The Great Smokey Mountains

 The Great Smokey Mountains, this is our second time at this national park having stayed there on our third trip in 2017.  I had a lot of hikes planned back then but it rained us out every day and we only made it up to Clingman's dome. This time we’re staying on the other side of the mountains in North Carolina.  (Shout out to North Carolina for having awesome waves and awesome mountains.  How very California of you.) This trip I didn't plan a head so didn't know what was on this side of the mountain and we didn't want to travel to the things we missed that first year.  One thing I thought of that we wanted to do and couldn't the first year is Andrew's Bald we saw the trail when we went to Clingman's dome, but a ranger had told us another strong storm was moving in and didn't recommend it.  This year since we didn't have anything planned and Becky wanted to see if we could actually see anything from Clingman's dome this time we headed that way with the idea of doing the 3.6 mile Andrew Balds trail, the 1/2 mile straight up Clingman's dome walk, and then hit a waterfall.  We did the first two but didn't make it to a waterfall.  The Andrew's Bald hike was pretty awesome really mossy and looked like we stepped into another world. The hike there was better than the destination which was just a clearing.  It did rain here quite a bit off and on and was extremely hot and humid.  That made sleeping pretty tough, we thought we'd be up in the mountains enough to cool down but it was still too low to make a difference. We were supposed to do three nights, but after two sweaty nights we bugged out and moved down the road a bit and stayed at a KOA in Knoxville.

Here are some pictures from this year's Great Smokey Mountain adventure and an unplanned but surprisingly fun stop in Knoxville. 

Small view from the hike to Andrews Bald

Our campsite at the Smokemont campground in Great Smokey Mountain National Park.
It It was raining so we were huddled under the awning very much like our first time to this park. 

We could see a cut line in the rain, so Luke went out to check it out and stand where rain was cut off

It was Friday night, pizza night (yes we take it very seriously, a little to seriously) so we drove back into Cherokee to find a pizza place. On the way we saw a tank by the road so stopped, Marcus had mentioned that he'd love to see a tank up close when were were going by all these military bases. This was at a veteran's memorial park. Marcus' vacation checklist item... CHECK.

Our spot on Loop F of the campground.  It's on the inside there's a strip of sites that are on the river just to the left in the picture.  If you stay here try to get a river site.  I got reservation late for this stop so took what was available but it would have been a much better time by the river.

At a pull out, we're in the clouds and it was a lot cooler as we went up into the mountains more.

We made it ot the Clingmans Dome parking lot, ready to start our Andrew's Bald Hike.

After stepping in a ways, we could tell it wasn't going to be an ordinary hike

It was like stepping into a fairy garden. Very Mossy.

Sky started to clear a bit so took any view pictures I could while we had the chance.

So very, very mossy

Trees on rocks

Close up of the moss, it's like another forest in there.

It opened up and we reached the bald

Becky needed a picture with the flowers

Group picture

Heading back

It was mostly downhill going in so up hill on the way out.

We finished everyone had fun on the hike.

While we rested before taking the uphill to the dome Marcus and Lucas decided to do some rock climbing instead.

This picture is a big deal. Lucas, mister afraid of hights sat on the ledge on his own accord.

And we're heading up, it's only a 1/2 mile but it's very uphill

Clingman's Dome

View from the top, we got to see more than clouds this time. Yay!

Becky and her young men

The Appalachian Trail goes through here so of course we had to run down again and take a look. 
It's only a few yards off the paved Clingman's dome trail. 

White blaze of the Appalachian Trail

Walking down is so much easier.

Marcus playing in the stream by the campground.
The air hammock is getting used as a boat again, which is the only time they ever get used.

Cool bridge over the river at the campground's river trail

Becky and Marcus were playing in the river, and took a non-sanctioned log bridge to get over to the nature trail 

River from one of the campsites by us that wasn't occupied at the moment.
Try to get a river spot if you ever stay here, they are pretty cool sites.  

Our site again, no air and it was hot and muggy so spent a lot of time outside.

Since it was so hot sleeping, we decided to head out a day early. It was quite a drive with the camper over the pass in the park, but we made it. We got a spot at the Knoxville KOA, it was a small gravel parking lot looking KOA, but it was clean, they had a good deep swimming pool, and a pretty cool game room.  We needed laundry so I went over and started a couple loads of laundry just doing what was needed to get through the rest of the trip. While over there I walked into the rec room and found a Galaga video game machine.  So I had 19 dollars' worth of quarters and only needed a few bucks for the wash so sent a call out to the kids.  "They have Galaga, and I have quarters get over here".  Luke came first and we played some games, then the rest of the gang came over and we started playing some pool. Becky dominated the pool table.

