Sliding Rock and Chimney Rock

Taylor has two friends from VA visiting this week and we took a day trip Wednesday to Sliding Rock and Chimney Rock, NC. We first climbed to the top of Chimney Rock (where the end of Last of the Mohicans was filmed), overlooking Lake Lure. There was a forest fire on the backside of the mountain and a Huey helicopter was dropping buckets of water on it. (Yellow Huey is center of picture here. Sound of "whopp, whopp, whopp-ing" propellers was enough to give even me flashbacks to Vietnam...or at least Good Morning Vietnam. An interesting anecdote on Chimney Rock...it was privately owned and operated for over 60 yrs, until the State of NC purchased it in 2007. The Morse family even installed an 8-story elevator in the mountain in 1947 to increase accessibility.


After our, some would say exhausting (all the girls), hike up Chimney Rock, we drove 30 minutes over to Sliding Rock and were all reminded how cold mountain water is! In this video, Taylor, Brooke and Britney all slide down together. The rock, located in Pisgah Ntl. Forest, has also been taken over by the Park "Service" and now charges $1/person admission. But, they've installed bathrooms, parking area, and observation decks. The long line took about 35 minutes (which we thought we'd avoid on a weekday), so after going 3 times, we walked downstream and found our own mini-Sliding Rock with no line and spent almost as much time there.