Our next stop was an afternoon hike at Dupont State Forest - a very popular place this particular weekday!  We arrived at the parking lot where the visitor center is located and drove around that parking lot for many rounds before finally we found someone leaving and could park.  It was a beautiful day, sunny and not to hot but never realized that so many people would be out hiking at noon.  We met up with some friends, making our group 4 adults and 3 rather large dogs.  Off we go down the trail to visit High Falls.

We arrived after walking about .6 miles (which took us a while with dogs checking out all the smells) at the vantage point to view High Falls - it's a very big waterfall!   This waterfall is about 100 feet and has several short falls and some long cascades.  The sun was high when we arrived early afternoon, so definitely not the best time of day to photograph - but a great time to hike and enjoy the view. There were a few trees having yellow colors, but there was no orange or red.  GPS location is 35°11'36" N 82°36'54" W with an altitude of 2723.1 feet.

This is a busy place as people stop to enjoy the view and take photographs.  We set up our tripods to take a few photographs of this waterfall even though this is probably my least favorite time of day to take landscape photographs - particularly on a sunny day.   It was interesting to see how each of our dogs responded to this little break in the walk (we were probably there for 30 minutes).  Abby, our young dog, just under 2 years stayed alert and watched everything that was going on.

Jimbo is probably about 11 years old now - in great shape for a larger dog but he is more seasoned at this than Abby.  Jimbo has learned, the humans have stopped to do something, this is a great time to catch a nap in the sunshine!  He curled up and took a break enjoying the warm sun (it was probably in the 70's by now).

After a little while, we continued on down the trail and caught a view of the next grouping of water falls known as Triple falls.  This is another large water fall that has three tiered series of falls and cascades.   The river flowing through here is Little River and was featured in the film, The Last of the Mohicans. We have all been to this particular waterfall before and remembered there are quite a few stairs to get down to another vantage point.  Two of the dogs hiking with us (Jimbo and Jackie) are older dogs and stairs are hard for them (and us), so we didn't climb down the stairs this time.

Triple Falls is at GPS coordinates 35°12'1" N 82°37'2" W and an altitude of 2677.2 feet. There are many other waterfalls in the Dupont State Forest as well as many different trails  and that you can hike on.  These trails are very well maintained and traveled a lot by many each day.  If you like doing either of these outdoor activities, take some time to stop in this area and enjoy!