Justin Acuff’s Blog

Technorati Tags: Cades Cove, Hyatt Lane, HDR, photography

You may remember that a couple of my previous posts had pictures, but now they are gone. This is because I just wasn’t happy with the new built in Wordpress Image Gallery. So instead I have removed them and placed a link to their appropriate album in my Gallery, as does that link. I might come back to it later, but there are some things that desperately need to be fixed before I do. Anyways, now on with the post.

This past weekend, I had some free time on Saturday morning, so I decided I was going to start it off real early and make some photographs just for the fun of it. It had rained the night before and wasn’t supposed to rain on Saturday, which means the day will be pretty clear. My first destination was the Miller’s Cove Overlook on Foothills Parkway West (the road up to Look Rock). Miller’s Cove is the first overlook you come to, so it really isn’t that far of a drive from Knoxville. I got there around 5:30 and just kind of waited. About 10 minutes before sunrise, a group of about 8 people on a workshop showed up as well. One of the first shots I got before they showed up, happens to be one of my more favorite shots from all day. It may be a dark picture, but that’s part of what I like about it. The next picture is one of the better sunrise shots. There really wasn’t a whole lot of red in the sky that morning, so I really had to push it to get this picture.

After that, I headed into Cades Cove. Cades Cove is one of those place that I usually prefer to go to either really early in the day or really late at night. If you go outside of those times, you are probably going to be stuck in a traffic jam that rivals some of the worst traffic jams in Knoxville. The cause of these traffic jams are often stupidity with a side of selfishness. Cades Cove is an 11 mile loop that once you get on, is difficult to get off. If people would just follow the rules, it wouldn’t be so bad. The main rule is, don’t stop in the middle of the road, use pull-offs. There are lots of pull offs to accommodate people, but they seldom use them. Instead they stop in the middle of the road and it is usually to take a picture of a deer. Deer are really abundant in Cades Cove, so you can just imagine how this is. The two things that really get me is people who stop in the middle of the road when there is a pull-off 10 feet in front of them and those that stop in the middle of the road and use the pull-off to take their picture. Anyways, enough with my Cades Cove rant. I got there just before 8:00 and wanted to get my pictures in while the light was still good. They were all typical shots that I’m happy with, but I’ll get better shots on a different day.

This next image is definitely a place I will go back to in the fall. I’m happy with the shot as it is, but I’m certain it will look 20 times better with the fall colors. It’s also an area of the park that really doesn’t get busy like Cades Cove does. To get here, you turn down the road that heads to Tremont.

The last picture in this post is Meigs Falls. Its almost kind of sad how many times I’ve past this and never noticed it. It on Little River Road between the Townsend Y and Elkmont. After going to Tremont, I decided that I would have enough time to go to the Sinks. We had scheduled a band practice for later that day, so I wanted to get home in enough time to load up the musical gear and clean up beforehand. On my way to the sinks, I saw this waterfall and even though the light wasn’t the best, I decided to photograph it anyways. I later looked it up and found out it is called Meigs Falls. It’s so far off to the road, it is kind of easy to miss (especially when you are paying attention to the curves in the road). I have a Nature and Travel Field trip on Sunday afternoon, and we are probably going to stop here.

Technorati Tags: Photography, Great Smoky Mountains, Foothills Parkway, Miller Cove, Cades Cove, Tremont, Meigs Falls, The Sinks, Sunrise, Waterfall, Little River Road

I should have posted this last week, but I got kind of busy with the baby day stuff at Laurel, so I didn’t get around to it. In the meantime, I upgraded Wordpress to 2.5, which includes a photo gallery. Previously I had experimented with using a plug-in called WPG2. It worked good when I first installed it, but I think and upgrade to Gallery broke it and I don’t really care that much to go in and see what is going wrong.

