2015-01: Grandfather Campground, Banner Elk, North Carolina

We headed north from Rockledge on Saturday at about 5AM, arriving in Boone at 3:30. We stopped by FirstTrax to pickup a rental for Donavin and they had exactly ONE board left. Everyone, everywhere was sold out…not a good sign.

Sunday morning, we woke up at 7AM and started on breakfast; burritos. Made some spam for the boys to taste, because they never had it before. We cleaned up then headed up to Beech Mountain Resort. While Donavin was taking lessons, Brandon, Trevor and I did a few laps on the Oz run. When Donavin met back up with us, he headed right up on the greens and blues and did great.

Due to the crowds, we headed back to the campground to make an early dinner. When we arrived, it was DESTROYED. Apparently winds picked up our tent, with everything inside and tossed it around the campground. A neighboring camper apparently put it back on our site and weighed it down with huge rocks. The good news was, everything was there. The bad news, some of it was wet, including my Down Sleeping bag.

Instead of making dinner, or setting camp back up, we decided that we will pack up camp and go grab dinner. If the wind didn’t die down by the time we return from night boarding, we would camp in the NARV.

We ate dinner at Coyote Kitchen, then headed back up to Beech at about 6PM. The fog was horrible, causing visibility of less than 10-20 feet at times. We finally wrapped up at about 9:45 before heading back to camp. The wind was still kicking, but we figured it was good enough to set the tent back up. The boys were still hungry, so they made Monday’s dinner for a snack.

It was a rough night. Wind was whipping all night, the tent was waving like a flag. Donavin was a little freaked out all night. All I can say, is thank goodness for ear plugs. I never travel without them.

Our plan Monday was to board at Sugar, but we took a vote and decided to just explore and hang out instead. After having pancakes for breakfast, we completely rebuilt the fire pit…twice.

We headed to both downtown Boone and Blowing Rock to shop. I tried to show Donavin the Blue Ridge Parkway, but he was so tired, he slept every time we got in the NARV. After one last stop at Walmart to replace stuff broken in the wind storm, we headed back to camp for dinner.

The next morning we packed up camp, ate breakfast and headed out at about 8:45. We arrived back in Rockledge at 8:30