Day Trip

Today we decided to take a break and go outdoors. Those of us who live in Charlotte are very lucky to be half-way from both the beach and the mountains. Well... I guess we're a little bit closer to the mountains? We got up this morning when our bodies were ready to get up, about 9am. We had a nice breakfast and then we packed up the car for our "day trip." My birthday was last Friday and to treat myself, the week before I bought myself a Nikon D-40. I have been so busy with school and work that I haven't had a chance to take any really good pictures with it. Today was going to be that day. We decided to head towards the mountains. We didn't know where we would end up, we just knew Asheville was about 2 hours away. We usually take 321 to 40 but today we took 74 "around the bend." I didn't like it as much because you go through Gastonia, and Shelby and some other little towns. A lot of stop and go. My favorite part about going up 321 is once you get past Hickory it's like the mountains appear, and it is always so pretty.

Oh well, we didn't go that way but we still had fun. We saw some places we had never seen before or hadn't been to in years. About noon-time we made it to Lake Lure. It was so pretty. I was surprised because there weren't that many people there. I guess it was kind of like the calm before the storm because once October comes the mountains pretty much become a zoo. I don't know if Chad had ever been to Lake Lure but it's been about 10 years since I've been there. I think once he saw it he started planning his fishing trip there. You can rent motorized boats so I think he was thinking it would be perfect for he and his dad. Chimney Rock is also right there by Lake Lure and goodness it's been probably 15 years or more since I have been there. Probably when I went with girl scouts. It is actually $14 per person now to go to Chimney Rock. Crazy! We might do that excursion when we go in October to Asheville.

Since we vetoed Chimney Rock we followed the river a little bit until we found a clearing. By clearing I mean clear of people. There were a lot of people picnicking by the river. I wanted a place to set up my tripod to take slow exposures of the river. I got a few neat filters from my future in-laws for my birthday, a polarized and UV filter. When I was photographing the river the polarized filter made a huge difference, you could see the bottom of the river through my camera, just like polarized sunglasses. See the difference? The photo on the right is polarized and the one on the left is not. Pretty neat!

We had a great day together. We were only gone for about 5 hours. We got a lot of vitamin D and a lot of exercise. I can't wait until October when we get to go to Biltmore. Since Chad and I have been together, ohhh about 6 years, we venture to Asheville every year. This year we will have gone twice. We usually go in the spring. Since we might be going to scope out Vegas this coming spring we figured we'd do our trip in October to be sure we don't miss it. I don't think we have ever been in the fall together, to Biltmore I mean. We've been at Christmas, on Christmas actually, and then in the spring. So this will be fun, and pretty, I am pretty sure the colors will be changing by then. I am sure I will have plenty of pictures to show you. It's officially 1 month from now, we are leaving on October 12th. What a great day this was!