As with most of the classes I am taking, this assignment was very informal. It was to pick a subject and photograph it many different ways. I actually picked two subjects, but that was just because they are in the same area. On April 13th, we are taking the youth group hiking. I know the Smoky Mountains the best and I am familiar with Big South Fork, but both of those areas are kind of far away and the Smoky Mountains will be crowded. I know there are hiking trails at Norris Dam State Park, so I loaded up my camera gear to run by Norris and pick up a trail map and hope there was something to photograph. In the southeastern part of the park, there is a Rice Grist Mill and the Crosby Threshing Barn in the same area. I chose these as my subjects. Also that weekend, I had a 40D we had modified to make it sensitive to infrared. I’m still trying to learn infrared. These were my first attempts. It was very cloudy and overcast that day, so the infrared pictures aren’t quite as good as they could have been.

Well, I’ve decided I’m not happy with the Wordpress Gallery, so I’ve removed the pictures and instead will give you a link to it in my gallery.

Technorati Tags: Nature and Travel Photography, photography, photography class, travel, Norris Dam, Norris Dam State Park, Rice Grist Mill, Grist Mill, Crosby Threshing Barn

The Nature shooting assignment is wide open for you to bring in any landscape/nature images. You are also welcome to develop an idea based on the Nature photographers that we discussed.

The first three images you will see are Panoramas that I have created in the past. The first is from the Brown’s cabin in North Carolina, the second is at the Grand Canyon, and the third is from Cataloochee. The next two are also from Cataloochee. The final two are from Norris Dam State Park. Unfortunately, this weekend isn’t the best weekend to do this assignment because of weather, but as you can see from the last two images, sometimes you just have to make do with what you’ve got.

Assignment 4

Technorati Tags: Contemporary Art Photography, photography, contemporary art, photography class, nature, Cataloochee, Norris Dam, Grand Canyon

Honey Creek Trail is probably one of the funnest trails you will encounter in Big South Fork. Yesterday I meet up with Bryan and some others from Brentwood Hills to do Honey Creek. This trail offers a wide variety of things to see and things to do. First off, there are 4 waterfalls along the trail, though being under a level D4 drought at this time, the waterfalls were nonexistent. This trail also offers a few rock caves that are very accessible. There is an overlook which gives you a good view of one of the most violent portions (class IV rapids) of the Cumberland River, but because of the drought it didn’t look all that particularly violent. Also this trail features some of Tennessee’s finest slot canyons. These slot canyons aren’t very big, nor or they all that difficult, especially if you compare them to the slot canyons you’d find in Utah. Tennessee isn’t exactly known for its canyons, so that makes this kind of unique.

The rock caves is one of the other features that make this trail so fun. Some are accessible just by climbing just a few feet, while others a ladder is already in place for you to climb. These caves don’t go underground and aren’t that deep. Most are just single chamber, so you don’t have to worry about getting lost. Several were probably used by the Native American’s as shelter. For example, this picture was taken from Indian Rock House Cave.

A word of warning though, this trail isn’t the best marked trail. The best way to hike this loop is to take the trailhead that is just up the road and end at the parking area. If you look at the elevation profile image above, ignore the distances. My program gives it as linear distance (aka, as the crow flies). The true distance is going to be terrain distance + climbing distance. Around the third mile, you will encounter a sign that says follow creek. This is where you could lose the trail if you aren’t careful. Make sure you don’t go too long without seeing the red trail blazes. This is the most dangerous part of the trail. Not only because you could get lost if you aren’t paying attention, but also because you are hiking along or in the creek. It is very slippery. This time the water was way down, but the last time I can remember the water being up and flowing pretty good. It was a tricky section of the trail to hike. This is definitely a trail you will want to avoid if it has recently rained or if rain is forecasted. You will also run into signs that are kind of ambiguous about where the main trail goes. This trail has a number of spur trails that either require turning around at the destination or rejoining the trail. When you encounter this sign, you want to take the trail that goes up. It is a little more difficult, but affords more scenery.

While most books and websites will tell you the elevation change on this trail is only 500 ft, I am going to give a way different number. This trail has a whole lot of up and down, there isn’t very many “flat” areas on this trail. Consequently, the total elevation gain is somewhere closer to 2500 ft.

