1st Fall Mountain Trip

Fall is upon us, so I decided it was time to take a trip up to the mountains this weekend to see how the color is progressing. I couldn't decide which area to go to until after I read some reports and saw a couple pictures of the Grandfather Mountain area. The color there seemed to be progressing along pretty well, so I decided that would be an area we would check out. We left the house pretty early in the morning so we could catch the sunrise from the Parkway at the Thunder Hill lookout just north of Boone. It was cloudier than the forecast said it would be so all we got for sunrise were gray skies. We did check some areas just off the Parkway that I wanted to see and there was some really good color there. We made our way long the Parkway toward Blowing Rock and stopped at Bass Lake. The trees around the lake were at peak and a lot had fallen already. I took several pictures there and then headed on down to Price Lake and then to Grandfather Mountain. The color there was pretty good, but still mostly green. We stopped at Boone Fork and got out to hike around for awhile and take some pictures. We also made the short hike to Beacon Heights. A great view of Grandfather Mountain can be seen from there, but the light was too bright for any good photography. From there we headed on south toward Crabtree Falls. That is one spot I wanted to get to this year for fall and it was beautiful. We ran into another photographer friend, John, and he joined us at the waterfall. We spent some time there taking pictures until it got dark before we headed on home.