Last weekend Matthew and I made a quick trip to North Carolina so that Matthew could ski before the weather started to warm up. We stayed Friday night with Emily and Miran in Charlotte, then all four of us drove to Blowing Rock on Saturday where we enjoyed an outdoor dinner at a little restaurant with a wonderful view. Next, we continued on to Grandfather Mountain State Park. It was late in the day so we only had to time to drive to the top of a the mountain for a quick walk. The winds were gusting at over 40 mph, brrr!
But the view was still beautiful.
After an evening of board games and a little sleep, I took Matthew to the slopes Sunday morning. He skied all day on what snow remained.
While Matthew was enjoying himself, Emily, Miran, and I went gem mining. We each got a bucket of dirt to sift through in search of various treasures.
After sifting through all of the dirt, we took our finds over to a counter where someone sorted through and told us what everything was (since most of them, to us, looked like a lump of rock!).
The most exciting part of mining, at least for me, was talking with the gem cutter about what our rocks might look like if they were cut. Here is one that I decided to have cut and then shipped to me when it was finished. The top rock is uncut and below is the cut garnet (about 8x10mm in size). I would like to make a necklace out of it since it is my birthstone.
After mining and lunch we still had an hour or so until picking Matthew up. We decided to check out a little hiking trail at the base of Grandfather Mountain.
Since gems were fresh on our minds, we spent most of the time looking for a ruby or sapphire among the rocks! (without any luck)
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