Friday was test #2 for Kris and so we had the weekend to spend some time together without having to do much studying. We decided to make a trip to Stone Mountain State Park despite the gas crisis that was going down here in NC. Apparently we get all of our oil/gas from Texas and since they shut things down for the hurricane there was a sort of panic here. Anyway, we had a great time. I didn't know that we were going to be doing the stair master in the mountains but we did and it was fun. The hike we did went up and over the top of the mountain and back around. It was 3.8 miles. It's nothing like the mountains of Utah but they are still beautiful and I'm excited to see them when the leaves change. Word on the street is that it is breath taking.

For the past few weeks we had been planning on going to the Winston-Salem Air Show. With tropical storm Hannah we thought that maybe that wasn't going to happen. But, good for us, the storm barely brushed us and the show went on. Kris was in airplane heaven;) There were lots of planes on display and several were the classics. I'm not going to pretend that I know what those are but they were pretty cool. The show itself was neat. Kris said that those planes that do the aerobatics have to have lots of power. It was awesome to watch them do their tricks then come zooming back towards the earth to do another trick. Kris said that an air show at an Air Force base is pretty sweet too because you get the big jets and such. Maybe one day we'll get there.

Labor Day Weekend

Since Kris didn't have to go to school on Monday that gave us a little more opportunity to take some time and enjoy the area around us. We are still learning of cool things to do but we discovered a couple this weekend. On Saturday afternoon we decided that we would take a little trip to a place called Mount Airy. It is about 45 minutes from here and it is the place where the Andy Griffith grew up. Apparently his old house is a bed and breakfast now. Anyway, it isn't the place where the hit TV show was filmed but they have a recreation of the Old Jail House (which oddly is closed on Saturdays), the police car, and the barber shop. I don't remember details about this show but I do remember the whistling. We got there kind of late (4:30pm or so) and lots of the stores were already closed. We did meander through some antique stores and gift shops with memorabilia from the show. Then we had dinner at a greasy little diner that was kind of dirty but I had a delicious philly steak and cheese sandwich.
From there we went to Pilot Mountain which is a little mountain with a rock top. We didn't have much time to explore up there but we did do a little hike around the top. It was pretty nice and I think we only passed 1 guy. We looked into it later at home and found out that there is a bit of climbing there and that we can probably do them because there is some stuff that isn't too difficult. There are other trails there that we will go back and do when we have more time.
On Monday we went to Hanging Rock State Park which is also about 45 minutes away from here. We hiked to the hanging rock which is a bit like pilot mountain where the rock is bare at the top but at this one you could go all the way to the top and walk around. It was a bit of a drop off and it was way cool.


Our other little hike was to Window Falls and Hidden Falls. I guess that NC has been in a drought for the last few year so I don't know if the waterfalls would be more spectacular at another time but it was a nice little hike. The Window is the first picture and the fall is the second.

All in all we had a good time and now we have a couple of places close by that we can get more familiar with. We still have lots more to discover but it was a start.