Vacation October 24, 2020

Drive to Looking Glass Falls via Sevierville, I40 into NC. Looking Glass is cool. Drive over is pretty much as neat as driving through the GSMNP.

Looking Glass Falls in Pisgah National Forest.

At Looking Glass Falls, I realized something about driving around in the mountains. There is no cellular service when you're deep in the woods, so if you haven't downloaded the map in Google Maps, you don't have a way to calculate a new route. I got to Looking Glass Falls but couldn't calculate a route to anywhere else. So I browsed the map that I had, and saw that I could follow the road I was on to the next town and hope that we'd have cell service there. And we did.

From Looking Glass Falls, we drove to Chimney Rock. That took us on many back roads. Lots of turns and curves. But we finally got there around 12:30. We turned into the park just to scope things out, and immediately found ourselves on a very narrow winding road in bumper to bumper traffic with one mile to go to get to the admission gate. So at that point we were pretty much committed.

It took us 45 minutes to drive the one mile up the mountain to the admission gate. Then we waited to go to the bathroom. Then we waited for the shuttle bus. Then we waited for the elevator up to top. We didn't have to wait to leave, but it was probably 2PM by the time we got our of there.

The view at Chimney Rock is quite nice
Panoramic view from the top of Chimney Rock

After Chimney Rock, we were looking for a place to eat in downtown Chimney Rock. We checked at one bar and grill and the wait was an hour. So we decided to head toward Black Mountain and hope that we'd see another place.

From Chimney Rock to Black Mountain and the Leaf Festival. On the way from Chimney Rock to Black Mountain we eat at Subway.

Black Mountain, was a nothing. If there was a leaf festival it was minuscule. We saw some people sitting on lawn chairs in a park. If that was the leaf festival... oh well.

We drove around a few blocks in town, found nothing interesting and hit I40 toward Ashville.

In Ashville we want directly to the Hilton Foundry Hotel. We weren't really hungry, but it was dinner time. We figured we would get hungry and so we decided to go for a walk in town. It was crowded. We walked over to the Basilica of Saint Lawrence, then headed back toward the hotel. Connie gets a salad a a take out joint. I pass on that.

Back the hotel we're trying to figure out what to do the next day. Nothing seemed that interesting, so I suggested we just go to Alex and Matty's and see Noelle. That's what Connie really wants to do so why not.