Fall break: Great Smoky Mountains

 

For fall break this year (October) we headed south and went camping in the Smokies for three nights! It was SO DARN COLD (even colder than Yellowstone and Glacier this summer!) but it was amazing and so so good to get out of our house for a few days in a way that felt safe. 

Also I'm still grading. So that's why a blog post is finally going up. If grading takes much longer I might also blog about Glacier! And Yellowstone!

We camped at Smokemont in North Carolina, where we have never camped before (our usual campground at Cosby was shut down due to COVID). We've also never gone to the Smokies in fall before because that's their busiest time, but we thought that this year might actually be a good time to do it because people aren't traveling as much, and it paid off! It was actually pretty empty most of the time we were there. 

This beautiful church was situated close by our campground. We hiked up there one night (certain people rang the bell while certain other people yelled that the park rangers were coming). 

We also had the most beautiful stream running through our campground. I did my usual exhaustive research on the best campsite and we were so close to the stream that we could hear it all night. So beautiful and soothing. 

We were at the campground for about an hour before Matthew fell in the stream (following Nathan in some rock-leaping), then we had the fun of engineering a suspended rack above the fire to dry his shoes out before the first day of hiking. Poor little guy--that water was COLD. 

He fell in about thirty seconds after I took this picture...

Here he is happily tromping towards the bridge over the stream. Five minutes later I carried him back soaked and sobbing. Ah, memories!

Tin foil dinners our first night! A family favorite for sure. 

And a very heated triple round of checkers against Isaac. I BEAT HIM SO BADLY and I have to say that because normally he absolutely trounces me. He literally could not believe what was happening. And I ate his marshmallow piece when I jumped it. 

We had two full days of hiking, so we decided to do a big hike and a little hike. Our big hike day was 9 miles on the Appalachian Trail to Charlie's Bunion with a side spur trip out to the Jump Off. And when we got up it was so misty and so, so, so cold. 

This was pretty much the last we saw of the sun that day!

We started at Newfound Gap and took the trail towards Maine. I love the trail markers on the AT. SO gorgeous. 

So there are parts of the Appalachian Trail that are super chill and just like oh cool this is a trail.

And there are parts (lots of parts on this particular hike) that are like this. We were so glad we brought our trekking poles--they were just as invaluable here as there were in Glacier this summer!

So misty and so beautiful. We were disappointed that we couldn't see any of the sweeping panoramic views that we should have been able to see THE ENTIRE HIKE (one guidebook described it as "walking the spine of the Appalachians with Tennessee spread out to the north and North Carolina to the south) but it was still incredibly beautiful wandering through the mist and trees. 

I took so many pictures of the trail disappearing off into the mist. The only time it cleared fully was up by one of the shelters, so we stopped there for a bit (the kids investigated the outhouse and declared it the worst one they'd ever seen, since it was suspended and everything just...fell down not far from the trail approaching it) and ate some jerky and talked to some through-hikers. 

When we got to the Bunion, it was still really misty (we were hoping it would burn off, but hey, that's why they call them the Smokies). 

This was the best view we got and it was VERY exciting!

We hung around for awhile hoping the mist would dissipate a bit, but it didn't, and more people started to arrive and it felt crowded, so we headed back down the trail and towards the Jump Off. 




More gorgeous trail...



And then my phone died which was VERY disappointing because the trail to the Jump Off was INSANE. Like over and over the kids kept asking "are you sure this is the trail and not just a runoff ditch?" I've never been on a trail like that in my life and my knees hurt so bad by the end! Super steep, crazy rocks everywhere, insane drop-offs on all sides (sometimes 3 sides), places where the ground was crazy spongy and you started sinking in and then bam you're back to a three-inch-wide twisty little rock path...it was pretty fun but very stressful with Matthew. 

Then we got to the Jump Off and while the mist did not entirely go away, it blew off for a minute, we saw a rainbow, we all cheered, and then we turned back around and headed for Newfound Gap, which was craaaaaaazy busy with cars when we got back to the parking lot, and we felt very superior towards everyone who was just stopping for a photo op instead of squelching 9 miles through the woods. 

The next day we had a very leisurely morning--we spent probably 2 hours just hanging out by the fire drinking endless hot chocolate and eating bowl after bowl of cranberry-flax steel cut oats. We were all laughing and talking and it was one of my favorite bits of the trip. 

Then it was time to hit the trails again! This time we were headed for Andrews Bald, which is near the Clingmans's Dome overlook, so we were pretty nervous about finding parking there (it's always awful, but we lucked out that day!). 

The view from the parking lot is pretty darn amazing. 

But it's also really crowded! So we headed out on the hike to the bald and the weather was SO different from the previous day! We'd all started out wearing double sweatshirts underneath a parka and then we all ended up in short sleeves carrying double sweaters and parkas. 

This was a much easier hike than the day before and offered so many pretty vantage points, but it was crowded enough that it was kind of stressful with COVID. We spent a lot of time off to the side waiting for people to pass. I felt really anxious because we hadn't brought masks with us on the hike and so I felt like everyone who passed us assumed we were mask-deniers and that was just a whole other level of weird pandemic anxiety. 

