Spring 2006 Mountain Adventure Day 5

Today started out a bit rainy, but we were up and out of the cabin by 10 am. Our first stop was the Sugarlands Visitors Center, where Rosie found a cute chipmunk stuffed animal and I got a mouse finger puppet from the gift shop. They have a museum there also and we spent some time inside learning about the flora and fauna within the Park.

Then we set off to find a Yellow Lady Slipper we had been told about, but we never found it. I’ve been sent to a number of locations they are rumored to be at, but have yet to find one here.

Our first hike was on a trail called Roundtop, because we had been told there were a lot of Pink Lady Slipper there. It is a seldom used trail, very peaceful, and we were the only ones on it. We saw a Pileated Woodpecker flying through the forest as we hiked. Then we found the lady slipper mecca! There must have been 50-75 plants in the area, several in full bloom and color. What a delight to have found so many. There were no signs of anyone trying to dig them, either. Steve got so excited he forgot his tripod case again, but remembered it before we got all the way back to the car, so he went to retrieve it. While waiting for him, I found a lot of Wood Betony.

We ate our lunch by a stream, then set off for a trail to Spruce Flats Falls, another alleged yellow lady slipper site. Wow, this was a rough trail! Very narrow and hard on the side of the mountain, very little traveled, with slippery rocks and footways. Rosie did very well, and is turning into quite the hiker. This was only about a 1 mile trail but was so steep that it took us about 3 hours to the falls and back. These falls were spectacular, probably the best ones of the entire trip. On the way there and back we found many pretty colored millipedes, yellows and oranges, unlike any I have ever seen before. But no Yellow Lady Slippers.

We were wet, dirty and tired when we finished this hike, so it was back to the cabin for a shower and clean clothes, then to Gatlinburg for dinner. We ate at the Smoky Mountain Brewery (the waitress advised us "Don't order the green beans, they're awful", and came back to the cabin to turn in for tomorrow’s trip back home. Rosie and I were awakened in the night by some creature rummaging through the trash can, most likely a coon, but we couldn't get a glimpse of it.

Spring 2006 Mountain Adventure Day 4

Got up early and went to Applewood Restaurant for breakfast—yummy! Rosie likes the finches that they have in large glass display cases there. They have little nesting pouches and swings made from twigs that the birds like to sit on. Very entertaining.

After breakfast, we went to the new Gatlinburg Conference Center where the Wildflower Pilgrimage vendors were set up. We met a number of artists and craftspeople. Rosie got 4 new birds for her collection, and I got a T-shirt, a fern book and several flower prints. I met a couple of guys who were pretty knowledgeable about botany and they gave me leads on lady slipper locations. This year there were live plants on display and one of the men went through all of them with me and identified the ones I didn’t know. Very helpful.

Steve said he’d like to go back to Porter Creek Trail because he thought somebody might have found his tripod case at the falls and brought it back down to the trailhead. He said that the really nice older couple we met on the trail had gone up after him and he thought they might have found it. So we drove to the trail and lo and behold, there was his tripod case hanging on the gate! There are still honest people in the world, it seems, even total strangers. We regretted again not exchanging names with the man and his wife.

We proceeded on to Trillium Gap Trail, on the Roaring Fork Motor Route. It’s a 1.2 mile hike to Grotto Falls and was a pretty easy hike compared to the previous two days. Notable along the trail was Squirrel Corn, the first we’d seen this time, and two large salamanders lying in a creek we crossed. Rosie and I also met a cute little yellow bird on the path who was busy gathering nesting material, and we watched for several minutes, waiting for Steve to catch up and take a photo. However, Steve thought he’d growl like a bear as he approached, and the bird decided not to hang around. It looked like a type of warbler.

These falls were my favorite thus far. We could walk under them and we stuck our hands in the water—brrrrr! The walk back was pleasant, too.

We followed Roaring Fork Motor Route the rest of the way. Steve stopped to take photos and Rosie and I walked part of the road along the creek. We found another place where butterflies were gathering on the ground and several very healthy clumps of Showy Orchis.

