October 31, 2023

Every time we say we’re not going to post much to our blog, we see some beautiful areas and just have to post photos. Some day this will be our memory lane. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy our photos and stories.

We visited the Botanical Gardens at Wake-Forest University. It was part of the RJ Reynolds estate…interesting history of course. We played pickleball with a man who worked for RJR all his life and learned a lot about the story from him.

Stone Mountain in North Carolina. That rock is HUGE! We just had to hike the trail around it. 800ft. elevation climb in less than a mile, much of it stairs. The views were awesome. The “easy” way down was the long way around, of course. 5 miles, which doesn’t sound like much, only we’re are not quite in the shape we used to be. Somewhere about 300 steps up and then a nice trail most of the way down, then another 300 or so steps down along waterfalls and finally to the view back up the rock face. PHEW! It seemed worth it, until the next day when our bones were complaining. There was a nice reward on the way home- there is a general store and hand dips really good ice cream! YAY!

Lake Hartwell, SC and GA. The lake is down 7ft or more, dropping daily. This area has been in moderate drought conditions for a couple of years. The lake is so low, as you can see from the left pic, the water should be at least 2 ft. over my head. It allowed us to walk out to some islands that are not islands right now.