I'll be your huckleberry!

I moved to Asheville 8 years ago... wow, that's hard to believe.  Almost as soon as I moved here, I quickly learned that my new back yard was the best place for hiking and exploring the outdoors.  The Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina is home to some of the most beautiful trails, many of them leading to spectacular views, rivers & waterfalls!  Almost every Summer, Ryan & I hike Dupont State Forest, which is where they filmed parts of The Hunger Games. While I love it, I wanted to explore some new trails this year... new to us at least.  Unfortunately, the rain has been relentless this season, and that's an understatement.  Asheville has had the second most wettest year so far, only to be surpassed by Hilo, HI.  Ironic right?  I miss my home state but I don't need the rain to remind me of it! 

As soon as it turned warm in May, my goal was to get us out on 100 hikes!  Yes, that's an exaggeration, but I really, really wanted us to make an effort to live outdoors.  Now that it's September, I'm sad to say we went hiking just ONCE! Oh, well.  Rain gets in the way.... life gets in the way... then rain gets in the way.  It's the story of our summer in a nutshell.  The Saturday of Labor Day weekend, however, I woke up determined to get out and literally as soon as Ryan opened his eyes, I told him, we're going to Graveyard Fields, weather is supposed to be great, get up and get dressed! So we did!  Even Dutchie got to come along on our adventure.

If we were only going to get one hike it, it would be Graveyard Fields.   I've been wanting to do this hike for 8 years, now!  I've been told many tales of this trail off the Blue Ridge Parkway, a little past the Pisgah Inn, where you hike to waterfalls and pick berries all day long. We were on a mission!

The drive up the Parkway to the hike is a little over half an hour from South Asheville, longer during peak tourist season.  We got stuck behind a few leisurely sightseers on the way up & down!  The overlook is at milepost 418.8, but once you see all the cars parked you know you've arrived.  

We grabbed the first spot we found along the road and made our way to the start of the trail.

I carried Keira on my back in an Ergo.  It's been a while since she's been in it.  I was a little worried she'd quickly get antsy but she did great.  She even played with my braids a little throughout the hike.  

As we were going in several hikers were coming out and some of them had buckets or bags full of berries!  We were heading in the right direction!  I had brought a ziplock bag myself.

Before we hit the fields, we came upon the river, a section of the hike called Yellowstone Prong.  If you headed right from here, you made your way to Second Falls; left to the fields and Upper Falls.  We crossed the bridge and explored the area a little. 

Other families were playing in the water or eating lunch, but we weren't quite ready to eat yet so we went on to the Second Falls. 

15 minutes & lots of stairs later we got to the bottom.  It was very pretty, but not someplace you want to let a toddler run around, so we headed back, past Yellowstone Prong and onto the fields.

This area was flat with lots of bushes... lots of berry bushes!

We could hear lots of hikers running around picking fruit, but we couldn't see them.  Not knowing what to look for we decided to ask the next hikers we ran into. There was a sweet little girl eating lunch in a tiny clearing, singing to herself while her parents were clearly on a fruit picking mission.  They looked like experts so we asked their advice.  They told us that these bushes were huckleberry bushes, not blueberry bushes like we had originally thought.  You just have to look carefully along the trail for them, but you may have to go off the trail some too. We stuck close by but not too close as not to encroach on their territory!  I wasn't too keen off roading it so we stuck close to the trail and got to picking, as well.

Keira was a little bored, as you can see!  Too young yet to leave her in a clearing like the little girl we ran into earlier, she stayed on my back, but we did let her stretch her legs some.  She was mostly interested in the dirt though - my little tomboy! 

When I thought I picked enough to at least make some muffins we headed back to the river for lunch.  This was one of my favorite moments.  We parked ourselves on the rock near the bridge at Yellowstone Prong and enjoyed the scenery and the other hikers passing by.   

Dutchie did try to sneak a couple bites of our lunch, but Keira wouldn't have it!

It was about this time that some dark clouds were starting to roll in so we packed up and headed out.  When I got to the car, I looked at our loot... not too bad, enough to make what I wanted!  

We had a great time and I highly recommend the hike.  We'll have to come back again next summer.  We never made it to Upper Falls!  Until next year... 

By the way, check out what I made with our huckleberries, below or click here!