DuPont: The Return

This past Sunday morning, the family and I made a last-minute decision to head out to the DuPont State Forest for a little riding/waterfall viewing. It was just Little Miss Sunshine, Lunchbox, and I, although I did attempt to bring along the Dirty Party Cycle. I sent him a text message the night before indicating that I was trying to coerce the Mrs. into a trip to the mountains, but he wasn’t able to attend. One day, my friend, you’ll get to ride out there. Soon, I hope.


Anyway, as you may recall, my luck wasn’t so great the last time I rode out there. Nevertheless, I wanted to make sure that Lunchbox got to ride the really fun trails out there and also see some cool waterfall action. Since I’ve broken two bikes in the past few weeks, I wasn’t sure which one to bring. Sure, the trails out there are probably well-suited for riding on a 29er, but I also like the comfort of my full squish bike. I opted to exercise the demons and bring along the new and improved Goose, and I hoped that there would be no repeat frame breakage. I loaded up the bikes early in the morning and we got ready to go:



We headed west, towards the mountains. I love driving out there, and I never get tired of the view on the highway. Being from Florida, I just can’t get enough of the mountains. A quick look up ahead reminded me of one reason I love living in North Carolina so much:



We arrived at the parking lot, and Lunchbox was excited (just as we all were.) He was a little nervous about riding in the “real” mountains, but I reminded him that he has mad skills on the bike and he would be okay. He quickly changed his clothes and waited for us to hit the trail:



We rode along for a bit, and came up to the creek crossing. The water level was a little higher this time, probably because they had received some rain the day before. We parked our bikes and decided to play around in the water for a few minutes:









As we hung out by the water, some unknown cyclist jumped right in the creek. I figured he was either trying to cool off, or cover his tracks because something was chasing him. It wasn’t as hot as the last time we were there, so the water felt extra cold. He swam around in the frigid waters for a while though, and I thought about doing the same.





He got out of the creek and before I knew it, he was gone. It was like he disappeared before my eyes. I didn’t see him get back on the trail, so I figured that the North Carolina Bigfoot must have grabbed him. We didn’t want to be the next victims of a Bigfoot attack, so we hurried across the water to the other side of the trail:





We rode the trail for a little while longer, with our destination being the Bridal Veil Falls. The singletrack was fun, and Little Miss Sunshine and Lunchbox seemed to be having a good time:





When we got to the falls, there was quite a bit more water flow than the last time we saw it. This prevented us from getting behind the falls, so we opted to pose for photos in front of them as close as we could get:





Here’s a view of the falls again, without us in it:



And looking down:



And of course, some more with us standing by:







Lunchbox had a seat so he could enjoy the cool water and the beautiful view:



We hung out there for a while, just taking it all in. I loved the view from the bottom of the falls:



Soon, it was time to figure out where we would go next. I pulled out the map to navigate a course to the next set of waterfalls:




Where would we go next? Well, since I was armed with a map we would figure it out on the fly. I used to be a pretty good map reader back in my Army days, so I hoped that I could keep us from getting lost. This was only my second trip out there, but I was confident that we would find plenty of trails to ride, and plenty of beautiful nature to view. Since today’s post is a little long (with all these extra photos), I’ll continue where we left off on tomorrow’s post. Y’all come back now, ya hear?