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Woof! |
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Holy crap, sun! |
A new day dawns! We played a little shadow puppets as the sun crept up. We breakfasted (omelets with stuff in them), and have I mentioned that it gets cold much faster in the mountains?
Brrrrr. Seriously, I did not really pack all that amazingly for the temperature, but thank goodness for the power of layers.
What does the day have in store for us? Caterpillars! This is probably my favorite picture of the entire weekend. Behold, The Monarch Caterpillar.
Go look at it at the largest size.
So, we headed out to hike! Our destination: Dark Hallow Falls (a childhood favorite).
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Trail! |
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Scott is attacked by a fuzzy caterpillar. |
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My dad takes his new knees up a rock. |
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The Falls. |
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My Mom and Marion, after oh, 25 years? finally climb the rock! |
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That's right, I'm heading up the rock too! |
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The rock's web... |
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Another completely insane looking caterpillar. |
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The group ona rock. |
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The end of the trail! Of course, there is still the trail back to the cars. |
So, we wandered back to the visitors center, where the cars were, and headed back to camp for lunch. The group splits up. M&A and their friends decide to do another hike, to a really lovely viewing spot. We decide to do a low key hike from the campsite to the visitor center via 'butterfly alley'.
We stumbled upon a newly hatched monarch butterfly, laying on the path. Since we'd nearly trampled it, my dad got it up on his finger, and we set it on a nearby rock.
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Look at those crinkly wings! |
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You can still see the caterpillar fur on it's back. |
The area we were walking through had lots of thistle in bloom, which the butterflies all go bonkers for.
We finally made it to the more wooded section, where we found...deer! A small herd, with a buck and some does and fawns. The buck was in heavy growth, much further out, so no good pictures of him.
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We crossed over the Appalachian Trail |
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and made it back to the Visitor's Center |
Where we stopped and had a delicious summer treat. Blackberry ice cream! We ended up meeting with M&A at the same time. They had come prepared with chocolate sprinkles, which I totally rolled my cone in. Mmmmm.
Sooooo pretty!!!!! Quite the adventure :)
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