Family Vaca Part III

When we weren't sitting on that deck doing a whole lotta nothin', we were hiking.

We heard that Grandfather Mountain was a good family hike, so we hit that on one of our first days. This hike was a littler harder than I thought it would be, but our 4 year olds persevered and made it to the top.
Do you see a little fear on my face? Just seconds before Rick snapped the above photo, I had to yell at Garrett to sit down. He was jumping around and hamming it up. He wasn't the least bit worried about the fact that we were on top of a rocky mountain with high winds.

He was so darned proud of himself for being brave and strong.

But this little guy:
He was a little bit skeered. I was shocked that our normally rough-and-tumble Jack was intimidated by the mountain.

Perhaps walking across this swinging bridge didn't help his fear.
Notice how he's still sitting? Every time we moved to a new location, he immediately sat down upon arrival.
I hope we haven't scared him of hiking forever!

After the hike, we made our way to the wildlife habitat where we could see otters, bald eagles, deer, and bears. This bear was quite funny. If you bought him food and told him to hold his foot, he would hold up his foot with one paw and catch food with his mouth.
What's not to love about that face?

On another day, we began hiking at Carver's Gap on the Appalachian Trail and went to Jane Bald.
En route, we ran into a botanist who is leading a restoration project on the Roan Highlands.
He herds about 40 Angora goats on top of the balds during the summer.

Their summer job is to eat the woody plants in an effort to restore the natural grasses to the area. Two Great Pyrenees dogs are also with them for their protection.

The goats and dogs are fenced into about an acre for 2 1/2 weeks of eating. After that time, they are moved to a new acre plot to resume their work.

It was really quite interesting to visit with Jamey, the botanist, and I'd encourage you to visit his blog for more info.
Jamey camps nearby to keep a close eye on the animals. God bless him! I couldn't do it! An entire summer in a TENT?!

If you feel so inclined, you can adopt one of these:
We plan to adopt a female and name her Aggie, of course. Even North Carolina needs at least one good Aggie.

I believe I've wrapped up one week's vacation into three posts, which is quite good if you consider I only used about 20% of our pictures. However, our trip wasn't quite over after leaving NC. We stopped to see some of Rick's extended family on our way home, and I'll post about that tomorrow.