Near the end of the Route, we were pleased to see our elderly friends from Porter Creek Trail along the road taking photos! We stopped and told him we’d found the tripod case. He said he and another man had found it and brought it down to the gate. This time we exchanged names and gave him our card. He is Bob Jones from Nashville, and said he lives on Cheek Road.

We came back to our cabin, cleaned up and rested, ate our leftover Applewood dinner, then went into Gatlinburg for a couple hours. We had coffee and picked up donuts for the morning at The Donut Friar. We’re going to impose a donut moratorium when we get back home!

Rosie has decided she wants to be a dog, and she wants to wake up in the morning and actually have turned into one. What an imagination this kid has.

Spring 2006 Mountain Adventure Day 3

Had yummy donuts for breakfast at the cabin, then picked up picnic supplies at Food City. We headed to Porter's Creek Trail for our hike; on the way, we had to stop at a parking area where there were literally thousands of butterflies—flying, basking, drinking from wet areas on the ground. I've never seen anything like it; it was like a paradise of butterflies.

Then onward to the trail. This is the same trail where we found pink lady's slipper last year. I found a trail going uphill off the main trail that we followed, because many times it will lead to something interesting, such as a patch of rare wildflowers. This trail led to a tiny graveyard on high ground, with very old graves that appeared to be mostly of children, one of them named Rosie. It was sad to think of people so many years ago carrying their babies up that hill to put them to rest in the earth, but I suppose that would be the perfect place to bury a loved one, in the middle of a forest surrounded by birds, flowers and trees. That was our first stop along this flower bordered trail.

A short time later, we were at the lady's slipper area. We met several other people at the site who knew how to make their way to the shrine of the Lady's Slipper, which is off trail but marked by a well-worn foot path. A lady there put me onto another area where we can find more of this my favorite wildflower.

We decided to follow the trail to Fern Falls and it was a bit of a hike but worth it for all the flowers we saw. We found an excellent clump of Painted Trillium. We also met a very sweet elderly couple that we chatted with a bit. Wish we had gotten their names.

The falls were beautiful, but I left ahead of Steve and Rosie as I needed a bit of a break from someone's incessant chatter. That Steve just never knows when to shut up ; )

On my way down, I overcame my fear of heights for the second time and walked the narrow bridge with a handrail on only one side, across a rushing stream. A couple coming toward me then advised that a large rattlesnake was a few yards ahead, lying across the trail. This is not exactly what I wanted to hear, but of course I was curious, so I tagged along with another couple in search of the beast. He had drawn a crowd of gawkers by the time I arrived. He was a big fellow, much darker than I thought he'd be, with quite a nice set of rattles, and he appeared to be in a pretty good mood. I called Steve and Rosie on the walkie-talkie telling them to hurry for this photo op.

The crowd dispersed and there I was, alone with the rattler, who paid me no mind. Then the troops arrived and Steve got some good photos.

On down the trail back to the car, Steve went off to the creek to take photos and fell in (only one leg) but Rosie and I had gone ahead so we didn't get to see this. He realized once he was back to the car that he had left his tripod case all the way back at the falls. Bummer.

We ate at Applewood Restaurant, then took a late evening drive through Cade's Cove. We saw tons of deer, turkey, and two highlights—Steve's first photo of an Eastern Bluebird, and a very handsome coyote. Then, back to the cabin for a good night's sleep.

Spring 2006 Mountain Adventure Day 2

Here we are at our cabin in Gatlinburg. I'm rather disappointed with it. Almost all the furniture is broken, there's only ONE coffee mug, and the pillows are paper thin. Oh well, we won't be here too much.

We left Corbin about 8 am and went to Cumberland Falls. The river is way up and the falls were pretty wild. After we looked at the falls, Rosie and I walked downstream along the banks and found a nice sandy beach where we built a little house out of driftwood. While we were on the beach, we could look across the river and see a very pretty falls called Eagle Falls. On the way back up, we spotted a little chipmunk in the woods. Steve took photos up at the falls for awhile and couldn't figure out where we went so he went back to the car to wait for us.

