A Blessed Homeschool Life: A Field Trip ~ Catawba Falls

Friday, August 7, 2020

This week went by in a blur of school lessons, household chores, painting ceilings, changing light bulbs to maximize light, buckets of rain and cat cuteness. The highlight of our week was a hike at Catawba Falls. This lovely nature hike is a relatively new trail that has been acquired by the U.S. Forestry. We got out of the house on the early side in the hopes of beating the rain and the crowds. We beat the rain...the crowds were intense at times on the trail and at the more easily accessible parts of the falls.

The trail is three miles round trip and mild/moderate in intensity. The first thing we found on the trail was an old abandoned water pump station. It was a beautiful ruin.

The trail follows a lovely stream. I have been missing the sounds of running water from the ocean or a mountain stream and this was a perfect respite for my ears.

The hike does become steep at times, but the trail is well maintained and the path is nice and wide to pass people while maintaining social distancing. We also found little nooks and crannies where we could get off the trail and be far enough away from people that we could take breaks from our masks.

Once we made it to the bottom of the top section of falls, we found rather large crowds of people. Most of them didn't want to get their feet wet and were sticking to the overlooks and flat rocks on the banks. However, there were plenty of lonely rocks in the middle of the falls where one could sit if they were willing to wade through the water or rock jump. My kids are mountain goats and generally shock me with the rocks they manage to get to on these hikes. We chose an area that we felt we all could rock jump and would have a pretty view of the falls but was more remote from all the people. We stuck to the bottom of the falls. Some people were climbing vertically along the upper part of the falls and scaring everyone to death. Disclaimer ~ I would never advocate jumping and climbing across slippery rocks to cross a waterfall. This particular fall is set up in a way that there is a swimming hole and gentle rapids between the two sections of waterfalls. I know our families abilities and we stuck to the areas where we could get out of the water if we did slip into the water without being pulled down stream.

Of course, it turned into a photo shoot and a photo bombing.

We spent about an hour at the upper section of the falls. It was just lovely to feel the cold mountain water and listen to the water and birds (and people giggling).

On our way down we found some lovely butterflies and a centipede. It was also just lovely to look at some of the stunning trees. Nature really is wonderful.