Posts
You'll be happy to know that I survived my second hiking trip also. This time we actually did two little trails, one of which (Mingo Falls) ended in this FANTASTIC waterfall. The trail to this one is short and easy to navigate, but requires hiking up about 150 stairs to get there.
Then we did a second trail, Kephart Prong (which meets up with the "Sweaty Heifer Trail", by the way) which was 2 miles up and 2 miles back. It follows a great stream, and has some old building ruins from a former Civilian Conservation Corp Camp that was there from 1933-42. You can also see old railroad remains that were left when Champion Fiber Company logged the area in the 1920s. I wasn't nearly as exhausted this time around, and even if I was, I'm not admitting it because Jessica brought her "almost eight" year old son with us, and he ran the whole way.
Today's wild animal spotting was the wild turkey, who, due to proximity to my person, was actually a little scarier than the black bear. (Those turkeys are bigger than butterball makes them look! And they were not scared of us at all, which is a little freaky).
This is all of us (minus Greg, who is taking the picture) on one of the "foot logs" (read: narrow slippery log with rickety "rail" on one side, which would probably only impale you if you slipped off the "bridge" and fell the 15' to the boulders below, where you would no doubt crack your head open like an egg and drown before anyone could get down there to save you). Fun times, fun times.
Here we have the view on the car ride up and over the mountains. Pretty cool how the clouds look like a lake, huh? We pulled over and took a few minutes to snap this picture (and in my case, allow the car sickness to pass. I love the mountains, but hate driving in them).
If you want to see more pictures, shoot on over to Greg's site.
