Our first hike on our recent trip to North Carolina was to Mingo Falls located near Cherokee, North Carolina.  Mingo Falls is a pretty high waterfall being 120 feet in height.  The nearest town is Cherokee, North Carolina although the waterfall is actually located east of this town.  This was by far the busiest waterfall in terms of traffic that we visited while in North Carolina.  The trail starts out with a lot of stairs - yes - stairs, so if you cannot do stairs this is not the hike for you.  There are 161 stairs at the beginning - plenty of time to stop for a breather if you need one.  We had our dogs with us on their leashes. 

This is the first time we had our smaller dogs with us and this particular trail presented a bit of a mind twister for little Ollie (short in the leg department). It is interesting to see how our dogs think things through and decide what they want to do when presented with a given situation. Here is the beginning of the trail to Mingo Falls - Abby and Rue were preceding up the stairs.  Ollie went up several stairs (2 or 3).  She stopped, looked behind her, then looked back up all these stairs and turned around.  We could see her saying "Nope, no doing this".

Having smaller dogs is a relatively new thing for us - this never even occurred to me as a potential issue.  Ollie is weighing in at a good solid 30 pounds or maybe a little more - carrying her is not an option.  What is?  Hmmmm, well maybe she will walk up the hand rail?

Apparently Ollie has done a bit to much of modeling because she posed just great!  But she wasn't planning on moving.  Next option?  Hmmm, well there is enough room for her to run along side the stairs on the other side of the railing - we can keep her on the leash and let her run along side it.  That worked for a short distance, then Ollie figured out we were doing the stairs and decided to do them with us.  (whew - something to keep in mind!).

Since this waterfall was pretty crowded, we decided to wait a bit for the traffic to let up as we are still in the middle of the COVID-19 and a lot of places are wearing masks and just about everyone is trying to avoid large numbers of people (myself included).

Mingo Falls - it is a beautiful waterfall with a long drop down.  The waterfall itself faces mostly a northern direction and the sun is getting pretty high in the sky now as it is shortly after 11am and the sun has been coming up around 6am.

There is a wooden viewing bridge that allows for viewing the waterfall.  Many people were actually up in the water coming down (I am sure it was pretty cool/cold).  Given the current times, we decided to take a few photographs and get out of the immediate area since it was fairly crowded.

The hike to this waterfall is short once you complete the stairs - so if you are looking for a short hike, this might fit into your schedule and is definitely a beautiful sight.