More of the Great Smoky Mountains

Saturday we did some more hiking. We packed a lunch and drove to the trailhead for Kephart Prong. From the trail description we knew we would see the remains of a CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camp.

The trail followed a stream and we listened to running water for most of our hike.

We came upon the CCC camp not far into our hike. This looked like an old sign, maybe for the camp.

Next we saw an old chimney which had definitely seen better days.

The next sight on our hike was a foot bridge. It wasn't bad for having only one handrail.

Then, we came to a log bridge that I wasn't too sure about. Bob and I made it across which gave us good practice for the next two log bridges!

 Of course, the second log bridge wasn't in quite the good shape as the first one!

Just before we reached Kephart Shelter we came to a crossroad in the trail.

The shelter had a fireplace to keep people warm in cool weather, but you aren't allowed to cook inside the shelter for fear of attracting bears. There was a campfire ring outside the shelter for cooking.

Bob and I explored the shelter and signed the book to let people know we had been there. Then we sat outside and ate our lunch.

From Kephart Shelter we retraced our steps to the car. After a shower and a rest, we decided we needed more walking so we went to the visitor center to the trailhead for Ocunaluftee River Trail. The trail follows the river from the visitor center to the boundary of Cherokee. We took a detour at the park boundary for a picture with the park sign.

The next day we were expecting friends to come visit. Before they arrived, we took a short trip to Mingus Mill. I was surprised to learn that the water turned a turbine, not a water wheel, to get its power.

You are allowed to go under the mill to see the mechanisms used to turn the grist stones and operate the wheat/corn elevator as well as the wheat cleaner.

We made it back to the campground in time for our special visitors! We hadn't seen Rhonda and her daughter Sarah in over 15 years! Sarah is married with three children. I think Gavin and Riley enjoyed exploring Sol--especially the basement storage. Of course when you are in the basement, you need to have a couple of flashlights.

 Gavin is quite the photographer. He took this picture of Riley and Bob.

 Adler didn't need to be in the sun so Bob got out our beach umbrella to keep him shaded.

 Adler didn't get much play time as I needed to hold him for a while.

 No visit is complete with such good friends without having a group photo.

 Bob and I enjoyed our visit to Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We had this beautiful campsite and good weather for our visit.

 

 Tuesday was another travel day. We were headed to a campground close to Knoxville, Tennessee, to visit Bob's youngest sister.

School and the Great Smoky Mountains!

What? Bob and Joyce went back to school? Yes, we did! We went to Camp Freightliner 1 to learn about Sol's chassis. Camp was great! Bob and I learned more than we thought we would and we thought we would learn quite a bit! The instructor, Mike Cody, prepared materials specific to each person's rig. There were 13 motor homes represented (2 rigs were no-shows).Some rigs had one person present, but most had a husband and wife team. While we were in class the first day, the technician took Sol and had her weighed doing a four corner weight. Now we know what the air pressure should be in each tire for optimum travel. The tech also aligned our wheels. Camp fed us lunch and dinner the first day and lunch again on the second day. Mike kept us in class until he was sure everyone understood what he was going over. In fact, the second day he kept us until almost seven p.m. to answer all the questions that arose. One of the things Mike covered was shifting in the mountains. As an example, he used the road we were going to travel on Wednesday! We followed Mike's directions and Sol got us to Cherokee without breaking a sweat! Not only did we learn a lot about the  Freightliner chassis, we made new friends who also do a lot of traveling.

So on Wednesday we departed Gaffney, SC and made our way to Smokemont Campground in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. When Bob made our reservation, he found that the reservation site had excellent information about each site including length and solar conditions. Bob picked the longest site available with excellent solar. Once we found our site and realized that we had no cell reception (also no internet), no television reception, and no radio stations, we knew we would be doing a lot of sightseeing and then relaxing when we returned to the campground.

Once we got settled, we were off to the visitor center to find some hikes for our 6 night stay and also to get a weather update. It had been hot and it looked like it was going to stay that way. I also checked out which hiking sticks medallions I wanted to add to my collection--I couldn't purchase them until I had actually hiked the hikes. Knowing what was available helped us choose our hikes.

