Christmas Eve in San Jose

For the holiday season this year, Sandy and I headed to Costa Rica for an action-packed week of adventure and fun. My employer has an end-of-year holiday shut down and I didn’t want to let perfectly good vacation time go to waste. We left Raleigh early on Christmas Eve. Since the holidays are peak travel time, everything was very busy. We had to have our car valet-parked at Fast Park and Relax before heading to the airport as the parking lot was completely full. Fortunately, we made it to the airport in time and none of our flights were delayed. We flew to Charlotte and from there to San José. It was quite warm in Raleigh when we left, so not much of a difference in temperature when we arrived in Costa Rica. After deplaning and clearing customs, we found our driver and met Dana from Toronto, another tourist on our G Adventures trip. The driver took us to Hotel Autentico in San José and after checking into our room, we headed out to get cash from a bank and had a late lunch/early dinner at Soda Tapia. Sandy and I both got a steak sandwich. They were good, but really big. We should have just split one. After eating, we went for a stroll around Parque la Sabana, the central park of San José.

The tropical flowers blooming in the park were absolutely beautiful, including some bright yellow trumpetbush.

We also saw male great-tailed grackles, a bird that looks somewhat like a crow with a long tail.

There was a huge Christmas tree sponsored by Coca-Cola, as well as a pretty artificial lake with ducks.

As the sun was beginning to set, we had beautiful views of the lake.

We then headed back to the hotel and met up with more of our tour group and our amazing tour guide, Ro. After introducing ourselves, Ro went over some of the logistics of the trip and background information. After the meeting, we went for dinner in the hotel. Sandy and I weren’t hungry as we had eaten so much just a little bit earlier so we had a couple drinks and socialized with the group and then went to bed early.

Holiday Hike in Gaston County

This past Saturday, we headed to the Charlotte area for a holiday hike and fun with friends in Gaston County. This December has been unseasonably warm, but it was chilly for the weekend, a welcome relief for steep climbing and scrambling at Crowders Mountain. We met in the Chapel Hill area to form carpools and headed south on I-85 to Crowders Mountain State Park. We arrived at the Linwood Road Access area of the park at about 1030 and started our hike. We started off on the Backside Trail towards Crowders Mountain, but when we got to the split, turned right on Crowders Trail and bypassed the mountain. We would be stopping here on the way back, so we followed Crowders Trail around the side of the mountain. We had a group of twelve and most of us were wearing some type of holiday apparel. At one point, a guy walking in the other direction was looking at Bob’s Santa hat and tripped over a rock. Apparently, our holiday flair was distracting to other park guests! We crossed Sparrow Springs Road and continued towards the park office. At the intersection with Pinnacle Trail, we went straight on this trail, continuing towards the trail’s namesake mountain.  After passing the intersection with the campground spur trails, the Pinnacle Trail leads over a rocky ridgeline. I really enjoy visiting Crowders Mountain for the rocky trails that require a bit of climbing and scrambling. Right after this rocky section, the Turnback Trail splits off and then it becomes steeper as it heads up to the summit of the Pinnacle. There are a couple of switchbacks and then the last part of the trail is pretty much just straight up. The trail ends right below the rocky summit.

We climbed up some rocks here and stopped to eat lunch. Looking west, there are sweeping views with the South Mountains visible and the Black Mountains far off in the distance.  Going north a bit to the true summit of the peak, I could see Crowders Mountain, the park office, and the Charlotte skyline far in the distance.

After lunch, we found some more rocks to climb around on enjoy the views. We saw a large black vulture perched in a tree not far from here.

He waited around long enough for some pictures and then flew off. Then we started making our hike back. We followed Pinnacle Trail back down the mountain, then turned right to get on Turnback Trail to make a partial loop to head back to the park office. We stopped here for a couple minutes to use the restrooms and then took Crowders Trail back to the road crossing. Across Sparrow Springs Road, we turned right to take Rocktop Trail to the summit of Crowders Mountain.

