Our Boone Vacation

George and I had a wonderful vacation the last week in October! We used Boone, North Carolina, as our home base, and did a lot of exploring in the northwest corner of the state.

It started snowing the night we arrived, and it was still spitting snow when we woke up the next morning! It was pretty, but didn't get in the way of getting out and about.


This picture was from a little later in the day. It cleared up nicely, and we had a fun time exploring.









One of our first stops was at New River State Park in Jefferson (Ashe County). It had a wonderful visitor center, with various exhibits and a short film. I was determined to have more pictures taken of us this trip, so one of the staff members graciously agreed to take a picture of us out on the back deck of the center. George's short sleeve shirt shows how much the weather cleared up from earlier in the day!

As we continued on our travels, we passed this bail of hay and had to stop for a picture! Remember, this was the week of Halloween!







Across the street was a field of pumpkins--I assume this is what a pumpkim patch looks like!

On our way to visit Galax, Virginia, we saw this Tastee Freeze on the outskirts of town. George had never actually seen a Tastee Freeze, so we stopped for a picture. He'd seen it mentioned in a book he'd read, so he was excited to get a picture.

Here's a picture of downtown Galax. It's a quaint mountain town, and we really enjoyed exploring it. We had a nice lunch there and ducked into a bookstore for a while.







At one of our stops on the Blue Ridge Parkway, we enjoyed looking at this sign, which pointed out various mountains and spots we could see from that particular vantage point. On the far right section of the sign, it told us we could see North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.




Here's the real live shot of that area of the mountain range. Pretty cool, huh?








Although it was getting toward the end of day, and we were tired, George willingly went along with me to to see St. Mary's Episcopal Church in West Jefferson. It's a charming church with a fresco painted by Benjamin F. Long.

















Another interesting stop during our time in the Boone area was at Shatley Springs Inn. The lady at New River State Park suggested we try to do lunch there one day, and we did! While "family style" country food is their specialty, we were able to order single dishes, which worked out well.

George and I also stopped at Mt. Jefferson State Park, and hiked up one of the easier trails. Bound and determined to have more pictures of the two of us, George took the shot on the left. The shot on the right, if I have my sequencing right, is one of the shots from the trail we took.












Toward the end of our vacation, we visited Blowing Rock, the tourist attraction, as well as the town. This is one of our favorite shots of us from the week. "The Blowing Rock" is behind us there.

After visiting the park, we walked around the town of Blowing Rock. I got a cute "Life is Good" t-shirt there at a shop called Jakes at the Rock, which is dedicated to Life is Good products. Very cute store! The sign on the left was in downtown Blowing Rock as well, and I thought it was very cute.