A Picnic At Moses H Cone

My wife left me alone with the kids, whilst she enjoyed some much needed quilting time at a retreat with her Quilt Guild.

I figured a great way to pass the time would be to go for a picnic and a hike up in the mountains.

So, we did.

We piled into the Geovan of Destiny, and headed over to Moses H Cone Park, and Manor, and, well, everything in a 5 square mile block seems to be Moses H Something - but basically its a series of parks, fields, and a mansion/museum type deal.

We started off the adventure by having a picnic lunch by the cow pasture (oh, there also is, what I assume is called, the Moses H Bovine cow pasture along one of the trails).  It was windy, and the kids are... well, kids, so they bundled up in the quilt we were using as a picnic blanket.

There are many horse riders along the trail.  These ones stopped to say hello.

After lunch we hiked up a trail to a large meadow.  The trail actually goes to a fire tower about 3 miles down the trail, but there was no way the toddlers among us would make it that far, so we went to the meadow approx. 1 mile up the trail (as it was I still had to distract certain young ones because "my legs hurt", and "I don't like rain."

They did stop to pick flowers, and smell them.

 On the way back the cows had come close to the fence, so we stopped to look at them.  Abigail named this one Grass Eater, and Zeke named her Cowy. She seemed amenable to my picture taking, and at one point even posed for me (watch for a Wordless Wednesday post to see that shot.)

Just as we got back to the parking lot, we checked out the old stagecoach building, where folks used to store horses and carriages, and now host public restrooms. 

We then wandered over to the Moses H Cone Manor, which I had never seen up close before, and checked it out.  There is a museum type deal, and a gift shop inside.

It was also, apparently, graduation weekend for App State University, so the place was lousy with fresh grads and proud parents, so I didn't stay long (nothing worse than pompous parents of english majors. Verily.)

So the last thing we did was walk up this path, and back to the Geovan of Destiny, and headed home.

All in all it was a great way to spend a few hours with the kids - and I got to do some hiking and photography - win.