First Hike - Survived!

We survived. 3 miles. Doesn't sound like much of a walk, does it? Is isn't, until you consider that half of it was downhill. Half of it was uphill. Some of it was pretty darn steep. Some of it was gently sloping. We found out when we got to the trailhead that the camera didn’t have a memory card in it, so the only pictures I have are from my camera phone. When I find the adapter for the mini-chip, I’ll post some pictures, probably sometime tomorrow or Monday.

The trail suckered us in. Really, it did. We started out on an old roadbed, with a gentle slope. Trees grew up all around and met overhead to form a dense, green canopy that shaded us. It was nice, it was cool. I can’t say it was quiet – we could hear the road half of the time. It didn’t help that the HOG Rally was going on in Knoxville this weekend, and the road that the trailhead was on is one of the most popular motorcycle roads in the area. But the walk was easy and comfortable. We were headed to an 80 foot waterfall.

Halfway to the waterfall, the trail bit. We moved off the old roadbed to a real footpath. We’d been walking on gently sloping gravel. We moved to steep terrain, covered by layers of pine needles and dead leaves. I noticed a smell for the first time – the smell of raw earth. It was good. We made our way down the slope, using tree roots as steps. I was very thankful it wasn’t raining. That would have been a very slick mess if it had been wet. As it was, the moss presented an opportunity to slip often enough.

We climbed down to the creek, then climbed upstream to the head of it. 80 feet above us, many small trickles and streams converged into the falls. We’ve not had much rain to speak of for the last several weeks, so the water that fell over the edge wasn’t nearly as impressive as it would be if we’d had normal rainfall this summer. Even so, it was very beautiful.

The water fell 80 feet into a pool, then continued on downstream at a pretty steep pace over large rocks and ledges. It was neat. We climbed up to the pool, something we wouldn’t have been able to do if the falls had been full. We found one fish, about 5 or 6 inches long, one crawdad, and lots of water-bugs living in the pool. There was something very peaceful and calming about sitting beside the waterfall to eat our snack and drink some water.

Neither of us were really looking forward to the climb back up the trail to the car. Jack checked the GPS to see that we weren’t all that far from the car, not nearly as far as we had walked. There was just this problem of a wet, 80 foot cliff directly between us and it. It looked like there was a rough trail going up the side of the cliff, and he decided to explore it. He tried to climb all the way up to the top while I amused myself trying to take pictures of the bees on the flowers growing in a pool of water. He ended up not being successful as what appeared to be a trail turned out to be a tease. Since I haven’t downloaded the pictures off my phone yet, we don’t know if I was successful or not.

We finished up our snack, watched the crawdad for a bit, then started back. The climb back up the steep part of the trail convinced me that I’m really, really, really out of shape. Coming back to the old roadbed was very welcome, I’ll tell you! We walked along in silence. I had nice long talk with God while walking, thanking Him for keeping us safe and for making all of the beautiful and wondrous things we’d seen. Just then, a big black butterfly wafted down on a sunbeam and landed on a leaf right in front of me. Would I be silly to think the butterfly was sent as a way to say “you’re welcome”? It sure seemed that way. We made it back to the car, about 2 ½ hours after we left, feeling tired, but happy. I’m sure we’ll both feel it in the morning, but we’re already planning our next hike. :o)