An older blog that I never published...
So spring track out was upon us...(for those of you that don't know we are in year-round schools so we get 4 longer breaks throughout the year instead of just the summer). My husband and I had been tossing around different ideas for a quick getaway. We thought about Great Wolf Lodge, Stone Mtn GA,Williamsburg, Busch Gardens Williamsburg and the beach. Ahh...but how to choose? Ask the little people! They are the driving force in all that we do anyway!!! I made the question open ended to start...What do you want to do over track out??? Camping! Okay, that's cool. Takes out the Great Wolf Lodge option (which truly doesn't belong in a frugal blog anyway!!!) but all the other options can be done in conjuction with camping. So, where I asked the little munchkins. A unanimous "We want to go gem mining again" (we had a camping trip last spring to Asheville area). I thought huh? maybe they just don't know what the options are... so I said we can go camping, sure! but we can go to lots of places. Do you want to go to an amusement park with rides and shows and roller coasters??? Can you guess what Mom's first choice was?? :) Nope, no go! They wanted to go camping and gem mining again. It was a great choice! Plus, we could take our dogs. This is important to us because we have our 12.5 yr old border collie and a new 2.5 yr old shih tzu. Not so worried about the little dog but my BC needs TLC.
I went off into cyberspace in search of a new and different place to mine for gems. This was made more challenging by the fact that the girls wanted to go to a "real" mine this time. So I found the town of
Spruce Pine and there were a number of mines in the area including 2 that looked like they would have some sort of real mining. Found a campground that looked reputable without creepy banjo music (important as we have stayed in some that were really creepy before kids!) and set up our trip! woo hoo!
The Campground
 |
| our campsite and the pups |
We stayed a
Bear Den campground. It is a great campground right off the Blue Ridge Parkway. Surprisingly easy to find since there is no sign at the entrance road due to rules on the parkway. The sites were spacious, level and seperated by trees for some privacy. They spaced us out though so we didn't have any direct neighbors. They also have a broad selection of different cabins to stay in if you aren't really the campy type. The bath house was clean and well maintained even though it is an older place (50 years). There were playgrounds, a game room, paddleboats and fishing in a pond/lake and swimming in the pond/lake but not for us (too cold). I honestly don't know if I would swim there or not though...we saw hundreds if not thousands of tadpoles on the edge of the water. That is a lot of frogs!!! The best part of the campground for the girls was the game room but for the adults it was the hiking trail(s). The campground borders a National Park area and there is a trail that takes you to either a waterfall or a pretty overlook.
 |
| the overlook |
 |
| pretty waterfall |
There are other trails too but they were too challenging for the little legs (possibly too much for the big ones too!) Hiking right at camp! How great is that! The hike is hilly (we're in the mountains) but worth it and fun! Even the dogs managed which is saying a lot for the old BC and his bad back.
 |
| That's ME! Digging for emeralds. |
As for the mining... We started with a typical day at a flume mine. We ended up at
Gem Mountain Mine. It was easy to find, well maintained and had a really friendly staff. I think the mining in some ways was better last year at
Elijah Mountain Gem Mine but the winning detail at this mine was after you finished mining, you take you gems into the store and they will go through your gems, tell you what you have found and you can even hove them cut you an actual stone!!! Yup, for a fee you can get real jewelry. I though it was really neat that you can actually find jewelry quality gems! That said we passed on the cutting but we do know which stones are the best quality if we ever want to make them into jewelry. We have a rock tumbler and hope to tumble dome of the gems as well.
Spring is always chilly in the mountains, but we had a good trip even with some sporadic rain showers.