Marcus played a lot of pool on his phone this trip I guess, he thought it would carry over to the real world... it did not.

Then some air hockey.  We really got into it.  Lucas is pretty good, but I was able to put him in his place.

Spent some time in their pool, it's 9 feet deep I love a good deep pool. 

Our spot at the KOA, pretty basic but level enough we could leave it hooked up. Great place to stop and a good choice leaving early, everyone had a good night's sleep, and we took a couple hours off our drive to our next stop at the land between the lakes. I added a few new stickers to the trailer this year, and Becky also decided to add the blogs website to the camper after we had a nice conversation with a neighbor in Conagree, they were interested in our trips. It always seems odd to say well why don't you check out our blog. Thought is they can figure it out themselves if it's on the camper. Not sure how I feel about that mainly because she hasn't been writing much this trip.  So do me a favor and let her know in the comments that you'd like to hear more of her stories.

Tallulah Gorge

This stop was Tallulah Gorge State Park in northern Georgia. We had three nights here and took it easy the first day to sleep in and recover a bit since the drive day, while it wasn't terribly long it was tough on us (me at least).  Also, we only had one thing we wanted to make sure to do here and that was the gorge trail to the bottom of the gorge.  I took a bunch of pictures, so I'll leave this short and get to them. 

Picture from one of the overlooks, our first day there we drove to the visitor center and scouted out the top part of the trail to get a lay of the land. 

Our campsite

Georgia marks a major milestone for the Munsch's. It's our 47th state we've camped in and only leaves the notorious Oregon left in the lower 48 that we haven't camped.  We've driven through Oregon on our first trip though, so we've been in each state.  To think we've been to all the states (some a few times) in this rapidly deteriorating camper is pretty amazing. Marcus is only 13. Here is the map on the wall in our camper.  There's a jewel sticker for each place we've camped.

We had steaks the first evening to celebrate the accomplishment.

Swim beach at the campground.  It was an interesting beach real long and skinny swim area.

Lucas checking out the beach.
He thought his "fixed" hair cut also made him look psychotic and requested it cut yet again.

Becky cleaned up the sides so it looked less mushroom top fluffy. 
I thought it looked good but he thought it was too close to a mohawk. 

So he requested a full buzz cut. See the sandles at the beach? Lucas got sandles at the last Walmart stop since his old ones broke and were ducted taped together for a few days. He puts the flipflops on getting out of the water as seen here and walked up the beach where we had our stuff. He stops looks down at his flip flops sitting by our bag and the flip flops on his feet and says. "I don't think these are my flip flops", he walks back to the water to return the sandals he stole from the beach.

Our little stair issue. I didn't have the hardware to fix it so it had to wait a day until we could get to yet another hardware store. That first step off the camper was a doozy for a while. Home Depot was only 12 miles away so were able to run up and grab what I needed.  Also it was time for a oil change and they had a express lube nearby so was able to get that out of the way as well. 

Here it is fixed up just drove a bolt through the board and used the lag bold and washer to attach it to the floor in the camper from above. We had overlaid 1/2 plywood over the floor so plenty strong to keep it up and functional. We had done the same thing on the other side when we fixed the camper floor. So that was easy fix and I knew about it on the drive but there was no hurry to fix it.  But after filling water after the not so great drive our water tank leak returned. We were pouring water out the bottom again and when I looked the patch had peeled off on one side.  This was a more immediate need so had to get under the camper and patch that up right away not what I wanted to be doing at the time. So I rage fixed it and it really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and why I was raging out.  I only needed to remove two bolts this time instead of half the skirt like last time. 

Marcus out taking a picture from the top of the gorge when we were scouting things out before the big hike.

We got a kick out of how big this sign was.  No way we could say we weren't warned.

Picture of the dam above the gorge, if the siren goes off and you're in the gorge they are releasing water and have high water marks up the banks you'd need to make your way to.

Setting off early in the morning for our hike.  Not as early as we had planned, we all overslept by an hour but still pretty early.  We walked in from our campground since the end of the hike was closer to the campground then the beginning, we took the distance early instead of at the end. 

At the visitor center getting our passes for the gorge hike.  They only allow 100 people to hike it a day.  It was a weekday so not too much issue of them being gone.  They say before noon you're pretty good.  But on weekends or holidays they can go right away after they open. We had to go through a little class explaining the route and the hazards and how no one should ever do it, blah blah blah. There are 1000 stairs, a river crossing, bolder hopping, bolder scrambling, another river crossing and then a bolder scramble/climb to get out of the gorge. Something for everyone. 

Samus getting some shots from the top overlooks, he didn't come along yesterday when we checked it out.

