Cradle of Forestry

The three brothers and I set of for Pisgah National Forest and the Cradle of Forestry today. It took a little less than an hour to get there. I expected all the staff to be fairly ragged out due to the holiday weekend just past, but they were really on. Very friendly and helpful. We did the exhibit area first, with Eli and Briggs doing the scavenger hunt. They finished all the sitings pretty quickly and had a blast doing it. Calvin really enjoyed the tunnel with the fox in it. We watched a movie about Vanderbilt, Pinchot, Schenk and the others involved in establishing this forest preserve and the science of forestry in American in general. We took a ride in the fire suppression helicopter simulator. Briggs enjoyed it most; it was kind of lame for Eli. We had a scouting mission in the store then took a break for lunch (we had packed a huge cooler of picnic elements). After lunch we hiked the Forest Festival Trail. It was very nice particularly because it was paved, which made taking a stroller very manageable. We saw the old logging train, the log loading crane, the fish hatchery, the old homestead and several salamanders. On the way back in Briggs tripped while running and had a couple of scrapes; the very friendly and helpful rangers had band aids available for him and happily applied them. Briggs was very impressed. We made a final swoop through the store and made our purchases. We had gone down using the Interstate highways; we came back using the Parkway. We could see Biltmore from a couple of overlooks. It was a great day! The pictures are scrolling in the right column. Here is a video of Eli and Briggs ringing the bell on the old logging train.