Hiking Crowder's Mountain: The Pinnacle

 Good morning friends and happy Monday! I hope you all had a great weekend! We had the most beautiful weather yesterday and were lucky to spend a majority of the day outside. No humidity, temperatures in the 70's most of the day, and sunny. It felt like a glimpse of fall!

So as you know, earlier last week we were in Wilmington, NC visiting my in-laws. We had to come back to Charlotte about mid-week because we had some appointments and things to take care of, but my in laws wanted to let Lily Grace stay behind a couple extra days with them so they could stay busy/not go crazy during quarantine. Since we had appointments and such anyway, we figured it would be easier to only have one kiddo while getting our stuff done. We had one morning off without any appointments/errands so we decided to head to one of our favorite hiking trails a little bit outside of Charlotte: Crowder's Mountain State Park. Here are some of our pictures from that day:

Here we are in the parking lot, ready to get going! You can tell Liam was excited and liked his hiking backpack!

Crowder's is a little less than an hour from our house but one of our favorite hikes because it is a really good workout climbing up to the top and the views are simply stunning. There are two paths you can take: Crowder's and Pinnacle. Crowder's is the more popular one at roughly 6 miles round trip and moderately strenuous hike. You can see the Charlotte skyline from the top! We have hiked this one numerous times, and I've even written about it before here. This time we decided to try the Pinnacle trail since we had never done it before. We are really happy we did! It was 4 miles round trip and although it was supposed to be more strenuous than the Crowder's Trail, we both disagreed. In our opinion it was significantly easier.

The views from the top of Pinnacle were also beautiful! I'm happy we gave this other trail a chance.

We all took a break to get rehydrated after the hike 😀

And then did a little more exploring at the top, before heading back down. 

It was a quick trip, but a great way to get our exercise in and get outside at the same time. 

I hope you all have a great week! See you back here on Wednesday!