For our first full day in the park, we chose to drive to Bryson City, NC, to find Waterfall Loop Trail. Well, we made a wrong turn and ended up on Lakeview Drive, also in the park. Since there was a geocache located at the end of the drive, we continued on the drive to the tunnel where the road ends.  We had to walk through the tunnel to find an answer to one of two questions to claim the virtual cache.

Yes, it was a lot farther through the tunnel than it first looked. In this picture, we are about halfway through the tunnel.

Once back to the car, we headed back toward town to find where we went wrong in trying to find Deep Creek. We finally found a road that would get us to our waterfall hike! The loop hike was to take us by three waterfalls. The first was Juney Whank.

Before we set off on our hike, I took a picture of the trail with the phone. We have found that some trails are just not marked very well.

This turned out to be one of them! We ended up walking a lot farther than what we thought we would. We took the red trail above Juney Whank and it turned into nothing! Well, where it turned into nothing, there was something--evidence of a thieving bear that had rummaged through a garbage sack.  Thank heavens we had the GPS! Bob was able to get us back to the trail we wanted. As we continued on the big trail, we met another couple that was having trouble with the map and the trail signs. We got them going in the right direction and hoped that they would make their appointment on time. This is the first time we have had trouble with a trail in a national park. The signs on the trail did not match the names on the map which caused a lot of confusion.

The second waterfall along the trail wasn't very impressive and we didn't even stop to get a picture. However, the third one looked much better. We ate our lunch not far from Tom Branch Falls.

The trail from Tom Branch Falls led back to the parking area via a trail next to the river.

After our hike and lunch, we stopped at Nantahala Brewery in Bryson City to sample their product. It was pretty good, but we each only had one as the drive back was through the mountains.

The next day we drove to Clingman's Dome. From the walkway going UP to the dome, we had a view of a small portion of Fontana Lake in the distance.

 The trail was quite steep, but the view at the top was worth the huffing and puffing.

 This was one of the views from the top of the dome.

 We drove a little bit further north to get to Newfound Gap. President F.D. Roosevelt stood on this spot at Newfound Gap to dedicate Smoky Mountain National Park.

 The views were incredible from the overlook.

 

 This is the trail from Newfound Gap that leads to Alum Cave and the Appalachian Trail.

We drove back toward the campground after visiting Newfound Gap. After lunch, we headed for another waterfall. This one was located outside the park on the Cherokee Nation Reservation. It was not a long hike, but there were many stairs involved in getting to the waterfall.

 Mingo Falls is one of the tallest falls in the Appalachian area.

 Not far from the falls, a geocache was hidden. We found it with no trouble and then headed back to the campground.

So far we have enjoyed our visit to Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We are looking forward to hiking more hikes and visiting with some friends we haven't seen in at least 15 years!

Is Iowa North of Georgia?

Okay, so you have figured out that we are not going directly to Iowa! We are scheduled to be in Gaffney, South Carolina, August 28 for a two day class at the Freightliner Facility. On the way we spent time at the Strom Thurmond Lake between Georgia and South Carolina. True to our last visit to the area, the ants were invasive! We had to put ant traps all over Sol and we sprayed around Sol trying to keep the little pests at bay.

Our first full day after our 35 mile drive, we drove toward Greenwood, South Carolina. We spotted a sign for 96 Revolutionary National Historic Site and turned in that direction. Of course being a Monday, the National Historic Site was closed. We walked around the one mile pave trail to see the informational signs and get the answers to some questions for a virtual geocache.

 The park was well maintained and had several hiking trails that we were interested in checking out in addition to the one mile loop around the battlefield and town.

The house I am sitting in front of was found inside a more modern structure that was being torn down. The Logan House was saved and moved to 96. The signs at the kiosk outside the visitor center advertised the 100th birthday of the national park system. The celebration would occur on Thursday and Saturday. We decided to return to do more hiking on Thursday. We also needed to complete the geocache....the box was in the visitor center which was closed.

 

 On our way out of town, Bob and I collected a few more caches to add to our total. Each of the welcome signs had a geocache somewhere on them.

