Grandfather Mountain Backpacking Adventure (June 2022)

In early June 2022, I had the privilege to journey with our daughters to the Grandfather Mountain State Park for the first time. We embarked on a three-day, two-night backpacking adventure and relished a wonderful experience. Although we ended up hiking more on the second day than planned, leading to some exhaustion, the overall trip was superb. In this post, I aim to reflect on our journey, the trails we trekked, and my overall impressions of both the Grandfather Mountain Biosphere Reserve and the Grandfather Mountain State Park.

Grandfather Mountain Backpacking (June 2023)” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

Overview of Our Trip

We have been residing in North Carolina for a year, and I have previously enjoyed backpacking and camping. I aimed to provide our daughters, aged 19 and 22, with a memorable backpacking experience, while also allowing them to appreciate the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Appalachians of North Carolina. I had heard from friends that Grandfather Mountain was an outstanding place to hike and explore, and they were absolutely correct.

I recorded quite a few video clips during our trip, and I edited these together along with a few still images in a 12.5 minute video using iMovie for iOS.

Back in March, during Easter Weekend, my wife and I stayed at a vacation rental in Deep Gap, near Boone, and spent some time driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was then we discovered the Boone Fork Parking Area, which served as our launch point for this adventure. Our planned route to the Storytellers’ Rock campsite was a modest one-and-a-half-mile journey, ideally completed in about an hour. I made reservations online a couple of months in advance and planned to arrive on Sunday afternoon, which gave us plenty of time to hike into camp and set up.

Grandfather Mountain Backpacking (June 2023)” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

Impressions of Storyteller’s Rock and the Nuwati Trail

The Nuwati Trail, leading to Storyteller’s Rock, isn’t particularly challenging, but it is rocky with many roots. It’s now essential to make camping reservations online and fill out a written camping form upon arrival, noting your plans and emergency contact information.

I chose Storyteller’s Rock due to its impressive views and reported native history, as well as its proximity to several streams and water sources. Purifying water is crucial in the backcountry, and I recorded a short video demonstrating three different methods of water purification.

The campsite was ideal; we particularly loved the wooden platform provided for tents and the excellent fire ring.

Grandfather Mountain Backpacking (June 2023)” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

We didn’t encounter any bears, but they are present in the area, so it’s important to take bear precautions seriously.

View from Storyteller’s Rock” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

Daniel Boone Trail to Grandfather Mountain

On the second day, we returned to the Nuwati Trail and connected with the Daniel Boone Trail, which follows the entire ridgeline up to the top of Grandfather Mountain. This challenging and rigorous hike offered spectacular views. If you plan to tackle the entire trail, ensure you are in excellent physical condition and prepared for a significant challenge.

Grandfather Mountain Backpacking (June 2023)” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

Overall Impressions of Grandfather Mountain Biosphere Reserve and State Park

Grandfather Mountain Nature Preserve and State Park are breathtaking areas of North Carolina. As new Charlotte residents, it’s fantastic to be just a couple of hours from the mountains. The communities of Blowing Rock, Boone, Banner Elk, and Linville are conveniently close.

We plan to return later this summer, having chosen to join the Grandfather Mountain non-profit and truly take advantage of the summit’s hiking trails. The area reminds me of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, which you can drive to the top of, but Grandfather Mountain offers a greater range of trail options. This spectacular area offered us a chance to introduce our girls to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

If you’re planning a trip, I recommend the mobile app ‘AllTrails,’ which proved invaluable on our journey, tracking our mileage and elevation changes, and allowing us to see precisely where we were on each trail.

Grandfather Mountain Backpacking (June 2023)” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

Conclusions

To conclude, I’ll share a short video of a black bear we encountered at the Grandfather Mountain Preserve, which was one of the most incredible experiences we’ve ever had with a bear, either in a zoo or in nature. 

Grandfather Mountain is indeed magical, and I am eagerly looking forward to our return. If you’re considering a trip to North Carolina, I highly recommend making Grandfather Mountain State Park a priority – it’s an adventure you won’t forget.

Grandfather Mountain Backpacking (June 2023)” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

AI Attribution: I used the Open AI iOS applications Whisperboard and ChatGPT to create and edit the text in this blog post.

MHK Dusk Takeoff to DFW Sunset Landing

A 2X video of my flight this evening from Manhattan, Kansas to Dallas – Fort Worth, featuring the MHK takeoff sequence and the  DFW landing sequence just after sunset. This was American Airlines flight 3434 on December 26, 2022.

