What a Weekend

Our plan was to meet Phillip, Jamie, and their family in Brevard, the land of many waterfalls, for a great weekend of camping and hiking. This is what the drive looked like:

Brevard advertises about 250 waterfalls in the area. We were excited to see as many of the falls as we could in one weekend. - Brian

If you can't tell, it was raining, and hard. It had been for about 2 days, so we hoped that it would clear up. We got to our campsite, and it was beautiful. It was a very nice area that even had a hot tub! We talked with the camp hosts, and they said that the rain was supposed to clear up soon, but that it would rain again the next day. So we said, BRING ON THE RAIN! And went to set up the tent....it started to rain harder. We got it set up and went to get the gear, it rained harder. Brian went to buy some extra twine to make some adjustments to the rain fly to keep us more dry...it rained harder. Needless to say, after only an hour we were soaked, and our tent was already overwhelmed. There was no way we were going to make it two days, and Jamie has a 6 month old, I just couldn't do that to her. So, we rolled up the tent, rain and all, and headed into Brevard. This is us after we tore down camp, you can't really tell but we are SOAKED!

I consider myself to be a good/prepared camper. I feel a little embarrassed that we had to clear out for a little rain. (Actually it was A LOT of rain). We have camped in rain, snow, and sleet before, but this was too much for our tent. Rain was coming in every seam, through the zippers, and through the rainfly itself.

We ended up at Holiday Inn Express where we got the last room they had. When we walked in we realized they'd made a mistake and had given us a suite. SWEET! So we called Phillip and Jamie and told them not to cancel plans but to come join us. We didn't want to hide anything from the hotel so we asked the lady at the front desk if it was ok if we invited our brother and his wife since we had a pull out bed. "You have a pull out bed??" She said, "did I give you a suite, Huh, I must have, sure invite anyone you want!" NICE!

After a long night of trying to get 5 kids to sleep in the same room, we woke up excited for a great Saturday. Heck with the rain we were going hiking! This is Kyler and Brian getting all ready.

The rain scared us out of camping but we were definately hiking.



Our whole group, heading to the first falls.

Jamie, Lydia, Morgan, Savannah

Our family, staying dry. (We weren't staying completely dry but we were having fun.)

Because of all the rain, the rivers rise and it becomes a kayakers dream. It was awesome watching them come over the falls.

We were talking to one of the kayakers and they said that this river is not good for kayaking unless it is raining. The water is too low without the rain. So we feel lucky actually that we were there when they were. It was great to see them go over this fall. It was about 20 feet high. I want a kayak.

This is the second hike we took, it's the falls in the Last of the Mohican's, it was really pretty.

All in all, we stayed pretty dry, our pants and shoes were wet, but it was so fun it was worth it.

We went to Pizza that night at a little hole in the wall place, and spent Sunday morning flying kites in park. It was a great weekend. Full of adventure!

Our next camping trip is planned for two weeks, we are going to the beach. We are hoping for nice beach weather. This video is of little Savannah pretending she is a duck. She is so darn cute.