I rode the
Dragon! 318 curves in 11 miles! Twice! Once in the rain!
Evidently this is a big thing, so y'all should be impressed. And we didn't end up on the Tree of Shame.
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| Tree of Shame (Wiki) |
The hiking was pretty long but still a lot of fun. The premise of this trip was to collect water samples for water quality surveying in the Smokies. These sites are sampled twice a year, but this time the NPS didn't do it, so the UT part of the collaboration (Timmy) had to. We did about 16 mi the first day, and then hiked up to Hazel Cascades to get the farthest one. It was starting to drizzle before we reached our campsite the next day, so we slept at Proctor (there is an old house there with a porch) and then finished the hike out in a thunderstorm today. A lot of cool things were along the trail that were not on the maps, (the town of Proctor, a gold mine) that I think the Park might be ignoring its heritage and just letting nature take it over.
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| Whoo! Terrible Maps! |
The bit up from the old horse camp to Hazel Cascades would be a nice day hike (lots ~25) stream crossings, but the cascades themselves are not worth the hike to them. I really like the mountains in a thunderstorm, really beautiful with a lot of nice, earthy smells. Causalities from this weekend include:
- My left pinky toe. Major blister from sandals.
- The DRAGON!
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