MHK Dusk Takeoff to DFW Sunset Landing (26 Dec 2022)

Created with iMovie for iOS.

The following music was used for this media project:

  1. Music: Raving Energy by Kevin MacLeod
  2. Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/5029-raving-energy
  3. License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Links to follow and learn with me / Wesley Fryer are available on wesfryer.com/after. Resources to support the creation of media projects like this are available on:

MHK Dusk Takeoff to DFW Sunset Landing” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

Fall Break on the Guadalupe River in the Texas Hill Country

This week, prior to the annual MoRanch Men’s Conference Planning Council Meeting, our family spent three nights at River Run Cabins on the Guadalupe River in Ingram, Texas. This is a fall break trip for our family, and has provided a much-needed opportunity to just hang out together in a natural setting and “mostly” be offline. It turns out the LTE/4G connectivity at our cabins was ok, and wifi was also available… so this was not an entirely “unplugged” vacation. Still, it was a more more “nature-focused” vacation and gave us changes to simply hangout by the river, go canoeing and kayaking, and read a lot.

This 360 degree Bubbli panorama is the most compelling representation of what our space was like by the river. This was EXACTLY what I hoped it would be: A great space to relax and enjoy the river.

This week was the first time Rachel has ever gone canoeing! She and Sarah also went kayaking by themselves, which was both fun and exciting. The part of the Guadalupe River where we stayed has almost a mile of water to explore by boat… the eastern side has a damn stopping the water before a bridge, and the western end has an area of rocks and rapids.

Yesterday before we left the river we recorded a short (4 minute) audio podcast, reflecting on some of our favorite parts of the week had been. Some of the animals we saw and heard during the week include fish, ducks, donkeys, deer, and a water snake.

I recorded a few 6 second Vine videos during our time in Kerrville and Ingram, and also shot some “slow motion” videos with my iPhone6S on the river. I combined these videos on my phone using iMovie, and published it to YouTube with a copyright-friendly music track using YouTube Capture.

I used the “burst” feature on my iPhone to capture a series of photos when Alexander made his first rope swing jump into the river, and created a collage of it using Diptic.

One of the culinary highlights of the week was campfire foil dinners. It’s been several years since we’ve cooked these, and I forgot that these taste even better with fattier ground beef. They were still good, but next time I’ll buy either 73% or 80% lean meat.

We dined at several restaurants in Kerrville during the week as well. Mary’s Tacos was the biggest hit, we actually had breakfast there twice. It had over 20 ratings on Yelp with a perfect average of 5. That’s rare to find on Yelp, in my experience… and it was 100% accurate.

Overall this was a great experience and I am so pleased with how things turned out. If you are looking for a great family vacation spot in the Texas Hill Country, definitely check out River Run Cabins. Mid-October is a spectacular time to come visit too!

More photos are available in this Flickr set.

Photos and Stories from Washington DC

The past two weeks Shelly, Rachel and I have traveled together in Philadelphia and Washington DC. I created two different, short digital stories using the free iPad app “Adobe Voice” to reflect on some of our experiences around the DC area.

I also posted a lot of our photos from the trip to several different Flickr albums:

  1. ISTE 2015
  2. Tall Ships in Philadelphia
  3. Washington DC July 2015
  4. Harpers Ferry

Over the fourth of July when we hung out with our friends, the Casebeers, I had an opportunity to interview Jonah about his amazing experiences last year at MIT for the Battlecode competition. I published that interview as a podcast on my main blog.

Today is our final day of sightseeting before we fly home to Oklahoma, and I’ll add our photos from today (which we expect to include the National Archives and the Library of Congress, among other destinations) to our Washington DC July 2015 photo set. We’ve had a great trip!

Rachel Reports from the Volcano House

Today in my STEM class I showed an amazing video of eruptions from the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii. This was one of our “curiosity links” for this week. In one class, student questions about how lava cools led me to discuss “lava tubes” and show this photo of a lava tube which I took in 2009 when our family visited the big island.

I ended up also finding this short video of Rachel, at age five, reporting from the Volcano House. Oh how this makes me want to go back to Hawaii with our family!

Inspired by the First All-Female USAF Boeing E-3 Sentry Air Crew

Rachel and Sarah had a wonderful opportunity yesterday to visit Tinker Air Force Base by Oklahoma City and tour a Boeing E-3 Sentry (AWACS) aircraft with the first all-female crew in the history of the US Air Force.

