Our first stop was to the Chocoholics Divine Desserts factory, which we just happened to spot on our way through Lockerby. The actual factory tour was nowhere near as exciting as the high speed traffic violations required to get into the parking lot, in fact Mary was a bit overwrought by the amount of "interesting facts" Diane wanted to share with us.
I don't know why, but we always seem to end up at a rock shop on these weekend trips, so here we are again at the Stories in Stone rock shop in Murphys. Where they have some truly amazing geodes, up to 7' tall.
After staring at big rocks at the rock shop for awhile we headed off to the Mercer cavern to check out some really, really big rocks in their natural habitat.
This is what's known as a "vertical cavern", which for us meant a 16 story descent into the bowels of the earth with one of the worst tour guides we've ever encountered. It seemed as if she was in training to be an auctioneer and had to practice rattling off words at lightening speed. In spite of her annoying delivery style we did learn some fascinating facts about this cavern. It was discovered in the 1800's and has some really interesting crystal formations, like the "organ" below which the discoverer, Mr. Mercer, used to play for his guests. The formations being pure crystal, this must have sounded quite lovely, especially in near total darkness with only candles to light the way.
this cavern also boasts some of the rarest natural crystal formations known as Argonite, shown below.
finally we huffed and puffed our way back up the 16 flights of stairs to the sky side again (for those of us a little claustrophobic this was a blessed relief). There is a placard outside the cavern entrance which states that Mr. Mercer ascended into the cavern?!? I'm still a little baffled by this terminology, but if you care to read on you will see this was definitely the trip of strange and baffling signage.
Mary had a little trouble getting the map folded correctly, which distressed Diane as correct map "foldery" is so critically important to the map's actual owner.
map squared away we went exploring in Big Trees State Park.
There was some patchy areas of snow on the ground, but the weather was fine and sunny and a perfect day for tree climbing on, over and through.
another very strange sign hidden off the main path celebrating the Concatenated Order of the Hoo Hoo 
Diane remarked that this fallen tree limb reminded her of something from a George Lucas film, to which I wittily replied "yeah, Star Woods", I do crack myself up : )
yet another baffling sign (actually, one of many on the twisting road up to Twisted Oak Winery). This is a winery with a distinct sense of humor and some pretty good wine to boot. 
Our last stop was the RanchoNC alpaca farm. An idyllic place with about 50 alpacas, quietly browsing in green pastures with several really cute babies bouncing around exploring their surroundings. The owner was very relaxed and spent quite a while with us answering questions and grabbing up some of the little ones to show us how to tell what the actual yarn color will be off the animal, like this little brown guy who looks like caramel on the surface, but is really a charcoal color underneath
these critters are pretty shy, being prey by nature, but if you stand still long enough they eventually approach to check you out from curiosity, like this youngster below who actually came nose to nose with me and I have to admit it was a special moment for me.