Chimney Rock and Lake Lure, North Carolina

all right everyone we have got a really good video for you today this last summer Yulia and I went up and visited the Lake Lure Chimney Rock area there's really so much to see and do up in this area there's there's a lot of variety in this video let's go and take a look at downtown Chimney Rock first of all so when you're driving West you come up through Lake Lure and and get into this little downtown area of Chimney Rock the opposite if you are coming out of Asheville you'll come down through bat cave yes there's really a town called Bat Cave it's a couple of buildings not much there but then you come down into Chimney Rock and this is you know your typical North Carolina tourist trap Town little shops and restaurants but kind of a cool little place to just walk up and down the street see what's there get souvenirs that kind of thing now Chimney Rock is right next to the river and it's a pretty decent river that goes through there and I think they've even got a couple little hotels so that you can stay on the river if you want there are a couple of places where you can go between the buildings and you know walk on down to the river and play around Splash around jump around on the rocks may even be able to do some fishing although I'm not sure what in the world you'd catch in this little creek so you can see there are restaurants and stuff where you can look out over the river as you eat and picnic areas that bridge there is people going up to the Chimney Rock we're gonna go up there in just a minute so the town of Chimney Rock sits down in this Valley and there's you know the hills on both sides really nice views as you're walking up at the street looking around [Music] so after playing around in town for a little while we jumped in the car and headed up to Chimney Rock right in the middle of town There's a turn off and it can get a little bit crowded with everybody trying to get in there but you crossed the bridge and go up I don't know maybe about a mile winding and twisting up the hill to the parking area I think there are about three parking areas on the way up so depending on when you get there and how bad the Crowds Are the traffic directors will direct you and you'll Park and they have shuttle buses that take you up to the uh up to the Chimney Rock area so you don't make it it it's a nice Easy Ride on up there now when you get to that upper area walk up the hill here and you can see Chimney Rock kind of jutting out from the cliff there and look out over the valley and you can see the river and Lake Lure down there in the distance and I think that's what makes chimney rocks so popular is the views from up here are just spectacular looking out over the lake and and over the Rolling Hills of North Carolina thank you in order to get to the top you go through this cave it's actually a pretty long cave and uh really nice in the summertime because it gets you out of the Heat cool in here but they've got a cave and that shows the making when they dug the tunnel and and made the elevator so we were fortunate we just walked right up and there was no line we went up the elevator and the elevator of course drops you out into the gift shop because that's what they do they drop you into gift shop so you can buy things but you can walk through the gift shop and on the other side you come out and head up the trail to the to the Rock if you're lucky and you get there on a nice beautiful day like we did you have a spectacular View [Music] and of course no North Carolina tourist area would be complete without steps lots and lots of steps you're going to see plenty of steps there's steps up to the rock as you look across the the way there's even more steps over there we're going to be there in just a little bit when you get up to Chimney Rock near the flagpole and you're looking out there's usually a lot of people everyone's trying to take photographs and video it can get crowded people vying for position so you as I've said before in our other videos we try to get there as early as possible so that we can enjoy the place and and not have to fight too many crowds but even as early as we were there were a lot of people there [Music] that flag as you drive up through the valley you can see that flag forever that is the one of the cool things about Chimney Rock the way it sticks out from the cliffs it's really pronounced and you you can spot it from a long way away but it isn't the highest point as you can see there's still quite a bit of Hill and you we go down the steps and then back up the steps into the on the hill on the other side this Trail actually goes all the way up to the top of the mountain and along the cliff side to the top of the waterfall now Yulie and I didn't go all the way to the top of the waterfall what we did is we circled around to the bottom of the waterfall and we'll be there in just a moment but we did climb some more steps and we made it about halfway up just so that we could get to this Lookout area and show you sort of the the midpoint Lookout area [Music] again it's just you know one vantage point after the next of allowing you to look out over the valley and just soak in the North Carolina Countryside now from