52 Hikes Challenge (2021)

 

I decided to do a 52 Hike Challenge last year as a way to be consistent with my hiking. Since I organize a weekly hiking group, I figured it wouldn't be too hard to meet that goal. Even if we paused for the summer, I was pretty sure we would still make 52 hikes.

Well we did! As seen in my photo blocks, we actually did 81 hikes. We kicked off the year with our annual New Year's Hike. Then our hiking group completed 39 hikes in our local area. On average we hiked 2.5 miles on these hikes, but we also did several hikes that were five miles long.

Our family took a camping trip out west in March and April where we hiked in Colorado, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Arkansas. We completed 22 hikes as a family. The hardest for us was a 7-mile day in Yosemite where we made it to the top of Vernal Falls.

We visited 6 National Parks, 4 National Monuments, 7 State Parks, and made it to the Pacific Ocean – a first for our boys. Among other things, we experienced snow and incredibly big trees in the northwest, hot temps in Death Valley, and the lowest point in America at Badwater Basin.

Our camping friends did 7 hikes with us. I'm including our 11-mile bike ride around Cades Cove as a "hike" since it was in a National Park and we were experiencing nature firsthand, just a little faster!

I did two hiking trips with girlfriends. Jack and Daniel completed a five-mile hike with cub scouts. Isaac did his first 5-mile hike-and-bike to Edwards Point. We also did several hikes with local friends who aren't a part of our hiking group.

In October our hiking group did a corn maze – a first for my boys, and then one of our final outings for the year was actually ice skating, but I'm counting since it's my blog!

We ended the year with a final National Park hike in the Great Smoky Mountains with a quick hike to Laurel Falls.

 

I was trying to track my mileage and hikes for the year on Instagram, but my record shows that I completed 65 hikes with 177.5 miles for the year. I'd wager I hiked closer to 200. It was a good year for hiking. I'm looking forward to whatever hikes are in store for 2022!

 

Weekly Hike: Foster Falls

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We had a fun afternoon at Foster Falls with some new friends in our hiking group. The kids found a huge crawdad and a common water snake and lots of fish. The waterfall was just a trickle, but we still enjoyed the refreshing pool and some of the bigger kids jumped, dove, and flipped off the side into the water. This is my 45th hike of the year (45/52) with one mile round trip bringing me to 131 miles hiked.

Weekly Hike: Bee Branch

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We kicked off our weekend with a hike with our small group. It’s always sweet to see kids bond on the trail, whether they are two or sixteen or somewhere in between. The littlest guy in our group was very concerned when the older boys started climbing the rock walls we came across. He kept saying that the rocks would fall down and we would die 🤣 This is my 44th hike for the year (44/52) and two miles walked bringing me to to 130 miles on the trails in 2021. 

Weekly Hike: Big Soddy Gulf

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This week’s Wednesday hike took us to Big Soddy Gulf. I’m not sure how it happened, but summer time is almost over and this is our first time to make it to this swimming hole this summer! It was a short hike — 0.5 miles round trip, but it was our 42nd hike for the year (42/52) bringing us to to 124 miles on the trails in 2021! 

Weekly Hike: Cane Creek Cascades

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We bumped our weekly hike to Tuesday to celebrate a friend’s birthday today. It was a perfect day to go swim at the Cane Creek Cascades in Fall Creek Falls State Park. It made up for our 4-mile waterfall hike last week that was missing the water!

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After Cane Creek Falls, a few of us couldn’t resist stopping at the George Swimming Hole before leaving the park. Some of the kids jumped off the rocks there. It was a perfect summer day. 

This was my 41st hike for 2021 (41/52). We might have done 0.5 miles down to the swimming holes, bringing me to 123.5 miles hiked this year. 

 

Weekly Hikes: Ritchie Hollow to Blowing Falls

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We took a small portion of our hiking group to do a waterfall hike for our weekly hike. It was four miles round trip, with a big portion uphill to the actual waterfall. 

It was hot and sticky, and the waterfall I promised as the reward turned out to be basically dry – not even a real pool at the bottom. It was disappointing. But the ones that stuck it out, finished the hike. It wasn’t our best hike. It was miserable at times. But, we still completed what we set out to do. Life is kind of like that. It isn’t always amazing. Sometimes it’s hard and the rewards are meh. 

Our family motto of sorts is: We can do hard things. When hikes (or life) gets hard, I remind the boys and myself of this motto. Afterward we went out for cold drinks and donuts at Dunkin, because sometimes you need a pick me up after a disappointing and hard experience. 

This was my 40th hike for 2021 (40/52). We completed 4 hot, sticky, miserable miles bringing me to 123 miles hiked this year. 

Weekly Hike: Blue Hole

Blue skies and puffy white clouds welcomed us for our weekly hike – the first official one of our summer break. The temperatures were finally hot enough so we hit up a local swimming hole and spent the afternoon swimming and playing. It is one of our favorite spots.    

 

It seems like snakes are being seen on the regular this year, at least it seems more often that previous years. Several people warned us about possible snakes on the trail. We did end up seeing one snake, but it was harmless. Our nature app said it was the non-venomous,semi-aquatic Queen Snake. We had all heard of a King Snake but not a Queen snake. 

This was my 39th hike for 2021 (39/52). We did about 1 mile working our way up the creek bringing me to 119 miles hiked this year. 

Camping at Chilhowee

We spent the weekend camping with some of our homeschool friends at Chilhoweee. This is one of our favorite camping spots. The weather was just about perfect, though we did have a big rain storm roll in Saturday night while we sat around the campfire. 

This led to some frantic packing up and a couple of the families deciding to chunk their tents in their cars and leave early. Since we had our camper we enjoyed the rain from the comfort of our cozy beds.

Friday night the kids enjoyed playing with their friends. An impromptu game of kickball between campsites and bike rides followed by s’mores were on the agenda —we missed an evening swim due to our later arrival. 

Saturday started with coffee and hot breakfast with the plan to hike as a group to Benton Falls. While I was making our bacon, I had the misfortune of dumping an entire pan of bacon grease on myself. 

Thankfully I reacted quickly and was able to strip off my clothes and hop in our camper shower immediately. My frantic screams brought several people running to my aid. Friends kept an eye on our kids while Daniel helped me get cleaned up and medicated. 

We called several people with medical backgrounds for advice and decided we could wait on rushing to see a doctor. One of my friends came and prayed over me and I started to feel better while she prayed. The worst of my burns is on my thigh with some blistering and my hand was scalded as well though thankfully it didn't blister and I have full mobility. 

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We decided Daniel and the boys should go on the group hike while I sat in the camper and let the Tylenol kick in. My friends left me with a bottle of wine and a book. By the time they got back my pain was pretty much gone –– I just felt really stiff where I had been burned. 

At that point I was able to go down to the lake to watch the boys swim and play with their friends. I was even able to do the short hike back to camp. I’m glad we decided to stick around since I would just be on the couch if we had gone home. 

We enjoyed a lovely campfire. One of the families brought adult-only brownies (they had rum in them). When combined with marshmallow and graham cracker to make a s’more, these brownies were divine. 

Then came the rain and camp broke up. We woke up this morning to overcast skies but no rain. The boys had fun playing a few more games before we finished packing up and headed home. 

 

Even when things go wrong, camping is always a good idea. We may have quite a bit of experience camping but sometimes things just go wrong. We can chose to give up and go home or we can assess the situation, eat the bacon anyway and stay, and hope things get better.

I am counting my blessings that the grease didn’t get dumped on either of the kids and that it didn’t inadvertently cause a grease fire in our camper. It might have ruined my morning but there is always a silver lining that can be found.