The directions on how to get there I have found are usually pretty vague, so the last thing I want to do is give good directions on how to get to Honey Creek from Knoxville or anyplace you find yourself taking I-75. Take I-75 to exit 141. Turn left off the exit and head west on Highway 53. Stay on Highway 53 through Huntsville until it ends at a light at Highway 27. Turn left onto Highway 27 south. After a few miles you will cross over the New River Bridge. A little less than .5 mile from the bridge you will see a sign on the right hand side of the road that says Burnt Mill Bridge River Access 4.1 miles. Follow the signs to Burnt Mill Bridge. These are well marked, much better than trying to give road names. If you look in the guidebooks, some will say this bridge is closed to traffic, while others say it is open but 2 tons is the weight limit. I wasn’t sure if I should risk taking it and it being closed, but I did… And I’m very glad that I did. They have constructed a new bridge, so you can view the old one for its historic value, but pass using the new bridge. A little over 3 miles past the bridge, you will see the road split. At this split, go right. This takes you to the parking area or you can drive it all the way to the end at the overlook mentioned earlier.

Technorati Tags: honey creek, big south fork, slot canyon, indian rock house

This past Saturday was the annual Fall Cookout at Caroline Evan’s house. In the past few years it has been scheduled for either the Georgia or Alabama game, since those rotate between home and away each year. Since the Alabama game was away this year, the cookout was scheduled for the 3rd weekend in October. One thing they like to do is setup a projector and show the game. Anytime you show something outside you are going to have problems with ambient sunlight, but when the game starts at 12:30 and you are trying to show something around that time, there is little you can do to overcome it. Such was the case this year. As time passed and the sun moved west, it got a little bit easier to see.

One thing I noticed this year was the the attendance seemed lower than usual. They were fewer college kids, fewer Laurel members, and also fewer youth group kids. In past years the cookout had been in the afternoon or the evening, so I had usually scheduled a trip to get some hiking in before the cookout. This year, since it was at 12:30, there wasn’t time to head up to the mountains before the cookout. I figured I wouldn’t be able to get any hiking in after the cookout either, but I decided I was going to try and take some pictures with my dSLR. Speaking of my dSLR, towards the ends of the cookout, some of the LYF group kids wanted to take some pictures with it themselves. I was a little nervous, but I figured they would be careful because they knew they were handling something expensive. You can view the rest of my pictures, as well as some of Philip’s, Lydia’s, Connor’s, Alex’s, and Sean’s pictures here.

I hadn’t made any plans to go with anybody else, I was just going to stay in the front country and not go much into the back country. I figured I might have some time to head up to Clingman’s Dome. Technically to get to Clingman’s Dome you have to “hike” half a mile to the tower, so I would be heading into the back country, but not really, since Clingman’s Dome is usually populated by lots of people. After taking some shots at Clingman’s, on my way back I would stop at Morton Overlook for some sunset pictures.

I was a little bit late leaving the cookout, but I thought I should still have time to do what I wanted to do. Sunset on Saturday was going to be right around 7:00. To get to where I wanted to go from the cookout, there were a few options. I could head to Townsend and take 321 through Wear Valley and end up in Pigeon Forge, or I could Turn left at the Townsend Wye and take Little River Road to Sugarlands and head up to Newfound Gap from there. The way I ended up taking was to go out to Chapman Highway and then take Veterans Boulevard to bypass as much of Pigeon Forge as I can and then take the Gatlinburg Bypass to get to Sugarlands and head up to Newfound Gap.

I was wrong about the amount of time I would actually have. I figured there would be a lot of traffic leaving the Smokey Mountains, but I hadn’t expected as many people heading into them, since it was later in the day. It took almost 2 hours from the time I left Caroline’s house until I got up to Morton Overlook. That was about 25 minutes before sunset. Figuring I would have no time to get much of anything if I went up to Clingman’s Dome, I decided to just go ahead and get a spot at Morton Overlook. Morton Overlook is a popular place to photograph sunsets since it looks west. The Chimney Tops are also very prominent when looking out from Morton Overlook. Not only did it take a long time to get up to Newfound Gap, it took a long time to get back down. Traffic was backed up all the way to the Chimney’s picnic area from Gatlinburg. I guess my average speed was 5 miles per hour since it took just about an hour to get from the Chimney’s picnic area to Sugarlands (which is about 5 miles apart). After Sugarlands, I was able to get on the bypass. I got home later than I wanted, but all in all, I got some really good pictures that I am happy with, so it was definitely worth the hassle. You can view the rest of my pictures here.

