I don’t remember what it was that first pulled me to Valle Crucis when I was planning our 2003 Vacation. I had fallen in love with the Blue Ridge Mountains on my Charlotte trip in 2000. During that trip I had cruised from Blowing Rock south through Little Switzerland to Linville Falls and I was really impressed with the area. Due to my genealogical research I had a general interest in North Carolina but hadn’t pinned down any areas of specific interest. Both my Boyd ancestors and my Sewell ancestors (via the Linville family) had moved through the area in the later part of the 18th and the early part of the 19th centuries.
So began the first post on North Carolina Mountain Dreams. In those early days the blog lived on Blogger.com. But it wasn’t long before I bought the domain name. I posted 34 times that first month…337 posts that first year. Somewhere along about the second year I began to notice that much of what I was posting here was no longer relevant to my North Carolina Mountain Dreams so I spun off what had become a standard category of posts…Coffee Muses, into my daily blog. That left this site languishing as I tried to figure a new direction for the site.
Fast forward another year or so and I started to really think about the whole Mountain Dreams “brand” thing as I started adding domains of additional places to explore. That first expansion was into Virginia as I became closer friends with the Floyd County Bloggers. Next was Tennessee…Followed fairly quickly by Alabama, West Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Just recently I rounded out my domain “domain” with New York and New England. I then decided to put the entire network under the umbrella of Mountain Dreams Press. To showcase my mountain photos I added Mountain Dream Photography.
If you noticed the fact that Georgia and South Carolina are missing, you have sharp eyes and know your Appalachian Mountains. The Georgia Mountain Dream name is in the hands of a reality company and is unlikely to come available anytime soon. And I am holding out on South Carolina until I assimilate the terrain I have to cover.
For all of those who have followed this site as it has grown and morphed into what it has now become…I thank you. I have every intention of growing this site, and it’s sisters, into a better resource for lovers of the Appalachian Mountains as I continue to dream my own dream of making the move into the mountains I have come to love…
I can’t wait to see what four more years will bring in the way of growth and changes.
The myth continues…
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[...] more at Four Years Ago Today • North Carolina Mountain Dreams. By Gary Boyd May 8th, 2010 | Tags: Appalachian Mountains, North Carolina, Travel and [...]