We then drove across a bridge to the other side of the river and hiked Trail 9, which was supposed to lead to Eagle Falls (but didn't—we were never able to get a glimpse of it). What we did see were 2 large snakes, one of them crawling up a rock overhang right beside the trail. Rosie spotted it first and after Steve took photos, they went on further down the trail. I, being curious as to how the snake was going to crawl up a completely vertical surface, hung around to stare up at him. To my horror, he fell off the rock onto the trail and I went screaming off before I could see where he landed!!!

There were many wildflowers on this trail. We saw a new one called Little Brown Jug, and also saw Squaw Corn, Fire Pink, Violet Wood Sorrel, Long Spurred Violet, and many others.

We came upon many large millipedes in the lower, wetter parts of the trail and yet another snake, this one climbing a tree. Whatever happened to the good old days when snakes just crawled on the ground?

We took a different loop back and followed a nice little creek for quite awhile, then went to the Dupont Lodge for lunch. It was very good and the highlight was the large windows by our table and the bird feeders outside. Goldfinches were flocking in and a little chipmunk was busily filling his pouches with fallen seed.

Then we got onto the interstate, which we'd managed to avoid thus far, arrriving in Gatlinburg to pick up our keys about 4:30, then heading straight to the cabin. We hauled all our stuff in, then went back to town to eat at Jose's Cantina, a really good Mexican restaurant. We walked around a bit afterward and searched the shops for a stuffed chipmunk, but were only able to find a squirrel. We finished up with a stop at the Donut Friar to get donuts for morning, a drive through the park on the way home, then turned in to get ready for a day of hiking and exploration on Monday.

Spring 2006 Mountain Adventure Day 1

Left New Albany around noon. We grabbed lunch at Subway, made a stop at Border's Books for a Kentucky map, picked up 2 Krispie Kreem coffees, then onto the open road!

Our first stop was Bernheim Forest. I was amazed at how many improvements have been made there since my last visit. There is a Canopy Tree Walk, a platform that takes you up 75 feet into the tree canopy, and new signage and roads. Many cool sculptures too.

We hiked a trail along a creek and saw lots of Larkspur blooming. Rosie successfully skipped a rock for the first time too. We found a funny little caterpillar hitching a ride on Rosie's shirt. He was the exact size and color of a twig and when touched, would stiffen up straight out just like a twig. We also found a cute little brown toad sunning himself. He peed on me when I picked him up—hope I don't get warts! The neatest find was a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly that had just hatched out and whose wings were still all folded up and wet. I carried it back to where Steve was so he could photograph it.

Steve caught a glimpse of something black and white moving through the woods—a skunk or cat? We never found out.

We left Bernheim after our hike and proceeded on to Berea, stopping for dinner at a Lee's Famous Recipe. Rosie and I spotted wild dumpster cats who received our chicken scraps. One was missing half its tail.

Shortly outside Berea, we stopped to hike to Anglin Falls in the John B. Stephenson Memorial Forest, a very out of the way place with an unbelievable show of wildflowers. The hillsides were carpeted with Bellwort, Larkspur, Jacob's Ladder, Jack in the Pulpit, Spring Beauty, Trillium, Long Spurred Violet and others. Part way in on this rather rugged, muddy trail, a wild looking dog came down from the slopes. We soon learned he was a very good dog looking for a kid like Rosie to escort to the falls. Rosie named him Runner and he stayed with us for the hike to the waterfalls, which are absolutely beautiful, with Columbine growing in the rocks around the falls. Steve took many photos and we then headed back the trail, with night starting to fall. Runner was fed a package of chocolate chip cookies in payment for escort services rendered.

An owl swooped across the road in front of us as we left, and we heard all the night creatures calling, reconfirming our desire to have a place in the country to get away to. We pledged that we'll stop putting it off and try to find ourselves a little cabin in the sticks so Rosie can have the fun that Steve and I both had as kids, exploring the woods and fields.

We arrived at the Baymont Inn in Corbin around 10 pm, tired and muddy. Thank Heavens we made reservations as they are completely booked. Spotted another dumpster cat from our 4th floor window. Slept well. Sunday, on to the Smokies, with stops planned along the way for 3 waterfall hikes.