this actually happened in January.

A few weekends ago, Matt and I took a Saturday to visit Hanging Rock State Park. We both love hiking, and we’ve done a bunch of trails in MD – including sections of the Appalachian Trail, Great Falls, and Cunningham Falls – and we have some great memories of the Cascades near VTech.

Lately though, we haven’t been anywhere besides Umstead State Park here in Raleigh. Don’t get me wrong, we love Umstead. It’s big and beautiful, right down the road from our house, and we especially like the Sycamore Creek trail. We also have fond (haha) memories of running Sal’s Path (of DEATH). However, in wanting to get to know NC a little more, we headed out west a little ways to Danbury.

After stopping at Grayson’s Café for a breakfast sandwich (me) and a breakfast burrito (him), we hopped on I-40W. Then it was onto a series of progressively smaller roads as we passed by Greensboro, and headed north of Winston-Salem. Somewhere around Walnut Cove, we picked up some Bojangles’ chicken and biscuits (sorry, I just drooled on the keyboard) to have for lunch later. As the roads became smaller and the land less developed, our ears started popping and we knew we were close.

The park was awesome. And since we chose one of the coldest days for this adventure (I don't think it ever got about 25 degrees F), it wasn't crowded. We felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. As you can see from the photos, we were bundled up and loving it!