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.
Showing posts with label homeschool life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homeschool life. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Weekly Hike: Foster Falls
Wednesday, July 28, 2021
Weekly Hike: Big Soddy Gulf
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!
Tuesday, July 06, 2021
Weekly Hike: Cane Creek Cascades
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!
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.
Thursday, July 01, 2021
Weekly Hikes: Ritchie Hollow to Blowing Falls
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.
Thursday, June 24, 2021
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.
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
Weekly Hike: Little Soddy Trailhead (Deep Creek)
The Cumberland Trail is a grassroots trail maintained by volunteers that spans some 300 miles from Cumberland Gap in Kentucky to its southern terminus at the Signal Point Military Park on Signal Mountain. Currently there are 210 miles of the trail that are open and complete with more than 50 trailheads and 28 sections.
It's a trail that I have been pursuing on and off for the last 18 years. Daniel and I did several sections in the northern part of the state when we were first married and living in Cookeville. I believe the first time we came across the Cumberland Trail was during our first visit to Cumberland Mountain State Park just east of Cookeville. We eventually went on to explore part of the Obed River, the Crab Orchard segment, and the Laurel-Snow Wilderness (all of this happened before blogging and social media).
When we first moved to Signal Mountain I noticed a sign for the CT at Signal Point, just two miles from our house. Over the last seven years we have been chipping away at portions of the southern-most sections, a few miles at a time.
We have explored most of the trails in the Tennessee River Gorge Section including Signal Point Edwards Point (I may have a little bit of bias toward the Signal Mountain trails over all the others!), and the Pot Point Loop (lower section). I have been told a new section recently opened up on our mountain and intend to check it out soon. We have done a decent amount of the trails in the North Chickamauga Creek Section over on Mowbray Mountain including Montlake Road to Stevenson Branch (Ladies Backpacking Trip) and shorter portions to Strip Mine Falls and the Hodgekin Loop with the kids.
The Three Gorges Segment has some of my favorite scenery. The Mowbray Pike Trailhead has some great waterfalls and rock formations that are lovely for climbing and bouldering. It is one of our family's favorite spots.
In the Possum Creek Gorge section
we have hiked from Little Heiss Mountain down to Little Possum Creek.
This was one of our longer hikes with kids (five miles and some lessons
learned for our hiking group!).The kids and I have also hiked a part of the pocket wilderness in the Laurel-Snow section with our hiking group and a couple of years ago the boys and I did part of the Piney River section.
Today we did a new section the northern end of the Mowbray Pike trail (Three Gorges Segment) starting at the Little Soddy Trailhead at Hotwater and Sluder. It has a much smaller parking lot and is less maintained, but lovely none-the-less. We did a quick out and back (3 miles total). The kids loved exploring the rocky streams that are typical for this area of the country. How blessed are we that we have so many well-maintained trails on every mountain in the vicinity!
The kids had a blast
skipping stones. All of the stones were incredibly flat and would easily
skip 3-5 times. The kids also took a dip in one of the pools they
found. It was only 70* out, but they did not care a lick! They caught a
crawdad (crawfish/crayfish depending on where you live), a lizard, and
noticed lots of mountain laurel, a Pharoah cicada (live) and the shells
of many cicadas that had already shed. It was a fun day! This will be a good
spot to revisit for swimming in the hot months ahead.
All of these section hikes we have completed are short, not full sections, but the little legs that go on hikes with us have covered a lot of ground on the Cumberland Trail. Some day I hope to complete all of the sections. Maybe my boys will as well.
If you are looking for a new trail to try, you really can't go wrong with a segment of the Cumberland Trail!
This was my 38th hike for 2021 (38/52). We did 3 miles bringing me to 118 miles hiked this year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Word for the Year: Reframe
For fifteen years now, I have been starting my year with intention. Last year I hoped to find contentment in my life, and I believe I did. T...
-
{via} Since Daniel typically works a four-day work week, Thursdays are Daniel's Friday. Over the last couple of weeks he has been worki... -
This post is going to be fairly personal. I wanted to share what it was like to be pregnant after going through a miscarriage and then dea... -
About 30 minutes north of where my aunt and uncle live is the town of Gravenhurst on Lake Muskoka. When my mom was younger she lived ...