Rocktop is my favorite trail in the park as it involves a lot of rock scrambling along the rocky spine of the mountain. At a few points where there are breaks in the trees, the trail provides good views of the surrounding countryside.

Towards the end of the trail, we got on the Tower Trail, which is also the access road to the radio towers on top of the mountain. We hiked this steep road up to the towers at the summit of the mountain and then went a little further to the overlook.

The views from here are great and the skyline of Charlotte was clearly visible to the northeast.

We also saw some climbing ropes leading down. As we were getting ready to leave, a woman climbed up and was adjusting the ropes to take down from the day. It’s amazing to see how skilled some climbers are in maneuvering around on the cliffs, seeming to defy gravity. If we improve our climbing skills, I’d love to come back out here for some rock climbing. From here, we took the Backside Trail back down to the parking lot. We drove into Gastonia and had dinner at Tequilas on West Main Street. After dinner, we took US-74 east towards McAdenville to see the Christmas lights. It was extremely crowded with unbelievable traffic, so we parked at Food Lion on Market Street and walked up Wesleyan Drive. McAdenville, also called Christmastown USA, lives up to its nickname in December.

Walking down Wesleyan Drive and Main Street, very house, building, store, and tree are covered in Christmas lights. Trees lining the small lake in the middle of downtown were especially scenic.

We also saw a Shelby Cobra covered in lights.

Once we got towards the end of Main Street, we turned around and headed back. It was quite cold, especially carrying a tripod, but it was fun seeing all the pretty lights.

Driving home, we saw the traffic on US-74 stretched back for miles. I’m sure glad we opted to get out and walk rather than trying to drive through town.

Lassiter Swamp

It was very chilly Sunday morning when we awoke around sunrise. We layered up to get out of the tent and then packed our stuff up. Without the heavy firewood, we were able to get all our stuff on the boats and only have to make one trip back to the parking at Merchants Millpond. It was a lovely morning for a paddle, even if it was chilly, and the pond was beautiful in the early morning light. Back at the boat ramp, we packed up the car and got the boats back up on the rood, then set out for a hike before heading home. From the boat ramp parking, we hiked along Mill Pond Road over the dam, where a great blue heron was wading in the murky water.

Past here, a short spur trail led through the woods to the park office. After checking out, we started hiking the Lassiter Trail, the longest trail in the park. Almost immediately, we saw a deer on the trail, but she ran off before we could get a picture. The trail follows the millpond’s shore at first, crossing a wide section of the millpond on a boardwalk.

The water all around here was very mucky and this area looked like the epitome of a swamp.

Shortly after this point, the trail split to form a loop. Turning right, we soon passed the path that leads to the campsite where we had stayed the night before. We also saw some American Beautyberry growing here.

This bush makes pretty purple berries that are popular with birds. I have a bush growing in the backyard, but this was the first time I had seen it wild. The trail then crosses the old fire roads where bicycling is permitted and then heads past Lassiter Swamp.

Lassiter Swamp is located near the head of the millpond where Bennets Creek flows into it. This was another beautiful area of murky water and deformed cypress trees that were gnarled into the most bizarre shapes. Along this section here, we saw a marbled orb weaver spider. I was surprised that it wasn't too cold for it.

I don't particularly care for spiders, but these orb weavers have really pretty coloring and patterns. After Lassiter Swamp, the trail heads back, passing an area near private property and finishing up the loop.

There were several benches along the trail to stop and enjoy the view of the forest and swamp. We then hiked back to the car and started making our way home.

Kayak Camping at Merchants Millpond

Last weekend, Sandy and I headed to northeastern NC for kayak camping at Merchants Millpond State Park. This fall has been exceptionally wet and rainy, so we were excited for a dry weekend to take our boats out. We left Raleigh shortly after sunrise and began traveling east, making it to the park around 1030. First, we stopped by the visitor center to check in and get a parking pass for the car. They didn’t have any firewood here, so we swung by the family campground to pick up a bundle. Then we drove to the boat ramp and got our stuff ready to head out onto the millpond. It was our first time taking the boats out overnight for a camping trip. With the firewood, we couldn’t get all of our stuff in the boats. So we got the tent and most camping gear in first, along with a couple pieces of the heavy firewood, and planned to come back for the rest. Once our boats were all packed up, we set off paddling across the millpond.

