The Appalachian Trail Hike—Finally!—Sunday!

Sunday

We hit the trail again Sunday morning. However, we were on our way to Cades Cove, so we left the AT to walk a different trail. The Russell Field Trail was ALL downhill. Every last bit of it! The AT was up on a mountain ridge, and Cades Cove is a valley. On this day, I finally wasn’t the slowest hiker! Tyler was having some knee trouble, so the down hills were tougher on him. I wasn’t too far ahead of him, as I was taking it a bit slow because of the copious amounts of rocks and unsteady terrain. Falling down while pregnant probably isn’t good, but falling down while pregnant with twenty pounds on your back would be worse!

While the day-hikers we met weren’t as fun to chat with as the AT folks, the trail was absolutely gorgeous! We had about 6 downhill miles to hike to reach Cades Cove. We crossed numerous streams and saw so many beautiful spots! I took a ton of pictures and here are some. If you wanna see 'em big, you know the drill...click on the picture!

My feet were rather sore when we reached this spot, so I could hardly wait to take my shoes off to put my feet in the cold water. This water was cold. Ice cold. I could only put my feet in for a few seconds at a time! But it sure felt good! Of course, Archie fell all the way in with shoes on, so he was absolutely soaked!

I thought this looked like such a cool spot! It is very deep-jungle-y in appearance. We look like we should be swinging on a vine at any moment!


Here are Dawn and Tyler on one of those cool log-bridges crossing a stream. If you're ever in the Cades Cove area, the Russel Field Trail is a gorgeous trail to hike for a day-hike! It's better going downhill, though!

We saw a really cool hollowed-out tree. Archie was too scared to get his picture taken while inside of it. So I volunteered! I was a tad worried about something yucky that might be living in there, but I guess since I lived to tell the tale, all things yucky stayed away from me!

Here is a picture Tyler took of the same tree—through it!



Here is my artsy picture…Hopefully you can see it well enough—We kept seeing this all along this particular trail...loads of beautiful butterflies eating sh...well you know...poop! It kind of makes a statement if you think about it hard enough.


I just love this picture of Phillip and Archie!


Finally, our destination, a shower, and the car! Only 1.6 more miles to go!

We made it!! Hurray! We made it to our car. Now to load up and drive back to Tyler’s jeep at Fontana Dam. The only obstacle now was Cades Cove itself. Apparently Sundays (or Memorial Weekend) make for horrible, horrible crowds at Cades Cove. It took us a few hours to travel thirty miles. We probably could’ve hiked it quicker! It was a bit frustrating, especially for a car-load of people who hadn’t showered in a few days and were trail-yucky! Plus there was this motorcycle rally going on there, so there were thousands of motorcycles all over the place, zipping around the curves and being obnoxious. Those whippersnappers! (Who's old now???) Dawn took a picture of one that was tail-gaiting me. It’s hard to be intimidated by a motorcycle. He accomplished nothing. Not only was I in a rental car, but also if he were man enough to bump me, I certainly wouldn’t be any worse for the wear. A Dodge Charger vs. some motorcycle…hmmm… a recipe for disaster, perhaps...but for whom??? Not me, certainly!

We ate dinner in some small town somewhere. We were hoping for a steak house, but for some reason, folks in small towns don’t have many of those along the small highways between the Smokeys and Mobile. So after much, much searching, we found something that would work and had a nice dinner together.

We had a fantastic trip! Tyler and Dawn did such a great job planning our hikes. We all truly enjoyed ourselves. I have one more post about things we learned on the Appalachian Trail coming up. Then tons of stuff about what we’ve been doing around here lately.