Green Mountain Falls. Taking it Easy.

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #28
Back at the hotel in Boone, NC - Fri, 6 Sep 2024. 6pm

The hike to Glen Burney and Glen Marie falls earlier today took more out of us than we expected. Partly that's because all the hiking we did yesterday— starting with Otter Falls, then Waterfall Park, then Upper Creek Falls, then Linville Falls— took a lot out of us. So after doing another 600'+ ascent in the glens today left us feeling pretty wrecked. We were tempted to call it a day after a late lunch in Blowing Rock. But we couldn't just call it a day; it was too early. So we temporized with a drive-to falls to see if our energy levels might perk back up.



Green Mountain Falls is several miles west of Blowing Rock. It's a quiet little falls that's hard to find. Up on the Blue Ridge Parkway there's a well marked Green Mountain Overlook... but that's not where the falls is. There's not even a trail. It's just a place to see Green Mountain. The falls? Those are on Green Mountain Creek. Down on route US 221 there's a drive-to spot where the road crosses the creek. Other than being able to find the creek and where it crosses the road on a map, it's not marked. Our source implied there's drive-to parking spot in front of the falls.... It doesn't exist. There is parking in a wide spot on the shoulder 100' past the falls, on the other side of the road.

All that mystery for this small falls is cool because it meant we had it to ourselves to enjoy for a while. Even traffic passing by on US-221 was light, barely interrupting the tranquility of lingering at the falls. As we left, travelers speaking in heavily accented English pulled up next to our car and asked if this was Green Mountain Falls. "Well," I answered, "It's definitely Green Mountain Creek."

Yesterday Pagers, Today Walkie Talkies. Tomorrow... Pigeons?

Yesterday it was in the news that thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah terrorists and allies exploded in Lebanon. Today I awoke to news that hundreds of walkie-talkies used by the same group had exploded. This coordinated walkie-talkie attack came one day after the coordinated pager attack.

News stories have updated the injury toll throughout the day as reports have rolled in. The latest I've seen is that Lebanon's health ministry reports 14 people had been killed and 450 injured on Wednesday, while the death toll from Tuesday's pager explosions rose to 12, including two children, with nearly 3,000 injured. (Source: Reuters article, 18 Sep 2024.) Meanwhile, an investigative reporter in Israel, Ronen Bergman, has written that he thinks the death toll is actually much higher. (Source: The Times of Israel article, 18 Sep 2024.)

These attacks will certainly have members of terrorist group Hezbollah looking at all their electronic devices with concern and fear. Already they switched from cell phones to pagers months ago after the group warned its members that Israel was able to spy on them through their cellphones. Many members, particularly those responsible for managing operations, also were issued walkie-talkies. Tuesday their pagers blew up, Wednesday their two-way radios. What'll they use next, carrier pigeons? And how soon before we read about exploding pigeons?

Nice Surprise, Price Surprise

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #29
Back at the hotel in Boone, NC - Fri, 6 Sep 2024. 8pm

We enjoyed a taking-it-easy afternoon in our hotel room today, just kind of vegging on the sofa and bed after getting back from Green Mountain Falls. It's not that that hike was difficult— I mean, Green Mountain Falls wasn't even a hike, it was a drive-to spot— or that our hike this morning at Glen Burney was that tough. Glen Burney was a legit hike, it just wasn't tough. Or at least it shouldn't have been. What's really kicked our butts is the cumulative effect of all the hiking we've done the past few days.

As it started to get dark this evening we decided we should get dinner. We weren't sure we deserved a full meal after a big lunch after hiking Glen Burney and then taking it easy the rest of the afternoon. So we decided we could order light, like I'd get a small burger and share fries with Hawk, at the Come Back Shack.

While dining out the past few nights in Boone I've been struck by how cheap prices are. We don't have spendy tastes in dining to start with. We've eaten twice at a burger shack and once at a diner the past three nights. But even so we've been pleasantly surprised how the bill has come in well under what we're accustomed to from living in California.

Gas is cheap, too. We've filled up the past few days at $3.09/gal. Some places we drove past in less touristy areas 3 nights ago were as low as $2.89. Back home the cheapest gas is $3.99/gal, and that's at Costco. Conventional discount gas stations are probably $4.39 and name-brand stations likely around $4.79.