Laurel River Lake

10/7 - 10/9/16
2016 bag nights: 20

Kids were out of school for fall break, so we left work early on Friday and drove an hour or so south to meet friends for a weekend of car camping at Laurel River Lake. Ended up having great weather and our campsite had easy access down the hill to the lake.

The kids loved throwing rocks in the water and the older ones explored a little on their own.

We all went for a short hike on the Sheltowee Trace.

 The kids also occupied themselves with coloring and crafts while I napped in my hammock.

We took the long way home and went by Cumberland Falls. I really want to get back to that area and hike down the river.

A nice weekend with friends and unbelievable weather for the beginning of October.

First Paddle

10/18/2016
Leatherwood Boat Ramp
Cave Run Lake

I got an inflatable kayak and needed to try it out. I also needed a personal day from work, so I headed to Cave Run Lake for the first float. The weather forecast was for a high around 85 and sun, very weird for October.

No pics of the kayak, but I had a good time and the views were very nice with the leaves just starting to turn.

After a bit, the wind started to pick up. While it was fun to watch the clouds go by (and their shadows on the trees), it made paddling a lot harder.

A great way to spend an October day.

Tarr Ridge

9/29/16
Tarr Ridge Trailhead
Red River Gorge

I decided to take a personal day and head to the gorge. I had heard good things about Tarr Ridge and it sounded like a good way to fill a couple hours and maybe scout for a place to hang a hammock.

I got to the trailhead and there were two cars there, one with an overnight hang tag and one without. I was a little disappointed since I had hoped the weekday and the weather would give me the ridge to myself.

It was grey and overcast and damp, but the views were fantastic. The mist/clouds made for atmosphere, but made it some difficult to get good photos.

Spent some time watch the mist and listening to the birds. A cup of coffee at this point would have been nice.

And then I headed towards the Tarr Ridge Extravaganza trail and a couple more overlooks. I ran into the owners of the cars. The guy had camped out and his girlfriend had met him that morning. They were nice to talk to and I appreciated that they were picking up other people's trash like I tend to do. We chatted for a couple minutes and then I headed towards the end of the ridge, stopping at another overlook along the way.

I got to the end and followed the long rock wall at the end of the Tarr Ridge Extravaganza trail until it cliffed out ...

...  and then climbed up the rock with the help of a rope that someone left and finished the hike out to the end of the ridge. The view is pretty amazing, I just wished the clouds had broke and let in a little more sun. It was a great place to just sit and look.

I'm going to try to make it back when the leaves are changing.

On top of the stairs

9/2 - 9/3/16
Bison Way Trailhead - Red River Gorge
2016 bag nights: 18

The weather forecast for Labor Day weekend was looking fantastic (clear with highs in the low 80s). I mentioned to my wife that instead of staying home this weekend and hosting a pool party, I should be taking the kids camping. She said I should go do a one night trip by myself. No problem.

I have been wanting to try a little more astrophotography and the clear night that was forecast sounded good, so it was just a matter of figuring out where to go that would give me a clear view of the sky. I decided that the Indian Staircase area in the gorge would work, my only fear was there would be a ton of people given a weekend with nice weather. The gorge was packed, but it seemed to be mostly dayhikers when I got to the trailhead after leaving work early on Friday.

Since I was only going a couple of miles, I carried Subway for dinner along with a couple beers (Two Hearted) and my chair (Alite Monarch). It was awesome sitting at the top of the staircase waiting for the sunset.

A great place to hang for the night. I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a shooting star from the comfort of the hammock.

It was a nice sunset, but I was hoping for a little bit more color in the clouds. In the end, I was glad the clouds weren't very spectacular since the stars probably would have sucked.

The stars were great, but I did not get many good photos because the trees were in the way. Being at the edge of the cliff line meant that I did not have a lot of room to move for a better angle. In the photo below, the light on the horizon is light pollution from (I think) Slade. I was really surprised at the amount of light coming from the Mountain Parkway area. I was also surprised how many airplanes fly over the gorge. A lot of the photos ended up with a light streak through the middle from an airplane flying through the 20 second exposure.

Pretty sure I will never camp at the top of the staircase again. Three guys came up about 11pm (I was still watching the stars) and then a couple more guys appeared around 1130 after I was in the hammock. Personally, I can't imagine wandering around a cliffline in the middle of the night, but I guess this type of behavior is why people die in the gorge every year. 

Woke up as the sky was getting lighter, decided if I was going to get any sunrise photos I needed to drag myself out of the hammock. There were basically no clouds, so it was not an "impressive" sunrise, but the mist in the valley was pretty and it was a nice view for breakfast.