Technorati Tags: christian student center, laurel church of christ, cookout, smoky mountains, fall colors, chimney tops, morton overlook, sunset, photography

Ok, I promise I hadn’t forgotten about my blog. Sure its been over a month since I last posted, but things have just been really busy. A lot has happened over the last month since I lasted updated and never mind that this hike was done almost 2 months ago…

I did this hike with Matt Troxler and was going to meet up with Bryan and a group from Brentwood Hills. It is a pretty basic Big South Fork hike. What I mean by that is that you start out by losing elevation and at the end you gain that elevation again. You will see lots of rock formations along the way.

Since Matt and I ended up going at a faster pace, we ended up getting to see a few things that the rest of the group missed out on. As we were about to cross Laurel Fork for about the 9th or 10th time, I heard something come romping through the trees. I also vaguely made it out to be a boar, which Matt saw. A little later on, there was a nice snake just off the trail. The last little unique thing I saw along the way was a tree that a beaver had been working on.

Technorati Tags: hiking, big south fork, sawmill, laurel fork

You may have seen in Laurel’s Family News that on June 2^nd, there is a 20 mile bike ride. We will be meeting at the church at 8:45 am. A few of us are going to do a test ride of the route this Saturday, the 12^th. We will be meeting at Laurel at 8:45 am. This Saturday’s ride probably be somewhat unorganized because the point is to organize the June 2^nd ride. If you want to ride but don’t have a bike, let me know. I’ve got a couple of extra bikes. This will be good practice if you want to do the Virginia Creeper on August 4th.

Technorati Tags: bike, laurel church of christ, virginia creeper

It’s been a while since I last did a trail report, so here we go. On Saturday I meet up with Bryan and a couple of other folks from Brentwood Hills to stomp around in Savage Gulf State Park. It’s kind of far away considering we have large areas that are much closer (Great Smokey Mountains and Big South Fork). Saturday also saw storms for a good part of the day in East Tennessee. Savage Gulf had gotten a little bit of rain on Friday night, but was clear on Saturday. The drive there was pretty slow going because the rain was so heavy all the way to Cookeville. As I headed south from Cookeville, it started to lighten up some. The meeting time was 12:30 Central. I figured I might show up first and have some time to spare, so I brought along the current book I am reading, Under the Banner of Heaven. After about 45 minutes, the rest showed up and we got on the trail at 12:55 Central. I remember this because at the trailhead, we had to sign in to register as a day hiker.

After being in the trail for a couple of minutes, you will encounter this sign. Most often when I am backpacking, all the hiking to the campsite is done at night using a headlamp. In Savage Gulf, this isn’t an option. A couple of friends have even said that the rangers will do a check to make sure nobody is out on the trail when it gets dark. One said this was the only place he’s ever been asked to see his permit when he was in the back country. A few of the things that I noticed where that there were signs almost everywhere. Don’t cut down trees. Don’t pick the flowers or any other plant. No bikes. Only two people on the suspension bridge. No running or jumping on the suspension bridge. Old moonshine still site, no camping. Every intersection of a trail was marked by at least 2 signs, leaving no doubt on which way to go. The trails were also blazed so that you can practically see the next 2-3 blazes from your current blaze. The trail is really well defined too. There shouldn’t be any excuse for a person getting lost based on all the precautions we observed.

Eventually you’ll come to an intersection in the trail where you can go left or right. Left will take you to the Falls and the South Rim Trail and right will take you to the North Rim Trail. I suggested that we go Right. This way we hit the highlights of the hike near the end. For the most part, this trail is fairly flat because you stay on the plateau and are hiking to the rim. The day loop trail is listed at 4.2 miles, but it will be closer to 5 miles if you take the extra trails that we took. The first extra trail we took was the Savage Falls Overlook. It’s like a tenth of a mile of the Day Loop Trail. As the sign warns, there is no access into the gorge from this trail. The second additional trail we took was to the falls. Its about .3 miles off the Day Loop trail. Getting to the falls is probably the most strenuous part of this hike. By all standards though, it is an easy hike to the falls. My GPS isn’t 100% accurate, but you can see for the most part, your elevation stays within 100 ft zone.

