Blowing Rock, NC - Valentine's Weekend

We had a fabulous time this past weekend in Blowing Rock, NC! I hadn't been there in years, and I don't ever recall being there in the wintertime. We stayed in a cute little inn in downtown Blowing Rock where we could walk to all the restaurants and shops. It was so quaint! I hope we can make this a tradition to go at least every few years! Here are some highlights from the trip.

We stayed at the Hemlock Inn, and here's our cute room when we arrived!

Here we are at Sonny's Grill, a true 50's diner established in 1954. We loved it! We ate breakfast on Saturday and lunch on Sunday here. It was packed! They had to shut the door every few minutes to not let people in b/c only about 15-20 people could fit at one time. We were super sad to discover that this was their last week in business though. :-( Boo on the recession!

Here we are outside the entrance to Linville Caverns. Neither of us had ever been in a cave before so it was pretty neat!

Here's a tiny little bat sleeping in the cave

These are just parts of the walls - lots of slippery, wet rocks. Water was dripping from the ceiling and every time it would hit me in the head I would jump!

This is looking down into Linville Falls - it was impressive!

Here we are above Linville Falls

Then we walked a trail further up and looked down into the gorge and the Falls. It was an amazing view!

Here we are outside our favorite diner - I bought one of the mugs you see in the window as a souvenir!

It's always time for ice cream - even in 30 degree weather!

Soda in a glass bottle just tastes better, simple as that!

Here we are outside the inn where we stayed

This is on top of Grandfather Mountain - another amazing view!

There was an animal habitat on the mountain which was fun to get to see too! We had talked about going to the zoo this weekend, so this was sort of our zoo experience! There were cougars, eagles, otters, deer, and bears (that you couldn't really see b/c they were hibernating).

We stopped by the side of the road at this sweet little waterfall and carved our initials in the rock nearby! It'll probably be gone in a few weeks, but it's fun to think we could maybe show our kids someday!