Camping at Wilson Creek, NC

Ben and I love to travel and are always making plans for future trips, so he usually opts to work on days when his department schedules vacation time to save up the vacation day for a longer trip later. We have plans to be out-of-town this weekend and Ben will need to take off of work for Monday and possibly Tuesday, so imagine my surprise last week when he said he had Good Friday off of work and wanted to take it, instead of banking the holiday! Two weekend trips in a row? Fine with me!

He suggested going camping, so that is what we did. I chose Wilson Creek- an area at the base of the App mountains that runs all the way from Lenoir to Grandfather Mountain in Boone, NC. The area is heavily wooded, has very few inhabitants, and is home to the Wilson Creek Gorge- one of the best whitewater kayaking sites in the southeast. Plus it's only around 2 hours away from our home : )

We camped for two nights and spent three days just playing in God's backyard!

I felt like we were in a Subaru commercial- driving over dusty, rocky mountain roads with two kayaks on top of the car and camping, biking, and rock climbing gear in the back of the car :) It's a good feeling. 

Our campsite:

I bought a 1.5" foam pad (to also be used on our guest bed) to put under our sleeping bags b/c I'm having very serious joint pain right now and wanted to be comfortable sleeping on the ground. 

A kayak paddle put between two large rocks makes a perfect clothes line!

Playing around:

We were only 20 mins away from rock climbing at the Chimneys on Table Rock Mountain, which is one of our favorite spots. Sat. morning was really frigid, though, and my hips were really hurting from a bad night's sleep, so we didn't stay long because my body was in a lot of pain. The only available rock face was pretty easy, too, which Ben can only enjoy a couple of times. But at least we tried :)

We spent two afternoons kayaking one of the best river sections I've been on in my SOT, but we didn't take any pictures because there were Class I and II rapids and didn't want the camera to get wet :( Darn! But this is what most of the river section looked like:

(We also didn't get any pictures of Ben mountain biking. We would stash his bike a few miles from where we dropped in and he would bike back to pick up the car while I stayed with the boats. Kayaking for a few miles then biking uphill... yep, he got his workouts!)

We also watched some more experienced whitewater kayakers run the gorge section of the river. This particular spot is called "10-ft-falls". 

They use Werner paddles. I want a Werner paddle. Non-feathered, just in case Santa is reading this :)

This was SUCH a fun weekend, thanks to my adventurous husband! He just amazes me.