Broke, but happy!: Grandfather Mountain for Abigail's Birthday

Somehow I skipped posting anything about our surprise trip to the mountains on Abigail's Birthday. We took the Wednesday off and Tuesday after work decided to tell the kids we were going to go get ice cream after supper. We rode up to Lincolnton to the Morgans Dairy Bar and Calf-A and got ice cream. By then it was 9 pm and we told the kids it was just too late to go home and we were going to go ahead and go to the mountains. We rode to Blowing Rock and got a hotel and were fresh and ready to go to Grandfather Mountain Wednesday morning. It was only 67 degrees up there and very nice clean fresh smelling air. I couldn't but keep saying IT SMELLS SO GOOD HERE! We went out on the mile high swinging bridge and then we found a hiking trail that was labeled AGGRESSIVE-PROPER HIKING EQUIPMENT REQUIRED! We looked down and everyone had good sturdy tennis shoes, so hey we were equipped! It was a 2.4 mile trail that at times you had to use cables to pull yourself up or to rappel down with. Some rocks were only climbable with ladders that were bolted to the side of them. This was one of the funnest trails we had ever been on. We were almost to the top of the "cliff side" when Brandon decided it wasn't safe anymore to hold onto Abi with one hand and only have one hand to hold and pull up himself. Emily and I went a little further on our own because we wanted to see the last ladder area. We will definitely be going back here to hike these trails again. Abigail kept saying THIS IS THE BEST BIRTHDAY IDEA EVER! We actually had 4 happy people in our party and we were so happy that we chose to spend the day there.

HAPPY 6th BIRTHDAY ABIGAIL!!!

Thank goodness Emily grabbed me before I went over the edge for good!!! No... this actually looks like the edge, but there is actually a grassy area we walked to around behind this rock!

I took this picture about the place where Brandon turned around with Abi. The lady in the green was standing at the bottom of this ladder that was pretty much on the side of a rock that we had to scale to get up to the ladder. Brandon and Abi are teetering on a mass of tree roots that just barely had enough room for you to perch to get over to the ladder. It's hard to explain or even show in a picture how scary this actually was.