 

 After caching, we visited the welcome center and found a good restaurant for lunch. Las Cascadas was an excellent Mexican restaurant with service to match.  As we headed back to Sol, we made a detour to Wal-Mart to find a few things we needed. By the time we returned to the campground, we were ready to relax and enjoy our site. When we checked in, the host told us we had the best site in the campground! Bob was really good at reserving our campsites this trip!

So far, we are enjoying our time in this area. If only the weather would cool just a bit, our trip would be perfect!

The next few days we spent exploring local state parks in Georgia and South Carolina as well as geocaching along the Savannah Valley Railroad Trail. Our first visit to a state park took us back to Georgia! We spent a day hiking and geocaching in Elijah Clark State Park, Georgia. We were looking for a multi cache located along the hiking trail.

 We found the first stages of the cache, but the last stage of the cache eluded us.

 We finally gave up, enjoyed the rest of the hike and decided that we might return to find the final stage.

 Another day we hiked the SVRR Trail. We started at mile marker o and hiked to the Petigru Spring House.

The original walls of the spring house are protected by concrete blocks.

Looking inside the doors and windows, you can see the original brick walls. At one time the spring house was used for fresh water and to keep perishable foods on the Petigru Plantation cool.

We returned to 96 National Historic Site on Thursday to hike Cherokee Path Trail and Gouedy Trail. Both trails went through the woods along paths used by the Cherokee and early settlers. 

 Cherokee Path Trail ended at Ninety Six Lake.

We retraced our steps and found the junction of Cherokee Path and Gouedy Trail. We followed Gouedy Trail to the site of Gouedy's original trading post. There were several burial spots along the trail.

On Friday, we explored Hickory Knob Resort State Park in South Carolina. Prior to visiting Hickory Knob, we returned to Elijah Clark to find the final stage of the elusive multi cache. This time, we found it! It seems we had walked all around it, but never honed in on it.

Hickory Knob had a nice lodge, golf course and hiking/biking trail. We weren't impressed with the campground and decided that whenever we are in the area, the Corps of Engineer Parks are the places to stay.

Friday evening, my nephew Charles joined us for dinner. It had been quite some time since we last saw him and we had a lot of catching up to do. As he was leaving I realized we hadn't t taken any pictures so here is the pic of Charles and I outside of Sol.

Saturday Bob and I found another section of SVRRT to hike and search for geocaches. Much to our surprise, we found two multi caches along the trail. Usually we don't look for multi caches because the final cache is often missing and you get no credit for the stages that you do find.

On Sunday, we traveled to our next destination--Camp Freightliner in Gaffney, South Carolina.

On the Road to Iowa--the Long Way!

So we left R. Shaefer Heard Campground and made our way to Big Hart Corps of Engineer Campground near Thomson, Georgia. For those of you following us on a map, yes, we headed east instead of west!

 Our camp site was listed at a 40 foot pull-through, but the corners were a little tight so we used it as drive-in camp site.

 That left us a lot of room on the patio/lake side of the site.

 Our first night at the campground, there was a fantastic sunset. It was the best we had seen in a long time.

 Our first day of business at  Big Hart was to drive into Thomson to find a laundromat. After only 10 days on the  road in hot and humid weather we found that we were going through our clothes quicker than we would in cooler weather. After completing our laundry we found a couple of geocaches on our way back to the campground.

The next day we visited Mistletoe State Park. They had a great hiking trail with geocaches along the way. We got an early start to beat the heat, but it was still miserably hot by the time we finished our 4+ mile hike.

 Another day we drove to Washington, Georgia, to visit Callaway Plantation. We found out that the Callaways of Hills and Dales and Callaway Gardens were eighth generations of the original Callaway family!
This is the first cabin the Callaways lived in when they arrived in the area.

 Later, this federal style home was built for the owners of Callaway Plantation.

 The final home was built of brick and was impressive. Our tour guide who was also the director told us a lot of interesting information about the family and how they lived. One thing we never thought about was how the house smelled. It was an eye opener!

 Our guide recommended a restaurant in Washington which we visited after our tour. Southern Scratch was an interesting place with home cooked meals and baked goods.

We enjoyed our time at Big Hart and the surrounding area. After five days it was time to move about 35 miles to Hawe Creek Corps of Engineer Campground near McCormick, South Carolina.