunscreen, and jumped in ahead of us.

We tied our inner tubes and cooler tube together, so it would be easier to stay together on the river.

The day was mostly overcast, but the sun came out from behind the clouds every so often.

 

Our cooler full of sandwiches, snacks and drinks.

 

 

There were a couple of tiny rapids we got to go down, the most fun parts of the float trip!

I kept expecting to see some wildlife on the riverbank, like we did when we canoed down the Little Manatee River in Florida, but about all we saw was some occasional trash. In retrospect, I think I'd rather not see wildlife like we did in Florida, because that included gators!



Somehow this little furry caterpillar ended up on our tube though. We scooped him up on a leaf and set him on a tree branch, so he wouldn't drowned.

 The next bridge, which was where we were getting picked up after 3 hours of floating.

After getting back to our cabin, showering and taking a nap, we decided to check out the campsites at Hanging Rock. When I made our summer plans back in April, we had no idea if it would be too hot for tent camping, so we only booked cabins for this year. But the weather up there was perfect, not too hot or humid at all, although there was a brief rain shower while we were napping that did cool things off.

(Sad face.)

There were some really nice, big campsites, well shaded and secluded from the neighboring sites. Definitely a place we would like to tent camp at in the future!

First signs of fall, red colored leaves.

That night, since it was a little windy out, we hung out inside the cabin, playing cards.

The next morning, on our way out of the park, we stopped for a short hike to a beautiful waterfall. We were the only people there at about 10am on a Sunday morning.

We set up the camera on a rock, and since I didn't have my remote shutter timer with me, I had to learn how to use the timer on the camera. We couldn't tell when it was taking the picture, but it ended up taking a bunch, super quick. So of course, I had to turn them into a GIF, so you could see the waterfall in action!

It was a steep climb back up to the top viewing area of the falls, but so nice to stretch our legs before the couple hour drive back home.

We didn't have cell service at the cabin all weekend, but on our way to and from the tubing trip, I had checked the hurricane reports on my phone, and all looked fine in Raleigh. It's funny, because our families all saw flooding and damage in Raleigh on the news on the west coast, but we watched the news when we got back, and it was only concentrated on damages along the coast. We only had some leaves blown onto our grass and deck, and the power went out at our house for a whole 6 minutes. The Durham Bulls even played their baseball game Saturday night, so the triangle area was pretty lucky.

How did you spend last weekend? If you were on the east coast, did you hide out from the hurricane, or did you prepare for it like we did, and then skip town?