Family Vacation to Beech Mountain July 2006

	The community of Beech Mountain is around 5000' elevation, just above Banner Elk, NC, which is the highest city east of the Mississippi!
	Spectacular mountain views up thar!
	Home to "Ski Beech" in the winter, you can see one of the chair lifts here.
	Walking distance from our cabin were some nice trails along a mountain creek.
	A nationwide heatwave made the cold mountain water quite refreshing.
	Erica and Laura decorated their walking sticks with pipevine (Aristolochia macrophylla) leaves and live Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillars! (Look closely!)
	The perfect seat while the girls play in the water! (GO BLUE!)
	One of my artistic photo attempts...
	Dinner on the deck at the delightful Destiny Inn.
	Back at the cabin, Erica & Laura settled right into TV mode.
	Don't take my picture!
	A vacation at Beech Mountain isn't complete without a daily visit to Fred's General Mercantile.
	A sign inside the store read, "If we don't have it, you don't need it!" And that sign was pretty much right. They carried a little bit of EVERYTHING from birdseed to hardware to groceries, shoes, gifts, videos, books, crafts, . . . which is why we were there every day!
	A rafting trip with Edge of the World down the Watauga River just over the border in Tennessee was an absolute blast! (The pics below are prints that we got from the rafting company. I then took a digital photo of the print for the website, hence some strange glares and lines in a few of the pics.)
	On the last day of the trip, we visited Grandfather Mountain, whose peak is just shy of 6000'.
	Who are those crazy people on the mile-high bridge?
	Wait a minute, they're waving at me!
	Intrepid rock climbers.
	And cave explorers
	I think I need more optics gear.
	Grandfather Mountain also has some animal exhibits. (So that means I can't count this bird on my list!)
	Up close and personal with the otters.
	Isn't he cute?
	At the bear exhibit, you could buy little cups of food and actually feed the bears.
	"Hey kid, throw me some!"
	"OR ELSE!!!"
	Wonderful set of hiking trails at Grandfather Mountain.
	After leaving Grandfather, we hit the Blue Ridge Parkway up to Moses Cone Manor where there are some beautiful mountain fields and an old fancy estate.
	Now where did my girls get off to while I was photographing those butterflies?
	Ahhh, taking a siesta, I see.
	A siesta with a decent view from the front porch.
	Now those are some odd looking gargoyles!
	Back at the cabin at Beech Mountain, Erica throws water balloons off the upper deck to Laura down the mountain in the yard.
	It's a catch! (Photo exposure in the dim light was 1/4 sec!)
	Obligatory sunset shot of the view from mid-canopy level of our deck of the cabin.