As we got in the water, we had to paddle through some thick green “muck” along the surface of the pond that really made paddling more of an effort. But soon, we got past it and followed the orange trail towards the canoe campsite.

There were a tremendous number of beautiful bald cypress trees in the pond, though unfortunately, they had pretty much lost all of their leaves by now. I was able to find a couple patches of remaining fall color.

When we got to the campsites, we got out of the water at camp site 1. From here, we carried our gear to site 4 and got our stuff set up. I walked down to the shore here, so I would know how to paddle back to the right campsite. Once our tent was all set up, we headed back to site 1 and got back on the water. We paddled along the yellow trail towards the group canoe campsites and then continued further into the millpond and “enchanted forest”.

The many cypress trees sticking up out of the shallow pond were draped in beautiful Spanish moss and made for a beautiful and relaxing scene. It was too cold for any alligators to be out that we could see, but we did spot one lone turtle sunning himself on an exposed log.

We paddled around for a while in this area, then started making our way back to the boat ramp. We cooked dinner at the picnic area here so we wouldn’t have to hang food at the campsite and I did a quick loop around the Cypress Point Trail.

After dinner, we packed the rest of our stuff and firewood for the paddle back to camp.

There was about 30 minutes left of daylight when we got back to our site, so we spent that time gathering small branches and twigs to start our fire. Fortunately, there was plenty of downed wood all around the campsite. It got quite cold once the sun went down, but the campfire kept us warm until it was time for bed.

MST Hike at Folk Art Center

Sunday morning, we broke camp and left around 830. We wanted to get on the road early as we had a long drive home. Before we made it out of the campground, however, we had to stop for a buck walking across the road.

Outside of camp, we took Little River Road towards Gatlinburg. We made a quick stop at Meigs Falls at the point where Meigs Creek flows into Little River.

After this, we continued through Gatlinburg to Cosby and got on the Foothills Parkway to I-40. We made a quick stop at a couple of the overlooks for some last fall foliage pictures in Tennessee before getting on the interstate and heading east.

Just past Asheville, we got off the interstate and took the Blue Ridge Parkway north a few miles to the Folk Art Center. After getting our stuff together, we started off hiking northbound on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, planning to check out the Folk Art Center when we returned. The trail starts following an interpretive trail around the center and then continues north following closely to the Blue Ridge Parkway. In less than a mile, the trail crossed the parkway and we hiked along the other side. Although the leaves were changing along the trail, there weren’t many great overlooks to view the fall foliage. In about 2 miles from the start, we found a short path that led to a cliff face over the parkway with great views of the hills and suburbs of Asheville.

Here were the great views we had been looking for – the foliage and views from the cliff were just spectacular. Down below was an overlook on the parkway, but our view from the cliffs was even better.

We stopped here for a few minutes to enjoy the view and get some pictures. Then we continued on the trail for another half-hour or so, turning around after we had hiked about 3 miles.

As we were returning, we saw a couple other groups of people on the trail and recommended the side path to the cliff for the best views. Near the start, we some some bushes whose leaves had changed to a bright pink.

Once back at the Folk Art Center, Sandy and I browsed for a little while. They had some really nice stuff, but it was very expensive, so we didn’t get anything. From here, we started making our way towards home. Before getting back on the interstate, we stopped at a produce shack to get some apples. And of course we had to stop at Las Salsas in Morganton on the way home for dinner. The rest of our friends had arrived at about the same time so we ate with them. As we were getting ready to leave, we saw Casey and LeAnna, having stopped on the way back from Linville Gorge. At that point, I think there were people from Raleigh than Morganton in the restaurant. After a delicious dinner of fajitas, we made the drive home.