Day 62 - Wednesday, May 12, 2021

We were up at 6 am and it wasn’t raining yet but the forecast is for rain till around 10 am so we will be taking our time getting to the trail head. That’s the beauty of slack packing 😉. 

We are also moving out of the Airbnb and we will be camping at the Dividing Ridge campground tonight and tomorrow in Hampton, Tennessee. This is a campground run by the Dividing Ridge Church and is just for AT hikers. It is run strictly  on donations from hikers and is supported by outside vendors who donate food and supplies. It will be interesting to see what the overall ambiance will be hanging just with hikers and hearing some of their stories. 

Today we are continuing our hiking in the Cherokee National Forest from Wilbur Dam Road (433.0 NoBo) to Dennis Cove Road, USFS 50 (420.0 NoBo) for a total of 13.0 miles. 

We started hiking at 10:25 am in a nuisance rain. The forecast is for rain to stop within the hour but the radar is saying otherwise... oh well we have to get going... 












Watauga Dam.



Looking down the gorge from Watauga Dam.





Piezometers in Watauga Dam to monitor slope/embankment movement.



Passing by the Shook Branch Recreation Area. 




Mountain Laurel is blooming.



This plant is appearing all throughout the forest floor. Does anyone know what it is as I have not seen it before? All I know is that it is not edible 🤢.




Cloud ceiling was low in the morning. 



Today we met “Dart” who left from Springer on April 1st and is from Texas. Yesterday he hiked to 1am. We passed 52 thru-hikers today with again the vast majority were under 30. 












Timber bridge over Laurel Creek.



We came upon these trail fairy’s. 



Campsite at Laurel Fork Shelter.




More rhododendron blooming.... amazing!





The trail runs right along the edge of the steam on the rocks. This would be underwater and impassable during the spring or after a large rain event.










Laurel Falls. These pictures do not serve the magnitude of the falls justice as they are over 60 feet high.
 











The climb from the falls was more difficult than the 2000 foot vertical climb we did earlier in the day. 









More Mountain Laurel in bloom... spectacular!





We finished hiking at 5:30 pm under partly sunny skies. It didn’t stop raining until almost 2 pm and the sun came out at 4 pm. The weather was not our friend today. 

We ended up not going to the campsite as we were wet and chilled to the bone - so we got a hotel room in Johnson City, TN so we could take a hot shower and dry things out. 

The next two days is calling for sunny skies with little chance of rain. We may try to make it to a campground... or not 🙄. We have the “Platinum Slack Packing  Package, remember?

Till next time.... Happy Hiking  🥾 

😋


“You gotta have passion for life and passion for something that you're going to get up and do,".    

                                Meredith “Sunny” Eberhart  

Comments

  1. Joe ArcuriJuly 14, 2021 at 8:44 PM

    Try downloading an app called “PictureThis”. You point your phone at a plant, snap a photo and it will tell you the name of the plant and everything about it.

    ReplyDelete

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