Guess where we were

There were lots of these and it would have sure been nice to see them in full bloom.

edited - I don't want to spoil it!

This message was edited Aug 15, 2009 8:39 PM

This was the final destination. note I AM NOT up there, an innocent bystander must have been drafted to get this shot of the adventurers. Even the adventurers said they were leery about standing up completely on top of there. Lots of hikers go up there tho. I was lucky to do the 2 miles of almost steady uphill hike before the last climb. Huf and puff.

Not telling yet!!! LOL
There are lots of mountains in America but maybe not a lot of giant chairs.

Dang- gotta go but have some pix I'd like to share later

More please! Ric

Ha-- Mike had it instantly but didn't spoil the game! What a pal.
Almost immediately on this trail you cross the first of two or three bridges over rocky mountain streams.

Every turn is a pretty woodland view and those pesky rhododendrons keep sneaking into the picture. There are huge patches of them. As you ascend, some are still in bloom.

A huge tree trunk. There is old-growth forest in the area. I'm sorry I didn't have more time ahead to plan and know exactly what we were in. There's another trail I'd love to do with more history and that one said for sure it goes thru old=growth.

North Carolina? That's the only place I can think of with old growth forests...

Hi Kubileya! You are very close ^_^
Not only does the trail cross streams, since there was rain earlier in the week the trail briefly WAS a small stream. Spent a good part of the hike going up rocky slopes with some trickles going down. Huff puff. I made it all the way but was not in shape.

With all that rain fall (the area gets something like 70 inches a year unlike most of our around 40) there were some good fungi...brackets on a trunk...

and I think I saw a big patch of red Lobelia cardinalis but the picture wasn't too good. And ferns. Lots of green everywhere. Sadly, not green on these big old hemlocks. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think these are old hemlocks destroyed by wooly adelgid.

You hike for two miles and end up on a ridge with trees around you. Then the crazy ones among you crawl up this rock face. I just can't stand the feeling of nothing below me for many many feet. The top of that is where the picture earlier was made of my two daring men.

this--

My best flower picture of the day was this- maybe a turtlehead (Chelone). I wish we budgeted more time to take off the shoes and soak in the stream, and look for more botany.

going to look for this guy's name

Claypa's fast! I "cheated" when I saw this pic http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/fp.php?pid=6950885 but had a hunch you were in Tennessee :) Looks like a great trip, "The Smokies" is an area I'd love to explore!

I was close. We went on a family camping trip near the NC/TN border when I was a teenager. I loved it so much! Some day when Dan and I retire I'd like to move somewhere around there.

The gold goes to claypa, with the silver to Kubileya. You might even actually see NC in the mountaintop views. That trail is called Chimney Tops.
rcn--you cheated, no bronze for you LOL.
Highway goes across TN Knoxville to Chattanooga and you take another road south thru Pigeon Forge , Sevierville and end up in Gatlin burg . The traffic IS horrible as one book said. Its like going thru a beach town like OC MD. Super touristy. We ate at a Mexican place in a strip mall going into the area and waiting for traffic to subside on Friday evening. Good luck! If you make it to Gatlinburg and a hotel, just stay in and rest up for the hike. Boy I sound like a party pooper, but we didn't want to spend 11 $ each for a ski lift ride up the mountainside from G Burg, or spend much time in the mobs walking on the main drag. There is a river next to River Road with a patch of sidewalk along it. An erstwhile, very mini Riverwalk San Antonio. Plenty of shopping if you like that, the obligatory Ripleys Believe it Or Not.
But the big reward came the next day. Load up on your complimentary hotel breakfast bar or hit the Pancake House --one on every block. Then drive a very short way into Great Smoky Park. For the cost of $1 for one trail map (souvenir, didn't need it) we had a beautiful hike, one of many. Lots of trail info available online. Popular and busy but clean where we were.
The Smokies are smoky because of the very high rainfall, like a temperate rain forest.
The strenuous level 4 mi round trip hike took a couple hours plus time to swim and play in the river at the beginning/ end of the hike. So the timing was great to hit well-known Smoky Mountain Brewery Restaurant for between meal eating which is great with these popular places. It was really good, located in a small complex ---you can park within as long as you make a purchase somewhere in the shops or restaurants within, other wise they'll charge ten dollars.
Ober Gatlinburg does sound fun for kids, but we didn't quite have the time.- this time.

This part of Tennesse is just beautiful and looks like a great place to garden. Chattanooga is growing fast, downtown Chat was nice when we stayed there a couple years ago.
On the way home we did another trail in another area, the South Cherokee Nat Forest. That is NOT under the Parks system but USDA. Very little info online. Much more like a local park. Big lake , sure the camping is nice there too and you can swim in the lake. We drove the winding road up to a camping area with its own small lake with swimming beach. This time we took an Easy trial and it was a little boring, but a neato waterfall at the end.- Benton Falls. I hope this pic is in focus. Somebody had trouble with focusing. Sadly, on this trail we found two discarded diapers. (How disgusting can people be- they can't even carry it out and can't even cover it or throw it far off the beaten path. Even if they were only water soaked or maybe pee'd...)
Hope you enjoyed the view. I'm just so glad I did enough research to avoid some hassles, do things we like, and the kids are not too big to have fun with us for a while.

What???? No bronze? LOL Regardless it looks like a wonderful trip and happy to hear the kids enjoyed it :) I remember our last attempt for a family vacation before the kids were "too big to have fun with us" - it was a disaster :( Took our oldest son's girlfriend with us, first mistake! She was like one of the family but after three days she was having problems with a toothache, we had to cut our vacation short - impacted wisdom tooth :( Plus the two youngest argued all the way home from Prince Edward Island - we should have planned the trip two years earlier, i.e. before girlfriend and before Ben discovered it was great fun to tease his older sister!

OK Debbie- a bronze, but WITHOUT clustered leaves ; ^ P
A shame about the disaster vacation. Any vacation is a risk of things going wrong and lots of money lost in the process!

Sally very pretty. What beautiful mtns. Thanks so much for sharing your pics. Ric got it, too. As soon as he looked at the pics he said Smokies. Looks like you all really enjoyed it all. Yes, Ric and I have had our share of disaster vacations. One vacation consisted of an old motor home that kept breaking fan belts one after another and a boat trailer that kept losing tires one after another. Getting lost in a very bad area of Miami and Ric unloading the boat in the middle of the night an leaving it sit in the parking lot of a bar not a 1/2 mile from our campground. His comment at the time was if someone came and took it they could have it. LOL Of course we loved the keys when we finally got there and we have the best stories from that trip. LOL

Ha, this could enjoy life as a Disaster Trip thread.
Not a disaster but last year we loved San Antonon and also tried to see more of Texas. Did not research well that time!!!!!!!!! Let's just say Texas is much bigger than we thought. We drug a huge tent thru the airport coming and going and didn't get to use it for beach camping like we'd planned. But almost got to use it IN Atlanta Hartsfield Airport being stuck due to weather LOL

Sounds like lots of fun Sally. (Atlanta Airport) Hope you had a great time with the kids.

Havn't been to TN since I was a kid. Thanks for sharing.

Looks like you had a wingdinger of a summer trip, Sallyg. I thought it was in the Blue Ridges somewhere, with that picture of the guys on the summit/top. I have camped and hiked around in the Blue Ridge a lot and even topped on Old Rag. But those flowers...I've never seen those in the Blue Ridge, but then again, all my hikes and camping were done in the Fall. I've been though Tennessee a lot, too, but mostly remember Memphis where we lived when I was a kid. It looks like a fun place to visit again.