USAF Women in the E3 AWACS

The girls spent about ten minutes in the cockpit checking out the controls and asking questions of both female pilots and the female flight engineer.

Sarah & Rachel in the E3 AWACS

Then they learned all about the mission and roles of the air crew in the AWACS, which serves as the “eyes and ears” of the US national command authority worldwide. I’ve wanted my girls to get a better understanding of what officers and NCOs in the US Air Force do and what careers they could potentially have in the military, and yesterday was absolutely the PERFECT opportunity to help them do that! MANY thanks to my friend and classmate Vern Conaway, who let us know about this opportunity.

Oklahoma City’s Fox 25 News interviewed Rachel and Sarah during their tour and featured some of their comments in a video news segment which aired on March 15th.

Rachel recorded a 2.5 minute narrated slideshow, “Inspired by Women in the US Air Force,” using the app SonicPics on my iPhone, sharing some additional thoughts and reflections about the impact of this experience on her.

Thinking and planning for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) careers starts early! Many thanks to all the officers, NCOs, and civilian employees at Tinker AFB who made these experiences possible!

Inspired by USAF Women

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Storychasing our Philmont Backpacking Trek in June 2012 with Images, Audio & Video

This month I was greatly blessed by the opportunity to serve as an adult advisor on my son’s first backpacking “high adventure” trek to Philmont Scout Ranch in northeastern New Mexico. We spent 11 days and 10 nights on the trail, and I probably lost somewhere between 5 to 10 pounds on the journey! In this post I’ll share a few photos and some of the ways I was a “storychaser” of our adventures using my iPhone in the Philmont backcountry. All 212 photos from our trip are included in this Flickr collection, and 7 of the 8 videos I recorded are chronologically connected in this 4.5 minute video I uploaded to YouTube.

The number one reason I wanted to use my iPhone4 as my camera at Philmont, instead of a battery operated digital camera, was its ability to take HDR (high dynamic range) photos with the Pro HDR app which Dean Shareski told me about several years ago. I absolutely LOVE this Surrounds Landscaping and the high quality images it enables me to capture. Especially in the mountains where landscapes have dark shadows as well as bright sunshine and clouds, the HDR app is priceless. Here are a few of my favorite HDR photos I captured on our trek.

Alexander by Cathedral Rock, on day 2 of our trek.

Alex at Cathedral Rock

Looking down the mountain at surrounding clouds and storms, climbing Mount Phillips (11,700′ MSL) on day 4 of our trek.

Climbing Mount Phillips

Sunset at Fish Camp, which is where Waite Phillips (the Tulsa oil man who donated the 127,000 acres which comprises Philmont in 1938 and 1941) built his favorite backcountry cabin.

Sunset at Fish Camp

View from “the notch” overlooking Rayado Canyon, between Fish Camp and Abrehu.

View from the Notch in Rayado Canyon

Alexander on top of the Tooth of Time on day 11.

Alex on Top of the Tooth of Time

The other iPhoneography app I really like on my iPhone4 is Pano, which takes great panoramic images. It’s incidentally also available for Android and Windows 7 phones. Here are a few of my pano shots from Philmont this month.

Having breakfast on top of Mount Phillips on day 5.

On top of Mount Phillips [PANO]

On the porch of the staff cabin at Cimarroncito Camp on day 2.

Cabin View at Cimarroncito [PANO]

Panorama (almost 360 degrees) on top of the Tooth of Time on day 11.

Top of the Tooth of Time [PANO]

Since we were on the trail for 11 days and did not have ANY access to electricity, I needed a way to use solar power to charge my iPhone. (I could have opted for a battery charger, but I didn’t want to carry all the extra battery weight.) I purchased a $35 G24i Solar Innovations Power Curve Solar Charger at Academy Sports before our trip where they had a lot of sports items and then even had require soccer equipment that I need for my new team, and was pleased with the performance overall. It came with a USB female plug which I could directly use with my iPhone USB dock charging cable.

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The Power Curve has a rechargeable battery built into it, so I would charge it during the day and then recharge my iPhone at night. I generally was able to get a 30% to 40% charge of my iPhone4 each night with a full solar battery charge. Near the end of the trip during the day I got down to less than 10% battery at some points, but I was able to boost the iPhone battery enough that I was able to take all the pictures I wanted. I did turn the brightness down to almost zero (probably about 15% of max brightness) for the entire trip, along with turning on airplane mode to conserve battery. According to the instructions, the solar charger needed 6 to 8 hours in direct sunlight to become fully charged. I found this was not possible when the charger was just hanging on the back of my backpack on the trail. I needed to set the charger in direct sunlight at camp for many hours each day, when possible, to obtain the maximum charge available.

