Canoe Trip, Stone Mtn. and Grandfather Mtn, NC

Must wrap up our stay at New River State Park in North Carolina as we moved on today back to Endless Caverns in Virginia where we will be for a whole month.  We were hoping to try and avoid the summer heat....we will see.  It was 85 degrees with 50+ percent humidity when we arrived today!

Anyway, back at New River SP.  We enjoyed a very nice canoe trip down part of the river last weekend.  I was about a 1 hour 45 min float, almost, down a stretch of the New River.  We signed up at the park for the trip and it cost us $5 each for a lovely afternoon!

With our park ranger guides in the canoe
on the left,
we had lovely float down the river witch
included a
narrated history of the area!

We passed some people tubing the
river and
a few fishermen enjoying the float!

We drove about 50 minutes back to Boone to do a trail on Grandfather Mtn. which we were not
able to do the previous stop there:

 This was a steep, but really beautiful trail.  Very scenic.  Only downside was the noise from traffic
coming up from a highway which runs through the bottom of the canyon.

Profile View

thought these were pretty cool!

 We did a waterfall trail at Stone Mountain State Park.

 We really had no idea what we were in for here.  We read that you could access 3 waterfalls on one trail so that sounded like a plan to us.  We did not know we would have to walk down some 550+ stairs to get to the top/first falls and that, of course we had to return the same way!  Whew!

the largest of the falls cascades down a 200 foot rock wall

Colorful shrooms
everywhere!

this one had purple rings!

this fungus was pink!

back up the stairs!!!