Its hard to believe how busy it can get between Thanksgiving and Christmas.We had a really good Thanksgiving, driving up to the mountains and visiting quite a few places. In the weekend after Thanksgiving we also went up into the mountains and visited quite a few places. The 4 videos that resulted from that weekend cruising the mountains were: Looking for Overland Around Asheville, NC, NC Forest Roads- Finding Table Rock Mt. -Overland Adventures, Wilson Creek Gorge and Mortimer Campground, NC, -Cruising the Appalachians, and Seeking OHV – Overland Roads- Brown Mt OHV area NC. and Free camping.

I have had an itching for some 4 wheeling adventures since we got the new Toyota forerunner. And according to several YouTube videos there are quite a few forest roads that have a “little challenge” to them in the Appalachians. So we headed up there to see what we could find and on the map we saw that there were areas for “Off-Highway Vehicles” (OHV). I had no idea of the wonderful other stuff that we would find along the way. It was a big surprise to see the beautiful waterfalls and trout streams, and the free campsites. The one really big surprise to me was the little dirt road we took that said “Table Mountain Picnic Area-13 miles “, and then to find that Table Mountain was a beautiful escarpment mountain to climb and phenomenal view of the surrounding mountains and river valleys. We were just really disappointed that we had gotten there at sunset so we could not climb the mountain. There just wasn’t enough time and we didn’t want to be climbing a strange mountain in the dark.

The revisit to Wilson Creek Gorge in the Mortimer campground was a step back in time to when we camped there 3 years ago. It was at a time when both boys were in great health and we did a lot of hiking and camping and a lot of other things together. I got the feeling that Dakota recognized it and wondered where Caesar was. And so it was just a little uncomfortable and sad, but it’s a nice enough place that I’ll be back there sooner or later. The old videos of the place still brings a tear to my eyes. But if you want to watch them they are back here: US Forest Service Campground – Mortimer .

Of course any time there is exceptional weather around here I like to post a video of it. So when we got 8 to 12 inches of snow, that required a special episode of my videos. SnowDay Stateville, NC – December 9th, 2018. And it’s amazing how it freaks out the natives down here to get so little snow. We did not go out while it was snowing because it definitely was a very slippery snow and a lot of people did slide off the roads. The new forerunner although it is four-wheel-drive has the most worst snow tires in the world. They are definitely just long distance touring highway tires with very little traction grip pattern on the tread. When it finally did stop snowing Sunday night, we plowed through the snow in the driveway and got out and went into work Monday. And it seemed there were about 8 other people there including me and my boss who had decided to venture in to see how things were. I guessed most of the people here are just used to perfect weather, because it really is pretty perfect most of the time. The average temperature from winter summer spring and fall averages between 60 and 85 every day of the year at some time of the day. When it gets down into the low 40s or 30s at night in the winter, people hardly know what to do. But if the sun comes out it’ll be back up into the high 50s to 60s by 2 o’clock, which is pretty good weather. So I’m kinda liking it down here. And the occasional snowstorm or rogue hurricane just makes it interesting. You never want to get bored with weather.