the top of the tower you can look down on Chimney Rock and look down on actual Chimney Rock plus the town Plus Lake Lure in the distance plus all the Rolling Hills and at the top of that Tower is another one of those overhangs and this one's pretty low you have to get down to get underneath it but you can crawl around in there kids would just go nuts in this little thing exploring the cave so when we were done climbing around the hills we went back down to the gift shop down the elevator around the parking lot to the Hickory Nut Falls Trail and it's a nice Trail it's wide it's easy to walk just a a nice gentle walk through the woods over to the Hickory Nut Falls and it would be a shame to go all the way up to Chimney Rock and not walk down this Trail to see the Hickory Nut Falls that that area is really nice oh yeah you know what you're gonna see along the trail I'll tell you more steps if you don't want to walk all the way down through the parking lot and around to the beginning of the trail you they've actually got steps going from the lower part of the gift shop there at the elevator down to the trail and you can cut off some walking that direction eventually the trail comes along a sheer cliff and you can look straight up the rocks and see the rocks overhanging and that's where that upper trail goes along but those sheer Cliffs as you can see the water just kind of trickling down and this isn't the main waterfall but you can see the water just trickling down it's and when you're looking up it's hard to see in the video but when you're looking up you can see the overhang up there and just kind of a really neat Cliff there of course at this point you can hear the waterfall up there so you know you're getting close to the end of this Trail [Music] eventually you come out and there it is and it's actually a very tall it's not a lot of water falling but it's it's a very tall waterfall so it's a nice view here [Music] it's a popular Trail so there's quite a few people that hang out here just enjoying the scenery eventually we wore ourselves out drove back down the hill crossed the bridge and headed for Lake Lure right where the river gets to Lake Lure they've got a little bridge and at the bridge they've made sort of a Botanical Garden here with a varieties of flowers and and it's kind of a neat little Park as you cross the bridge you look out over the the river joining into the lake merging into the lake and enjoy this uh the flowers of the scenery if you enjoy Garden type environments this is a really really cool Garden area that they made doesn't cost anything it's free you can just walk up and down here and and enjoy it foreign [Music] Yulia has to stop here and enjoy looking at everything wanting to stop here there's really a lot of varieties of different plants uh flowers and different types of plants even plants you wouldn't expect you know palms and you know you wouldn't really expect some of these varieties right here in the in the hill countries uh the Hill Country of North Carolina but it's uh they've done a good job with this little Park so just down from that Garden I don't know maybe half a mile mile down from that bridge Garden is the marina this this is a really a big Marina for this little Lake but a lot of boats on this Lake around the boardwalk you can just walk down the walkway here look at the boats and it takes you over to the beach area and you can park over at the beach area park at the marina either way this bridge takes you in between the two without you having to walk along the road when you get to the beach area and this is near the the township of Lake Lure I've got a swimming area they've got little water slides for the kids to play around some of the time it's even got a lifeguard there up at the other end of the marina you can actually rent pontoon boats and cruise the lake for yourself we will probably do that this upcoming summer [Music] good foreign [Music] of the marina is another Park and Garden area and this one is spectacular in a completely different way than the botanical garden bridge area because this has is more like a park and Garden area next to the lake and so they've got little Lookout areas where you can go over and hang out by the water watch the boats go by they've got grassy areas where you can just play Frisbee throw stuff for the dog have a picnic [Music] the trail goes around and they've got this I don't know oversized gazebo area and looks like there had been a some sort of wedding there the day before we were there some chairs and leftovers from the wedding [Music] as you can see the Lake Lure Chimney Rock area there's a lot to do it's just a really beautiful area in the hills of North Carolina very popular destination for a lot of people to go and spend the weekend hang out a big vacation destination so it there's there's a lot of people there A lot of a lot of visitors but it is well worth going and seeing I hope you get a chance to visit someday thank you for watching the video and we certainly hope that you have a great day [Music]

Channel: Cameron and Yulia

Views: 9,753

Keywords: chimney rock, hiking, north carolina, lakes, lake lure

Id: zesOhcHIRQI

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 13 2023