June Trips & Stats

When time and weather permit, we enjoy taking a one-or-two-night trip to somewhere in the beach or mountain areas.  Sometimes I long to live in either one of those areas, but then I figure living about in the middle of the state, we are roughly half-way to the beach and mountains which is pretty good. 

If I remember correctly, the first official 90° day of 2015 hit my area when we were in the North Carolina mountains. Specifically we went to Roan Mountain along the NC/Tennessee border...and we had our sweatshirts on first thing in the morning.  (Click to enlarge photos.)

It was cool enough for a sweatshirt when we started

Part of the Appalachian Trail (AT) runs through Roan Mountain so we walked a bit of it.  Instead of it mostly being a trail within woods (it was a little; see above picture), this part of the AT opened up to some grassy areas or balds. We enjoyed the pretty views.  Also, it was peak time for the rhododendrons - and flame azaleas, apparently - so we picked a great weekend to visit.

First the rhododendrons. I didn't realize they were so tall!

That's me in the middle of them!

The bee is enjoying it, too!

And now some flame azaleas.

Beautiful, right?  Here is the trail we walked on. You can see patches of flame azaleas along the left side.

The AT heading south towards Georgia

We also visited Todd where Andrew likes to ride his bicycle along the road where the train used to run.  Todd is not far from Boone. We pass a community called Meat Camp and a store called Goober Peas when we go there.

The road along the South Fork of the New River

Andrew rode his bike on the Blue Ridge Parkway here, but I took this picture before he arrived. 

The Linn Cove Viaduct

Since it was still so hot, we decided to head to Myrtle Beach the following weekend.  Wilmington, Oak Island, and Southport are great, but they don't offer the number of hotels on the beach - which was important to us since it was nearly 100°, and we wanted to be near the ocean!  We found a place at Dunes Village in North Myrtle Beach, and we only left it once after we checked in.  (And that was to buy some food.)

This was the view from our room.  Andrew rode his boogie board in the ocean while I just enjoyed how refreshing it felt as the waves hit me, and as I walked in the water.  We walked along the beach, swam in the pool, sat on those blue-and-white striped chairs (I read some there), enjoyed the swing, played a round of mini-golf...that sort of thing.  There was a nice sea breeze so it never felt hot like it would just a few miles inland. 

We left Monday morning, and on a whim decided to ride into Southport just to see what things were like there. It was hot so we stayed a bit under two hours. But we did walk around and saw this pretty flower.

Someone told me it was a flame lily

And it felt nice out on the pier because of the breeze blowing off the Cape Fear River. 

June Stats: 
From the local meteorologists, Tim and Grant:


"It was a really warm June. 6th warmest on record in the Triad.

Our heat wave in the middle of the month was the longest 90° stretch in June on record."

and

"The avg. high temp in the Triad for June was 88.7° (+3.9)."

I counted 15 days with high temps over 90!