| Time for color to come out at our elevation |
Late October brings us to Week 5 of our Fall Color Reports for the North Carolina Mountains near Black Mountain, Asheville and Old Fort. Finally! Mother Nature has turned up the color at our elevation of 2,300 feet inside Pisgah National Forest, three miles east of Black Mountain.
| The road past the south lawn at the Inn on Mill Creek B&B |
It’s week three of our fall color reports for the North Carolina mountains and fall’s colors are starting to reach our elevation at 2,300 feet near Black Mountain and Asheville! As color descends from elevations above 4,000 feet, this is the week for yellow hues, as birch, beech, hickory, some sassafras, white ash and more start lighting up the ridges near the Inn. In addition to the golds, the reds of sourwoods, dogwoods and sweetgums provide a nice accent.
It’s Week 2 of our fall color reports for the North Carolina mountains around the Inn on Mill Creek Bed & Breakfast. While Black Mountain, Asheville and our neck of the woods at 2,300 feet above sea level are starting to show signs of color, the peaks above 4,000 feet are decked out in velvety golds, oranges and reds as beech, birch, maple, sassafras, sweetgum, dogwood and more light up with color.
Welcome to the beginning of our fall color reports for 2013! Each Tuesday for the next six weeks, we’ll be sharing updates on fall foliage in the North Carolina mountains, namely, what trees are changing and where you can see fall color each week. Sometimes the fall color season stretches to the second week of November, and if it does this year, we’ll do a bonus Week 7.
| Black-throated Blue Warbler [Photo Credit: Joe Kegley] |
Heading through our “neighborhood” of Pisgah National Forest in the North Carolina mountains on its way to its winter abode in the Caribbean, the Black-throated Blue Warbler is a fairly common visitor to the Inn on Mill Creek B&B in the early fall. Thus, this beautiful songbird earns the September spot in our 2013 Birding at the Inn series on the blog.
| Locally-made flatbread crackers at the Black Mountain Tailgate Market |
From spring through fall (and even sometimes in the winter), a trip to the western North Carolina mountains is not complete without a stop at a local tailgate or farmers market, or a roadside produce stand. If you’ll be in our neck of the woods this fall season, here is a list of tailgate and farmers markets in western NC that are not far from the Inn on Mill Creek B&B:
Chimney Rock State Park not only offers visitors “gorge”ous views of Hickory Nut Gorge and Lake Lure during fall, but you can also catch live performances by local musicians on weekend evenings in October as part of Chimney Rock’s Beats, Brews & Burgers music series.
When our Autumn Clematis starts blooming at the Inn on Mill Creek Bed & Breakfast in August, that’s generally when we start thinking ahead to the fabulous season that is Fall in the North Carolina mountains.
| View from Point Lookout Trail near the Inn, October 27, 2012 |
It looks like this will be our last fall color report for 2012…Frankenstorm arrived in the mountains of Western North Carolina earlier this week and blew many of the leaves to the ground at our elevation (2,300 feet). We had some really strong wind gusts as a result of Hurricane Sandy and the winter storm system that decided to overlap and bring crazy weather to the Eastern U.S., but we were fortunate and only lost two apple trees and our power and phone service for the day. Our guests and innkeeper friends who live in areas affected by this week’s weather are foremost in our thoughts — hope everyone came through the storm OK!
