Camping Shining Rock Wilderness Area

My son asked me to do a little hiking and camping with him this past weekend. I only had three days off before having to hit the road again for work but I sure didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to share in my son’s desire to get out and enjoy nature.

Three days at home doesn’t give you much time do get all the little honey doos complete. Especially when my wife surprised me with my first night home a stay at the Grove Park Inn. Wow, its one of my favorite places for sunsets. In fact they’re using one of my images for their Facebook cover: (https://www.facebook.com/omnigroveparkinn) So Wednesday night into most of Thursday was spent on an awesome date with my wife.

Friday morning included haircut and some other odds and ends then spent a couple hours trying to gather my camping gear together. My son decided we’d park at the Black Balsam Parking lot and begin our hike for our one night camping trip.

We got to the parking lot around 5:30 PM and found we had to hike between 4-5 miles to find a place to camp. Being the weekend and summertime this area can be very busy. No one was camping at the Shining Rock Gap so we hurriedly set up here for the evening as it was already getting dark and a bit of drizzle was falling. Heck we were in the clouds!

The morning gave us a beautiful sunrise. My son had to wake me up so I didn’t miss it. I packed my Leica and just the 35mm lens along with my tripod. It was really all I needed but I wish I’d brought the 75mm lens for a couple of the longer shots. Next time.