hiking to royalty and heaven

Picking up where we left off, a few more hours turned into most of the day as the parts of the South Carolina State Museum that we missed the previous day were as interesting as the parts we saw and we went over some of the stuff we saw again plus the Civil War relic room. We are heading into the piedmont and so our progress will now only be slowed by the hills and valleys of the Blue Ridge.
We spent the night at King’s Mountain which is the site of one of the most decisive battles of the Revolutionary War. Most of the RW was fought in the north but Cornwallis wanted to cut off the south so the north couldn’t get soldiers and supplies from there. He had a commander named Ferguson who was considered the best shot in the British army who was sent to the Carolina’s to recruit and train loyalists and he did. To make a long but interesting story short, his Tories met up with patriots from the Carolina’s at Kings Mountain in 1780 which history will tell you was not a kind time in the war for the Americans but the patriots whooped the Tories and so rallied the country and forced Cornwallis from the south and the rest is history as they say. We hiked the trail all around Kings Mountain and it was impressive how any force could have routed another from the top of that mountain. It was a beautiful spring day and the landscape was coming to life in the spring like weather. We had spent the morning at a re-creation of an 1850’s farmstead where the buildings were original dovetail log construction and Olivia got to experience the chore that a colonial child would have of pulling water from a well. Plus we saw some chickens that made us homesick for our chicken period.
A well versed traveler should always visit at least one site where a famous movie was filmed and we did that today. At the end of the Last of the Mohicans there is a very sad scene where the Native Americans are trying to escape from their enemies and taking the anglo children of the commander with them to save them but in the end everyone dies. It was filmed at Chimney Rock North Carolina. This is a very impressive rock outcrop and accompanying waterfall in the Appalachian mountains. You really have to want to get there because you have to go over some big mountains to get there. We were all very proud of Fluffy for not only did she get us to Lake Lure which is at the base of Chimney Rock but she got us halfway up the mountain to Chimney Rock and down again. We hiked all over the cliff’s around Chimney Rock to the waterfall that is twice as high as Niagara but not nearly as much water volume. Olivia kept up the whole way about 2.5 miles, it was a workout for all of us but thank goodness we had some practice at King’s Mountain. The weather was good for hiking, not to much heat and not to cold. It is supposed to snow tonight here. So much for warm spring weather…We are in Ashville tonight visiting Tommy who we met at Tuck in the Woods. Soon to be playing bluegrass in the Blue Ridge…hope everyone is not blue but happy. Hugs from the Meanderthals,

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