Callen and Crew

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Whoa! How is it already September?!?! I feel like we celebrated Cal's birthday August 1st, and then blink, August was over!

The beginning of September means daddy's birthday!!! Since Doug's birthday fell during the middle of the week, we decided to celebrate the weekend before. We usually go for a hike or do some sort of outdoor activity as a family to celebrate. This year Doug wanted to try hiking in Panthertown Valley again. We had gone up there about a year ago...we didn't look at the weather forecast for that day and it turned out to be cold and rainy the entire time. We were pretty miserable, so we quickly turned around and headed home. This time around we checked the weather often and knew it was going to be nice and cool (compared to Greenville). We made the hour and forty-five minute drive to the Panthertown Valley area (near Cashiers, NC) and began our adventure. We originally planned for a 2.5 mile round trip hike to Schoolhouse Falls. The hike in was nice but it was on a mountain bike trail that was fairly wide and mostly gravel. We knew we didn't want to hike out that way...we wanted more of a trail with more tree coverage and scenery! So, we took a 5+mile loop back to the car that allowed us to climb to the summit of Little Green Mountain and take in beautiful views of the surrounding area while standing atop large exposed areas of granite. Well worth the extra mileage back to the car!!!

This was a great hike with great views (and play areas according to Cal!). He absolutely loved our lunch spot and could have stayed to play in the water and climb on the rocks all afternoon. We admired the views from across the pond, but quickly found ourselves hiking over to the falls to get a better view of them! There was a great camping spot we would love to try out with these falls as their view!

Schoolhouse Falls

This boy loves to climb and loved traversing these rocks without any help from mom or dad

At the top of Little Green Mountain (not the best pic to show the view, but it's the best we could do without our tripod)

This is a great area and we look forward to hiking more trails around here. There is a PDF version of a trail map you can download from the site. However, we ran into a couple that had an actual map that showed more details on the trails and parking areas. They purchased it through the Friends of Panthertown Valley website (I'm linking to it so I don't lose it!), We will definitely take this with us the next time we go so we can park in a different area and explore more of the places that aren't as frequented by others.