Technorati Tags: savage gulf, savage falls, hiking, savage day loop, hike

If you haven’t already heard by now, a good number of us are planning on hiking the Trillium Gap Trail this Saturday (4/14). Plan for this taking up all of your day on Saturday. The Fuller’s will be meeting people at Laurel’s parking lot and leaving at 8:00 AM. Since a good number of us will already be near Gatlinburg, we plan on meeting up with them at the Rainbow Falls trail head around 9:00. There will be two different groups on this hike to suite different skill/fitness levels.

One group will be going at a slow pace looking at wildflowers. Grotto Falls will be probably be the turn around for this group. The distance of this hike is 3.6 miles one way (with the option of 1.4 miles on the way back if one person picks up the van and drives to an alternate trail head). About 1000 feet in elevation is gained over the 3.6 miles. This will allow ample time for the wildflower lookers to identify flowers along the trail while the other group is hiking to the summit.

The second group will be hiking to the top of Mt LeConte. This is a VERY STRENUOUS hike. We will be returning via the Rainbow Falls Trail. Total distance of the hike is 15.3 miles with the possibility of extra miles if you want to go to the Cliff Tops, High Top, or Myrtle Point peaks. Over 4000 feet in elevation is gained from the trail head to the LeConte Lodge.

Regardless of what group you choose to go with, there are a few things you need to have. Water is essential; 1 liter minimum, 2 liters recommended. You also need to pack a lunch, since everybody will probably still be on the trail come lunch time. Don’t use this trip to break in new shoes! If you have severe allergies and are likely to go into anaphylactic shock if stung, let someone else know if you have epinephrine with you. If you have asthma, remember to bring you’re inhaler. The weather should be nice on Saturday, but I recommend always having a poncho or packable rain jacket with you just in case the weather turns. Finally, I recommend a headlamp/flashlight too. There should be enough daylight that it won’t be necessary, but you never know. Always better to have it and not need it then to not have it and need it. A camera is also a nice thing to have.

The return time will largely depend on the group hiking all the way up to the top of LeConte; unless all the people that rode the van just do the wildflower hike to Grotto Falls. I imagine that the people that hike to the top of LeConte would be returning to the Rainbow Falls trail head parking lot no later than 5:00. If time is a concern for you, but you still want to do just the wildflower hike, you can always drive yourself. (Parking at the Rainbow Falls trail head, will probably fill up fast). To get to the trail head, take US 441 (Chapman Highway) to Gatlinburg. Turn left at traffic light #8 (Airport Road). (While I don’t imagine the traffic will be too bad in Gatlinburg, they are doing construction around that light, so I would probably come in via the Gatlinburg Bypass, so you would turn right at traffic light #8.) Just over half a mile, the road comes to a 3 way intersection. You want to stay to rightmost of the three roads. The parking for Rainbow Falls is pretty well marked about 2.7 miles from that funky intersection.

Let me know if you want to go. If you do want to go, let me know if you want to meet at the church or at the trail head and which group (wildflower or summit) you want to be a part of. If you’ve got any other questions, go ahead and ask.

Technorati Tags: hiking, mount leconte, trillium gap, rainbow falls

Well with spring weather now in full force, it was time to get out of biking in my basement on the trainer and onto the road/trails. After tuning up my mountain bike, I wanted to go check out Third Creek Greenway since I know they’ve been working on it for the past few months. It definitely has a lot of potential. Previously, there were trees everywhere and you really couldn’t see the creek in some places. Now that they’ve cleared it and done some work on the creek flow, it looks better. You can even see Laurel from the trail, which you couldn’t previously.

