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Table Rock (3930 feet) on the horizon and the Linville River below. We hiked to the river on the Babel Trail trail. This is a 12000 acre wilderness area, the 3rd largest in North Carolina. The river drops 1900 feet in 12 miles. According to Clark, a great place to backpack!

We camped at the campground near the top of Mt. Mitchell. This is the highest mountain east of the Mississippi river, at 6684 feet.

The swamp is in a giant peat bog, which makes the fresh water a dark tea like color. The dark perfectly still water acted like a perfect mirror.

The fall colors were just about perfect here. If you look carefully in the valleys, the dead Eastern Hemlock trees are visible. These are the largest diameter trees in most places we visited, most have already been killed by the Hemlock woolly adelgid (like an aphid). The demise of the hemlocks follows the complete loss of the Chestnuts in the early 1900's, also caused by an invasive disease.

On the Blue Ridge Parkway. The red berries are on Mountain Ash trees.