I was able to make a couple calls at different points of our trip, mainly on top of mountains and high ridges where cell phone service was available. Since the Oklahoma City Thunder was in the NBA finals during our trek, it was ‘critical’ (in the minds of several of our boys) to get score updates. Overall, however, I was ‘unplugged’ from the grid for almost two weeks and really enjoyed it.

Since I had my iPhone, instead of keeping a written journal during our trek I decided to make an audio journal using the free app AudioBoo. (In addition to iOS, AudioBoo is also available for Android and Nokia phones.) I recorded a short audio journal entry each night before bed, and selected a photo from the day to accompany it. After getting back home to Oklahoma City, I uploaded all of those AudioBoo recordings to the web. This worked great and is an audio journal option I highly recommend to others taking trips you’d like to document.

I came very close before the trek to buying a Spot Connect satellite GPS device which would allow me to tweet from the backcountry with our updated GPS coordinates. Our Maryland auto accident lawyer told us these are discouraged in the backcountry, because of the possibility of accidentally hitting the “panic / come rescue me” button and inadvertently calling in a rescue helicopter. It’s possible in the next couple years my son and I may go on another high adventure trek canoeing in the Minnesota / Canadian boundary waters. If so, I might again explore that option. As it turned out, it was great to be largely disconnected from technology and information during our trek, and the option to “tweet from the backcountry” might have been more of a distraction in our journey than it would have been worth. To learn more the latest trend about technology including PDF file converter online services, check out www.sodapdf.com/pdf-editor/ for more information.

If you ever have an opportunity to go on a backpacking trek to Philmont, I highly recommend that you go. I went on a trek with my scout troop from Manhattan, Kansas, (Troop 74) back in 1986, and was a Philmont “zoomie” ranger in the summers of 1990 and 1992. Philmont is a truly magical place and it casts a spell on you that will last a lifetime. It was a tremendous blessing to be able to share these experiences with my son this summer!

Alex and Wes After the Trek

Evening Chapel Service at Philmont

Closing Campfire

This trek was, by the way, the reason I was not able to attend ISTE 2012 this year. Next year I definitely hope to attend ISTE 2013 in San Antonio.

To learn more about my favorite iPhoneography apps, please see my iPhoneography workshop curriculum. An hour long videoconference I taught on iPhoneography in December 2011 is also available free on YouTube.

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A Train to Fort Worth

We surprised our kids in April 2008 with a train trip to Fort Worth from Oklahoma City. This is the best resolution version of this movie that I have at this point. What FUN this was!

I found this video tonight as I was looking at data on an old hard drive. Unfortunately the new version of iMovie isn’t compatible with the older version I created this with. If I find a copy at some point I may encode this at a higher resolution. At least we have this version!

Photos from New England: December 2010

I’ve published all the photos from the trip Sarah and I took to New Hampshire and Maine last week to a new Flickr collection.

Collection: New England Dec 2010

I still have more videos to publish, but it’s good to have all the photos online. I’ve found if I don’t share photos fairly soon after a trip, lots of other things get my attention and it’s more challenging to do it later. Lots of GREAT memories were made on this trip. 🙂

CMTC Technology Conference 2010

Wells, Maine

Cathy Wolinsky, Sarah and Alice Barr

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Fun camping in the Pecos

Here’s a few favorite photos from the images we took this week in the Pecos wilderness area in New Mexico, and I uploaded to Flickr. I have more short videos to upload, along with all the photos from mom’s camera which I don’t have with me this evening. We had a GREAT time!

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Panorama at Jack's Creek Campground, Pecos Wilderness, New Mexico

This was the best fish I’d ever eaten in my entire life. You can’t beat freshly caught and cooked trout.

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We camped at Terrero Campground, since Holy Ghost campground was closed for bathroom upgrades. This was our tent and campsite early in the week. It REALLY filled up (unfortunately but predictably) for the weekend.

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There were hundreds of hummingbirds outside the Terrero general store. I took some video of this as well I’ll upload.

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This was the weather forecast for Edmond the past week: Highs every day of 104! In the mountains at our campsite, it got down to the 50s and up only to the upper 70s.

The weather for Edmond the week we were in New Mexico! (Our temps ranged from 50 to high 70s)

Good times!

Dad and Alex

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