We started our first morning at the cabin with breakfast on the porch. For the record, Alice only took one teeny tiny bite out of this muffin, that Kate and Rob brought.
Then, there was a quick walk next to one of the pastures while I finished getting ready. They reported seeing a snake.
Our plan for the day was to do a little hike on the Graveyard Fields Trail. To get there, we took a scenic and beautiful drive through Pisgah that took us past many waterfalls and on up to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
We arrived at the Graveyard Fields trailhead about an hour later. After a short hike, we came to a stream.
Then we walked a bit further to the main waterfall attraction. The kids had fun walking in the cold water and climbing on the rocks. We'd come prepared--dressing the kids in their swimming clothes, but no one fell in.
After a while at the falls, we continued hiking. The kids were real troopers--we didn't carry Alice the whole time, and even Simon did a lot of the walking himself.
We had lunch on a rock at this beautiful secluded stream.
After lunch, Alice needed to tinkle, and we had a momentous event: her first wilderness pee. We'd tried from time to time on hikes before, but she always chickened out at the last minute and decided to just hold it. Needless to say, there are not photos of this event.
One fun part of the hike was that there were many ripe blueberries and blackberries along the path.
After a while, Simon finally got too tired to walk and I had to carry him the rest of the way. He ended up falling asleep on me and stayed asleep even when we transferred him to his carseat after the hike.
It's funny because we probably only hiked about three miles total, but somehow even a short hike with kids feels like a really long hike. Both kids napped in the car on the way back to the cabin.
We arrived "home" in the late afternoon, and had a snack. Then Rob had the bright idea of taking a little walk around the grounds, using the hand-drawn map provided in the guest notebook. Luckily, Simon consented to being put in the green backpack for this hike!
Our first stop was a cute little pond with an island in it, that we could see on our drive in to the property.
After that, the short little hike turned into a bit of a marathon. The map, it turns out, was not really drawn to scale and the loop around the back of the property took much longer than expected. At several points we worried if we were going the right way, and that maybe Kate, who had stayed back at the cabin, would have to send a rescue party out for us.
I had, in my typical food and water paranoia, grabbed a bottle of water and couple of snacks before heading out. Thank goodness I did (and this also supports my chronic over-preparedness) because little Alice needed some snacks and water to keep going on this unexpectedly long journey. But, to her credit, she hiked the whole way herself. I only carried her for one little bit where the grass was really high and hurt her legs. I think the hike was probably not really that long, but it was just the difference between our expectations and the reality that made it seem so long and arduous.
We did eventually make all the right turns and ended up back at the cabin in time for a late supper.
Then, it was time for s'more and some backyard bugga-bugga. The kids loved running around in the back yard. It made me sad that we don't have a good backyard for them to play in at our own house.
Finally, we had completed our first full day at the cabin, and it was time for bednight snacks on the porch (so we could enjoy the view while the kids watched Peppa).
