I drove over to Maryville after getting off of shift. As soon as I got there, it was obvious that the Cicada were here. We ate lunch at the ponderosa and headed to the trail.
Mom dropped us off after prepositioning the van. We got on the trail about 2:00pm. Dad must have felt sorry for me this time because he didn't try to kill me. The trails were relatively easy and we spent a bit of time just enjoying the different flowers and plant life that were out at this time of year. We have had a wonderful year for flowers and you see them everywhere.
We hiked Ace Gap trail to Beard Cane trail and stopped at campsite #3. We got in around 6.1 miles. Campsite #3 is a beautiful campsite along the river. It was a quite night with lighting bugs putting on a show. The campers before us had built quite a chimney for a camp ring. We had to adjust it a little just to keep a fire going that you could see above the ring. We ended up lowering it just to keep a fire going with the usual damp wood of the Smokey's.
We got on the trail around 9:00am the next morning following Beard Cane trail to Hatcher Mountain. This was a mild 700 ft climb. The weather and scenery were both really nice. We hiked through an area that they had done a controlled burn. This is where we caught site of the rare "Killer Tree". Had to take a picture of that. From Hatcher Mountain we took Little Bottoms trail to Abrams creek for lunch. After lunch Dad was a little rough on me as we climbed up and down 250 ft on Little Bottoms to Cooper Road trail. Yes Steve, the knats were still there from our last hike. We finished at Abrams Creek campground about 11 miles for today.
Mom had already hit the strawberry fields and I was forced to take home a couple of boxes of fresh berries.
Pictures
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