Photos from our trip!

 Here are the pictures I promised you!  I will probably give some explanation on the ones that need explaining.  Here we go!

First I will start with our trip as a family to Grandfather Mountain.  It was a 6-mile round trip, and there was one part of the trail that had ladders it was so steep.

This is a salamander that I caught.  I dunno why I took a photo, but I did. ;-)

This is the view from a lookout, when we were going up Grandfather Mountain.

And for some reason, the blog reversed the order of these photos, so I will have to explain in reverse.  Haha.

These flower photos are just two of many that I took when we went to a nursery on the last day.  Elijah oohed and aahed over the plants, while I practiced my macro shots. ;-)

This praying mantis was an Aunty Heapher's house, and I took several close-ups of it.  However, these were the better two shots.

This train in the display case is 'T Scale', and the cars are literally as long as two of my finger joints.  In this picture my finger is a little bigger than it ought to be, obviously, because it is in the foreground.

I'm not sure why this canon was on this flat car.

This train museum, BTW, we went to only because the geology museum was closed, but I'm glad we went.  There were numerous sets in numerous scales, most of them donated.  This one above is HO scale, and the electric center was fully wired.  It was quite impressive.  Also, there were fully-operable traffic lights the size of my fingernail.  Really cool.

This streetlamp is also in HO scale, and it turned on with the press of a button.

There was a greenhouse in the backyard of this house, which is pretty cool.  I don't know why they put it there, but it's a nice touch.

From here on for a while, these are pictures from our hike up to Table Rock, which we did with one of Aunty Heapher's friends and her two kids.  It was pretty fun.  I ran 2 miles down on the way back, and got to rest for 45 minutes while I waited for everyone else.  At least I didn't sprain an ankle rushing pell-mell down the mountain.

This is the view of a lake down below from almost the peak of Table Rock.

This is just some kind of moss, but I thought it looked like trees, so I clicked it, and now I'm glad I did.  It turned out rather well.

This is a place called Governer's Rock, which we passed on the way to the peak of Table Rock.  Elijah is walking in the foreground, with a peak I think is called Silver Rock behind him.

Just some flowers.  Be glad I'm sparing you the time it would take to look at all of my flower photos.

This is a rat snake, I think, that I almost caught on the way up.  Almost.  Bummer.

A beetle!  yay.

This is from the Wycliffe Center in SC, in the Alphabet Museum.  What's in the photo is the plaque for the metal sculpture below of the Tower of Babel.  It's rather funny if you read it.

Alexander the Great!  For whatever reason....

This is the rear of the CV-10 Yorktown, an aircraft carrier we went to see on Patriot's Point in Charleston.

This is a submarine, made in 1945, that was too late to see action, so it was doomed to be a museum piece. ;-)  We got to see the inside, but unfortunately, I didn't take photos of it.  Oops.

A depth charge!  Elijah is holding it in midair. ;-)

This is a 1959 QH-50 DASH helicopter.  The DASH stood for 'Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter'.  It was an experimental craft for anti-submarine warfare, in case of sub attacks on aircraft carriers or battleships.  Some were used during the Vietnam War too, from 1967 onwards.

Torpedo launcher here.

And a duck.  I mean a cormorant.

There were also two space capsules in the aircraft carrier below deck.  I don't really know why.  This one is the Apollo 8, which the CV-10 Yorktown picked up from the ocean after it landed.  We also got to go inside, but it was gutted, so it wasn't very interesting.

This photo and the one above are of the spacecraft used during Project Mercury, from 1958 to 1963.  It was to send up the first man into space, but the Russians got to that first, as we all know.  Still, it was sent up in 1963, mostly, I suspect, simply as proof that we could send up a man as well.

An MK44 torpedo, used from 1957-1967.

This, I am relatively sure, and the two photos above it, is the F-14A Tomcat.  It could go up to 1500mph.

A bomb cart that was on deck.

This was the electric repairman's office in the Yorktown.  And yes that's a dummy.  They had them all over.  It was weird.

One of the main navigation rooms.

This is the bridge we came on.  I think this is one of the only photos I got of it.

This is a lizard that I took a picture of while we all (that is my whole family and Aunty Heapher) were picking blueberries.  I think maybe the lizard was actually the highlight of blueberry picking. ;-)

This dragonflies was one of the nicest I've ever met.  He stood very still while I took some rather good pictures, I think, of him.

These are all from hiking on Elk Knob.  I have many more flower pictures, but I think just two is enough.

This is a deer (not an elk) that we saw driving into the park.  I got several good photos of it.

This is probably my best closeup photo of the entire trip.  I took it on the way down from Grandfather Mtn., and it is our current desktop photo. :)

This is a large rock outlook, from which you can see quite a ways, both down the mountain, as is in this photo, and up it, as in the next.

And that's all I had!  If you want more pictures, I will post 'em here.  And thanks for looking/reading.  I hope it wasn't boring!  I love ya'll!  (that goes for everyone).