Technorati Tags: biking, laurel church of christ, third creek greenway, knoxville tn

This past weekend Bryan came up with the Brentwood Hills Church of Christ’s Young Professionals Group. They were having a retreat in Gatlinburg. Of course this meant that a hike was definitely in order. I had suggested that we do a shuttle hike from Elkmont to Treemont. In terms of difficulty its pretty easy, so it would open up the hike to more people. As of Saturday morning, we really hadn’t settled on a hike yet. He had suggested going up Mount LeConte via Rainbow Falls and go down the Bull Head trail. In terms of difficulty, it is a very difficult hike and definitely shouldn’t be attempted by novices. He didn’t know how many people would come and they wouldn’t have transportation, so I took one of the vans.

Well it turns out it was only me, Jon, Bryan, and another guy from Brentwood Hills named Justin. It turns out we didn’t need the van at all, but better safe then sorry. We ended up deciding to the Mount LeConte hike. Bryan had checked in with the ranger to see what conditions were like near the top of LeConte. The Ranger said conditions were clear and that crampons weren’t necessary to get up LeConte. Deep down inside, I knew better. The ranger was right though… I did make it up LeConte without crampons.

After meeting up with Bryan and Justin, we end up leaving the hotel just after noon. We got to the trail head around 2:15 and started our trek up Rainbow Falls. (Note to self… never start up LeConte any later the 9:00.) Shortly after starting the trail, it goes along side a creek. As you can, the creek was mostly frozen over. There were lots of really cool places like that along the trail.

After about an hour and half, we arrived at Rainbow Falls. As you can see in the picture above, at the foot of the falls is a huge ice pile. That picture really doesn’t do it justice. If you’ve been to Rainbow Falls and you know how high that rock wall is, you’ll have an idea of how tall that ice was. For those that haven’t been, that ice pile was about 25 feet high. Also, after arriving to Rainbow Falls, Jon knew his back was hurting him and it would probably slow him down from reaching the top, so he went back to the van while the rest of us continued on.

It wasn’t long past Rainbow Falls we started to see snow on the trail. This was my first hunch that perhaps things were gonna get worse and we should all just turn around right now. The snow wasn’t so deep, that it hampered much, but were it is cold enough for the snow to stick, it is also cold enough to freeze over any water that the trail my pass over.

There would be almost 10 places where we would encounter ice. In some places, it would be a frozen stream we would have to cross, in other places we would have to go up or down the mountain off trail to get around the ice patch. A number of them didn’t leave much room for error. If you fell, you’d probably drop 80 feet of the mountain. Surprisingly, we only had one person fall and that was on one of the safer ice patches like what is pictured above.

About 4:00 we arrived at the junction of Rainbow Falls and The Bull Head. We knew we didn’t have much time left, so we opted not to climb the remaining 400 feet to the summit and go down The Bull Head. The hope was that since The Bull Head gets more exposure to the sun, so there would be less ice. That just wouldn’t be the case. There just wasn’t a way around the ice on the Bull Head. In a couple of places the only way to cross was to glissade across. Also about this time, my right leg started to cramp up and my camelbak hose had frozen over. Note to self… always clear the water out of the camelback hose when the temperature is below freezing.

About this time, the will to get off the mountain and back to the heated van took over. All of us sucked up any pain we had pushed forward. About 5:40 we arrived at The Pulpit. I was pretty physically and mentally drained when we arrived there. I think we took about a 10 minute break there. I was so exhausted, I didn’t feel like getting pictures around The Pulpit. As it was starting to get dark, we got our lights and pressed on. About 6:45 or so, we arrived back at the van.

The past few days are the sorest I can ever remember a hike leaving me. Sunday, it hurt just to walk around. I still had sore legs on Monday and Tuesday as well. By Wednesday, most of the soreness had gone away and I could run again.

BTW: If you want to know the password for the previous post, just request it via email or instant messenger. I’ve just got it protected because I don’t want search engines to index that post.

This weekend, I headed over to Cataloochee with Michele. Cataloochee is an area in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park that I haven’t explored much of. From what I saw, I would agree that the colors on the North Carolina side of the park were better than in the Tennessee side of the park. We started out by hiking Caldwell Fork and the Boogerman trail. After we finished hiking, we hung out some in Cataloochee Valley and waited for the elk to come out.