Gorge-ous was our word for the day.

Stairs there are a lot of stairs down.  The full route you didn't have to go up the stairs. I was happy about that at first, hey we only go down the stairs not up.  What a silly man I was, I would have killed for some stairs and benches a few hours later in the day.

Family shot on the stairs just getting going everyone is super excited this is going to be so fun.
See the steep railing, my 17 year old is walking down smiling having a good time and puts his butt on said railing and is off like a rocket. He flies down the steep railing and slams into his mother, sending her flying down 3 or 4 stairs. She has know idea what happened but is rolling around in pain.  Sam was stopped by the impact and is in full apology mode. So the mood took a turn quickly. We sat on a bench for a few minutes to do a systems check if everyone was alright and decided to push forward. Becky took quite a shot but probably saved Sam from serious injury, there was no way he'd stop and hitting the end or trying to get off at that speed would have been really bad.

After the stairs there's a suspension bridge over the river. 

It's a legit suspension bridge and made me think of the one in the Big Sioux Recreation Area. Only that one seemed sturdier. 

 

And isn't very far down, this is a good 40 feet or more to the bottom.

After the bridge there are more stairs

At the bottom of the stairs there's a platform to view the falls and a pass only gate to get off the board walk and continue the hike along the bottom of the gorge.

It's rock scrambling/hopping from here.

Along the bottom of the gorge.

It was some serious rock hopping. Taking some deliberate consideration at times on how best to get from one place to the other.

And by rock hopping, I mean rock hopping. This is Luke mid air making one of the jumps. For me jumping wasn't as bad as trying to stick the landing and not have my momentum carry me off the landing rock. The warning class was serious. 

We were getting banged and bruised up.

Some falls from the rocks above

It was a absolutely beautiful hike and the rocks while challenging made it a lot of fun

There weren't only rocks and boulders to contend with, some downed trees made it interesting as well.

At the end of the trail there's a place called sliding rock and there you can swim and slide on the rock.
We get to this waterfall thing it sort of looks like a slide.  We're wondering if we're at the end or not.

We hung out there for a while looking around if we could see a trail out on the other side or not.

No I didn't fall in the water that's all sweat. It's hot and humid out. 

We talk to a couple other hikers.  They were wondering the same thing as us but said "I'm pretty sure if we slid here we'd die", so were continuing on.  We agreed and worked farther downstream as well. 

From below, yeah that wouldn't feel good.

But downstream a little way further we finally hit sliding rock.  A much more manageable slope. 

At first it was just us and the couple of guys we talked to at the last falls, we rested and debated going in. As we waited a large group of kids showed up from the other side.  They were part of a Y camp that had come to slide and swim for a while. I was hot so I slide in first but from pretty low, it felt good but getting out was interesting I was glad they had the rope there. 

Marcus Sliding from farther up they got going pretty fast from the top.

Lucas at the low entry point debating going in.

Becky getting in, she went for it first time from towards the top.

Lucas using the rope.  I went again after a while and getting out this time after so much use it got very slippery on the rock getting out compared to my first time.  I was using the rope the whole way up just in case but it didn't matter all a sudden I took a step and slammed down hard.  My right arm hurt pretty bad and I was done sliding at that point. I also bit it a couple times on the stream cross to get to the other side.  I was starting to have a bad day.

Boys in line at the top, with all the kids it was really crowded.

Samus going Mach 5

Lucas going for it

Like I said I had slipped a couple more times crossing the river and then we started to ascend, I wasn't doing too hot and started to worry Becky and the kids. I think I was having some heat exhaustion issues.  I was just spent, and we were climbing almost straight up using hands and feet to get out of the gorge.  I expected a more gradual climb, but nope it was steep and long to get out of there.  I had to rest a bunch. I had my phone in the bag from the river crossing but finally took it out about halfway up to capture some of the pain. This is a shot looking down.

I'm delirious and Lucas is in the background trying to look at his map.  It got a little wet.

The map was a total loss. I think the temp right now was 87 or something like that but the heat index was 98. 

Becky and Samus hiking up.  Samus hauled our pack up the cliff face for me.

We finally made it out of the gorge we were so excited but still had a long way to hike back but at least it was walking.

Falls from the south rim

And the after shot. We marked the spot we did the before shot but we didn't have the energy to even line up.  Just snap it and let's get home to the camper. After some Gatorade and some real food we came around. We laid around for a hour or two then we headed out to take in a movie.  There was a theatre about 15 miles south of us so we drove there and went to Top Gun Maverick.  Wow, now that is a movie. Highly recommend, we all loved it. 

And that night we slept like dead horses.