Eclipse 2017

My husband and his crazy ideas. After driving to the beach for the weekend, he had the great idea of dropping my mom off in Raleigh and then heading to the mountains to watch the Eclipse. What??! Being in the car for that long sounded plain awful. After talking to the kids, we decided to humor him. We dropped Nana off and began our drive to Asheville. Parents, I have a great tip for you. My mom is the one that mentioned it and it was the best thing possible for our trip. We told the kids that they each were starting with five dollars. Each time they asked "how much longer", wined/complained or fought with each other...they would lose a quarter. This made our ride so much more peaceful. They were great. I mean, they may have been better than me. ;) We made it to our hotel in good time. We planned to wake up the next morning and begin our adventure. 

We started out a Looking Glass Falls. So beautiful!

Then, we headed to Sliding Rock. Um, holy cold water. I think we were all a little frightened. We planned to do this later, but we were told by others that this was the best time to do it. First thing. The line would be crazy the later we waited. You know, with all the smart people waiting for it to warm up. ;) We took their word for it. We all did it once. Once. It was so cold it knocked the wind right out of you. Emerson did not find it amusing at all. We did it though. We can say we did it. The next time we do it, it will have to be warmer! Did I say how cold it was? ;)

After we froze our butts off, we changed clothes and headed to a spot we could park and start our hike. I was so impressed with the kids during our hike. We hiked a good distance up the mountain. It was a long hike for me and they did it like champs. (Going down was a bit more dramatic) We hiked to the top and found a place to sit and wait. We brought snacks and took in the amazing view. Gavin and I were a bit more scared than everyone else. We maybe had a little too much time to wait and decided it would be best if we hiked back down a little ways to the helicopter pad. We watched the eclipse from there. It was pretty amazing how cold, dark and quiet it got right before and during.

Our last stop on our way out of town was gem mining. They both hit the jackpot. ;)

This was inevitable. The kids were such troopers all day. They fell asleep right after we ate dinner. We had a great day full of adventure. Daddy does have a few good ideas every once in a while. ;)