Last week, me and two other US citizens from our lab went to Washington, D.C. to do a URPR demo showcasing our work in Automatic Asset Monitoring, Robotics for Security, and with a Large Chamber Scanning Electron Microscope. We weren’t expecting it to be such a big deal. On Thursday, the director of NNSA came by to see what we were doing. Several high level DOE people also came by to see what it was about. Overall, everyone was pleased with what we are doing, so it was a successful trip.

After arriving home late on Friday, I went to bed so I could leave early to head to the Brown’s cabin in North Carolina. I showed up just in time to help stack firewood. After that was done, we went to pick up walnuts that had fallen off the tree. By the time we had finished, the bed of the truck was almost three quarters full of walnuts. After dumping them at the cabin and eating lunch, we went down to the golf course Gary’s dad had designed to go fishing in the ponds there. Eddy and I were the only ones that caught a fish, though Michael’s pole did get a bite while he was away, but that fish ended up getting away. Zach eventually got impatient and had to use a net so he could say he caught a fish. We threw all the fish back, so don’t ask how the trout tasted.

I left Sunday morning, just in time to arrive for worship at Laurel. After worship Hoss had asked if I was available to drive the van to Crossville later in the afternoon to take the kids to an area wide. The plan was to meet at the church at 3:30. About 3:00, I get a call from Hoss. He remembered the times were Central and not eastern, so we wouldn’t be getting back to Knoxville until after 10:00. We tried to come up with a Plan B. I suggested we go up to Look Rock. He had thought of going to World’s Fair Park. The kids ultimately decided on going to Look Rock. It was a great day to go yesterday. The visibility was the best I’ve seen it (100+ miles). The drive up was real pretty too. The leaves weren’t quite at peak, but there was enough colors that they will probably peak next week.

I had promised a report on the Rocky Top hike, so I guess I need to get around to doing that pretty soon before I forget some stuff. Well this has been sitting in drafts for a while, so tonight I decided to finish it and post it.

I had planned two routes, one was a really long route (~16.4 miles) and the other was slightly shorter (~12.1 miles). There were 6 of us that went hiking. David R, Charles G, Alex W, Sheridan D, Meredith M, and I. We parked our cars at the Cades Cove picnic area since the trailhead to Anthony Creek is located there. At the trailhead, we ran into some backpackers that had just come down and they warned us about yellow jackets being active on the trail about 2 miles in. We thanked them for that information that would turn out to be pretty useful. After only about 10 minutes on the trail, we had our first wildlife encounter. It was a whitetail deer. Encountering deer on the trail isn’t really all that rare, but it was a sign of other things to come. Shortly (and by shortly, I mean just around the next turn) before we reached the Russell Field Trail junction, it became pretty apparent that we would be having another Team E and Team C issue that could arise. We spit into two groups, David and Charles would go together, and the rest of us would be another group. At each trail intersection we would meet up. I hadn’t expected to see David and Charles again until the intersection of Anthony Creek and Bote Mountain, but yellow jackets would somewhat thwart them a little bit. At about 2 miles from the trailhead, David and Charles were stopped. They had encountered the first of five yellow jacket nests we would encounter that day.

At the Bote Mountain intersection, we agreed to meet back up with David and Charles at the Spence Field shelter. On the way up to Spence Field it started raining on us. I have learned its always best to have a packable rain jacket in your pack for those unexpected rain showers. The forecast for the day had called for rain; being in the mountains further increased the probability that we would be getting wet. Getting wet is indeed what we did. We ate lunch at Spence Field shelter and headed for Rocky Top. About a half mile from the summit, we decided to turn back for many different reasons. Mainly, I knew the view was not going to be impressive at all because of all the clouds. On the way down, Meredith had her first encounter with a bear. This was also at the same place that Alex had stopped to go off the trail to answer nature’s call. I didn’t see the bear, so I didn’t know which direction it went, but with Alex off the trail, I knew we had to get him back onto the trail. We called out to him to make sure he knew that a bear was in the area. This must have scared the bear away, because he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. On the way back down Anthony Creek the yellow jackets were still active, but I think everybody managed to make it without getting stung.