We love to go to the mountains in the fall. It is absolutely breathtaking!
We skipped last year since Natalie was a baby and we didn't think it would be as much fun, we try to make this an annual trip. We started off the trip driving straight to our favorite Apple Orchard..The Orchard at Altapass ... which is in Spruce Pine, NC right on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's about a 3 hr drive, but it is a very scenic drive once you are in the mountains. We made it to the Orchard and picked some apples and also bought already picked apples. We bought our tickets for the hayride and waited and listened to the bluegrass band playing and sipped on some fresh apple cider and ate apples with warm Carmel dip drizzled all over!! The hayride was great, the owners tell the history of the Orchard and the land. Weston and Natalie enjoyed the ride and the tractor pulling us...oh yes and eating apples!
After the Orchard we headed to Blowing Rock to have dinner and the Boone to check into our hotel. The kids had a great time at the hotel especially on the luggage cart. We also let them take a bath in the big jacuzzi tub and they had a blast...the jets were a little strong and would push Natalie all around the tub.
We woke up had breakfast and headed to town to go to the Mast General Store which is just a fun old timey store. We bought Natalie a little Christmas present here and also a Christmas ornament (It's a silver replica of the store) for our tree. Then headed to blowing rock for lunch at Mellow Mushroom and browsing through stores.
We had told Weston after we left the Mast General Store that that is where we bought his bath ducky (his favorite bath ducky) when he was a year old. Weston must have been thinking about that while we were driving and at lunch because when we began look at stores he wanted to go in all of them and he informed us that he was going to find a "Big Daddy Duck" to take home. We told him if he could find one he could take it home, we really thought it would be a long shot for him to find one but sure enough after a handful of stores we found a mini Mast General Store and went in there and Weston found what he had been searching for all day!! We were surprised but kept our word and bought him the "Big Daddy Duck"!! He talked on and on about his new duck it got a seat in the stroller, it also got thirsty and Weston shared Natalie's drink with "Big Daddy Duck".
After finding Duck we had to make our final stop at Kilwins which is our absolute favorite ice cream shop. We finished up our ice cream and headed over to the park which is conveniently located directly across from Kilwins. The kids had a great time on the slides and also playing in the piles upon piles of leaves! Natalie also made a little game of her own that I found interesting and took a couple (20ish) pictures of her playing. She found this little bridge...well it wasn't really a bridge more of a pathway and she would walk across it, stop, turn and walk across it again, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, until Mommy tells her it's time to go...she continues to repeat (as if she can't hear me)...Mommy picks her up and she cries and kicks...Mean Mommy!! (She was fine within a minute or two) All in all it was a wonderful trip to the mountains, Weston was fascinated by the apple trees and that he could pick an apple from a tree and eat it! It was really a great lesson for him because he loves apples and even though we have talked about them growing from trees...I don't think he really ever understood it until he actually did it. Can't wait to go next year! For the rest of the pictures click here.