Last night we stayed in Forest City, North Carolina. We were told that at Christmas the town strings up thousands and thousands of lights through the downtown part of the city, over all the buildings and trees. Supposed to be the most lights in a city in the USA, but these people exaggerate a lot...
This morning we drove to Lake Lure in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. We passed this beautiful old mill in Rutherfordton (which on some signs is called Rutherford Town). It looks to be abandoned, but in the USA you can never be too sure. There is still furniture inside and rocking chairs on the porch.
The creek that powered the mill has long since dried up but the bridge is still intact, as is the outside toilet behind it.
In Greenhill we found this antique shop. Unfortunately we were a little early and it was closed. I don't think we missed a lot.
On the shores of Lake Lure we found the small town of Batcave (sometimes referred to as Bat Cave). No joke, that's the town's name.
Above Lake Lure stands Chimney Rock, a major attraction in this area.
I climbed over 400 steps to the top, because the elevator has been broken for some time) just to take this photo of Lake Lure:
Vyv was sensible enough to wait for me at the bottom, filling the time in at the gift shop.
Leaving Lake Lure we headed towards Atlanta, Georgia. After a period of lightning activity in the sky ahead of us we were engulfed in such a heavy downpour of rain that we had to pull over on the side of the rain to wait for the visibility to improve. Not only does the rain make it hard to see, but as the rain hits the hot road it is turned into steam, obscuring your view further.
The second time we pulled over we noticed that it was hailing too and the temperature had dropped from 26 degrees C to 16 degrees in a matter of minutes, and as we waited it out on someone's front lawn a small river was building up alongside us. This is the view through our front windscreen:
20 minutes later the sky was blue and we were on our way again, hopefully without damaging his lawn too much.