By the time we made it to the bald, we were all so excited to just stretch out and enjoy the sunshine!!

Someday I'll start an album called "Views from Scenic Places I Have Peed."

Matthew was SO cranky on the hike back, so Neil picked him up and carried Matthew on his shoulders, nestled on top of his pack. A couple of 20-something guys passed us and I heard one say to the other "Dude! That guy is fitness goals--a kid AND a backpack!"

And then we realized that Matthew was totally conked out on top of Neil's head and that explained his crankiness.

And he was SO PERKY when he woke up!

On our way back to our campsite we decided to stop at the mill (which in non-COVID times would allow you to tour it and see it actually in operation, but guess what, nobody's grinding flour there now because pandemic times). Neil was in heaven, Matthew was D O N E with the day and I sat on a rock with him while he screamed at the top of his lungs, and Nathan & Luke had a race up the hill which terminated in a yellowjacket nest, so it was an interesting end to the day (they both had crazy reactions and I was very grateful that I'd brought both oral and topic Benadryl. Poor Nathan's ear swelled so much that it stood straight out from his head!)

But after Matthew had subsided and the stings had been treated, I slipped upstream for a minute to just glory in the beauty of the waterway leading to the mill (not the spillway...what is the upstream part called?). I love the vibrancy of the moss! 

And then it was back to camp for dinner and another chilly night before we packed up and headed home! Too short. 

Can't wait until the next time we go camping!

Smokies Day 5: Porter's Creek and Go-Karts!

Our last day of hiking was the easiest; only about 3 miles round-trip and a much better path! We followed Porter's Creek the entire way (even though we didn't actually make it to our destination; turns out our directions were faulty and the falls we were headed for were another half-mile up a rutted and rugged trail that we started up, but turned around after a few minutes. Our directions told us that the falls were unmarked and screened by brush so we spent quite awhile clambering around on rocks in the river wondering if the falls were just out of sight!).

One of our favorite things about this hike was the veritable swarms of butterflies--we saw SO many! They were just swirling around in giant clouds. It was really something!

 

 This is the gorgeous creek that we walked next to the entire time. It looked like this area had been somewhat heavily settled a few hundred years ago; we saw many moss-covered stone walls and even found the remnants of a fireplace back in the woods!

 About halfway up the trail, we explored the Ownby family cemetary, who were the original settlers of this cove. Many of the graves were from 1909 and we wondered if there had been some sort of epidemic at that time. And the majority of the graves were those of young women in their early twenties and babies who were days or weeks old. Not an easy time to be bearing children.

Half a mile or so past the cemetary, we came to an original cantilevered barn which had been built in 1875. I love the ax-marks on the beams; it reminded me a lot of the old barn that originally stood on our property in Ohio when I was a kid.

We explored the springhouse and talked about what it would be like to keep all of your milk and butter and whatnot in a place like this (much better condition than the pioneer springhouse we had in Ohio, which was kind of a death trap!).

And then we went a little further off the trail to check out the Smoky Mountain Hiking Club cabin. It was built in 1934 and the kids could literally have spent all day here--they LOVED it!

But eventually it was time to move on, so we skirted this guy who was sunning himself in the barn, and went on our way.

According to our directions, this was the point at which we should have seen the falls, but no falls were in sight, so we spent a long time playing around in the stream. This was probably the scariest of the bridges we crossed, since it was quite high, three logs long, and the water was a good 10 feet deep below us--but heavily peppered with big boulders! Definitely one where you didn't want to fall off the open side!

 The view downstream--Neil was longing to swim here!

And the view upstream.

The bridge. Beautiful! I was worried that Isaac would be afraid to cross, given his reaction to the hike the day before, but he went right over without any hesitation.

We spent so long here just throwing rocks in the water and trying to figure out how deep it was. Beautiful beautiful area!

 Then we started back down the trail and found a new place to throw rocks.

 And then we went to get ice cream and ride around in go-karts!

Abigail was big enough to ride by herself, but the other kiddos took turns riding with parents.

 Juliet

 Isaac

Luke (the go-kart guys were all talking while Luke and I were going around and literally let us go twice as long as they should have. I was DYING! My hip was killing from the awkward position that I had to use to hit the gas but Luke was having so much fun that I didn't want to stop for his sake, but every time we went around again I was like, oh my gosh, please end your conversation and tell us to get off the track so that you're the bad guy in Luke's eyes and not me!).

 And then we drove back to our campsite and it started pouring rain again! Fortunately we just heated dinner up on the stove (roasted tomato-garlic soup and grilled cheese sandwiches), but it was kind of a bummer wet night for our last evening. Oh well--we all slept soundly and the kids were such a huge help breaking camp in the morning that we had it all taken down within an hour of waking up! Then we headed into town and had a fun birthday breakfast for Luke at a pancake house, then we drove home and unpacked, and then Neil and I put the kids to bed, went running (he ran outside and I ran on the treadmill), and then collapsed into bed after the most wonderful hot shower--I really appreciated it after icy midnight showers in the woods! Haha! It was a great trip.