Panther Valley Hike

Monday was beautiful day in North Carolina for a hike. The group consisted of Ralph and I and six other guys. The hike leader, Chan was very familiar with the area as he had hiked in the valley many times before with Carlton, an older man who had lived in the valley and made many of the trails. We parked at Carlton's house and took a few short cuts to start the hike. Panther Valley has a very primitive trail system, there are some logging roads in the area that you can follow, but we followed Carlton's trails. The trails looked more like deer paths to me. We followed them through Carlton's Field of Ferns to Devil's Elbow where we crossed a stream. Ralph and I had to go barefoot. Brrr!!!! We hiked back upstream and up hill to Camille's Falls where we had lunch. Each time we went down to the river we had to find a trail through the rhododendrons and mountain laurel bushes, no cut branches to make it easy for the tall guys. Chan took us to Green Creek Falls, Warren Falls and the most well known falls in the area, Schoolhouse Falls. You can walk behind Schoolhouse falls if you are careful. It was a great ending to the hike with a fairly short uphill climb back to the start of the hike.

Perfect Fall Weather

Today was a perfect fall day. Cool evening temperatures ( around 30 degrees ) followed by blue skies and temperatures reaching 68 degrees around 3:00pm. The photos do not capture the how vivid the colors are in the area. This is the peak week for colors and what surprises us is how long the leaves stay on the trees, compared to Minnesota or Wisconsin.

Tomorrow we are going on a long hike in western NC. We are going 40 miles west to a lake region where everyone tells us we will see around 15 waterfalls. We will publish another post later this week with some pictures of the hike.

With one week to go, we are looking forward to seeing family and friends, but will miss this area.