A nice morning walk up on the ridge

Someone had a little too much time on their hands :)

Lots of flowers around a clearing up on the ridge

A nice view of the Indian Staircase ridge from across the valley

A couple more random photos

All in all, a pretty good way to spend approximately 20 hours. I need to do more trips like this in the future.

She Did It

Bob Stratton Bald
8/3 - 8/4/16
2016 bag nights: 17

Beech Gap trailhead (off the Cherohala Skyway)

I have been trying to get my wife to give backpacking a try for a couple years. She has been car camping, but the lack of "facilities" was an issue for backpacking. As our kids have got older and gone backpacking with me, the fear of being left behind began to dominate the lack of facilities. Then, it was just a matter of lining up childcare so we could go off into the woods for a couple of days without any kid distractions.

I wanted to go somewhere with a nice payoff and something that would be difficult to do on a dayhike. I decided that a trip to Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock would work, specifically a couple nights on Bob Stratton Bald. Hopefully, we would get killer sunsets, lots of stars, and a little bit of dayhiking to finish it off.

My mother was in town to see the kids and the weather looked reasonable for the Southern Appalachians this time of year, so we left for a two night trip to Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilderness. We had a short hike in from Beech Gap on the TN/NC state line (roughly 3.5 miles), so we each carried a beer for happy hour and she had a couple cans of wine while I had some bourbon.

It was an easy start to the day. The thermometer in my car read 75 and there were some dark clouds, but it did not look like it was going to rain.

The trail is an old forest road for the first 1 - 2 miles and was lined with wildflowers.

A hint of wildlife :)

And then a tiny snake in the middle of the trail.

The bald looked very different from the last time I was here (March).

The trees had leaves, all of the blackberry brambles had filled in and the grasses were knee to waist high, but we found a great campsite and enjoyed our happy hour beers surrounded by wildflowers, with a view of the mountains to the south.

There was not a great sunset view because the sun was dropping behind the trees, but the clouds to the east were very pretty.

I started a fire on the early side because we were going to have "pizza rolls" based on a recipe in the new Backpacker magazine. I don't know why I trusted the recipe, since I don't trust Backpacker for anything else. This recipe proved to be a bit of a problem. I think it would have worked with a huge bed of coals, but we would have had to gathered three times the amount of wood and burned it all before we started cooking dinner. A small fire and a bit of coals, meant that dinner took about 1.5 hours and it was almost 9 when we finished eating. I dumped the rest of the wood on the fire as we ate and we enjoyed the fire while the stars came out.

There was some lightning on the horizon that was lighting up the clouds, it made for an interesting view. Unfortunately, all of my photos that captured the lightning also captured passing planes.

We woke up in the morning to a ton of dew, it made for nice pictures, but my feet were very wet. It turned out that my feet/shoes were about to get a lot wetter.

And then we headed off towards Naked Ground and the Hangover. The trail was very overgrown (completely different from March) and the grass and plants were covered in dew. My wife referred to it as "the carwash"

We enjoyed the view at Naked Ground for a bit ... 

...before moving on to the Hangover. Unfortunately, the clouds had moved in and there was not much of a view. It also turned out that the lens on my cell phone camera was smudged, so this picture looks way worse than reality.

After about 30 minutes, we headed back to Naked Ground. We sat under the trees and avoided most of the drizzle that had begun.

The drizzle did not last long and did not really matter since the carwash had us pretty wet already. We got back to camp and I spent some time chasing the butterflies around...

... and then had an early dinner before the rain came again (a lot harder this time). Thankfully, it did not last long and we crawled out of the tent to see a sky with lots of dark clouds. About this time the thunder started up and my wife spent some time inspecting the clouds trying to figure out if we were about to get hit by lightning.

While she was thinking, I tried to capture a rainbow.

We had not seen any lightning and I thought that the thunder was moving away from us, but my wife had visions of dying in the middle of the night. It was about 7pm so there was about 2 hours of daylight left (enough to get to the car without too much trouble). I told her that she should decide if she wanted to stay or go and I would do whatever made her happy. About that point, there was a loud crack of thunder that seemed to be a sign. So we packed up and headed down the trail.

In less than 2 hours we were at the trailhead.

We found a hotel since it was too late to think about driving home. It is hard to say what would have happened on the bald, but there was rain (and lightning in the distance) on the drive down to Tellico Plains and then it poured at the hotel by I-75 all through the night. I suspect we made the right decision and hopefully my wife will join me again.