Rainbow Falls, Gorges State Park

North Carolina Travelog #26
Gorges State Park, NC - Sat, 23 Sep 2023. 12pm

We're hiking the Rainbow Falls Trail at Gorges State Park in North Carolina. It's yet-another of the seemingly countless waterfall trails that are within ~30 minutes of driving from our home-away-from-home in Brevard, NC. Better yet, this isn't just another waterfall trail; it will take us to three waterfalls starting with Rainbow Falls.

The trail starts out easy. It's wide and it's downhill. Of course, down on the way in means up on the way home. It's like buying on a credit card; you enjoy it now but have to pay later. At least there's a lot to enjoy!



After bottoming out in the canyon the trail starts upstream— and uphill— to Rainbow Falls.

Rainbow Falls is huge. It's not as tall as the many tiers of Whitewater Falls added together but it does fall over 100 feet in pretty much one big drop.

One first catches a glimpse of the falls when the trail rounds a bend and offers a narrow lookout point. That's where I captured the photo shown above. As the photo shows there's also a wide open viewing platform closer to the falls and down a bit (right edge of the photo). From near that lookout there's also a obvious footpath to get down to the pool at the bottom of the falls.

Guess where I went.



Yes, I scrambled down the use trail to the bottom then rock-hopped partway across.

As you can see with the photo above, I also used my backcountry camera monopod to stabilize pictures taken with a neutral density filter.

After a fair bit of rock-hopping and scrambling I headed back up the hill to rejoin the main trail. It turns out I had a spy along with me for that scrambling and rock-hopping.



I've mentioned a few times this week that the AllTrails app has been coming in really useful. On this trek I somewhat inadvertently engaged the tracking feature. It builds a trace of where I've actually hiked, along with a total distance and an elevation profile. The trace, though, makes it look like I've wandered around in a stupor. It's even loopier than one of those Family Circus comics showing Billy walking through the neighborhood. It's like I'm drunk. Drunk on beauty!

In beauty I walk. Even if some dumb app thinks I'm walking in circles. 😂

War in Israel

On Saturday Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, launched significant attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets. They fired hundreds if not thousands of rockets while soldiers attacked several military bases. In the initial round of the attack more than 100 900 Israelis were killed, hundreds more wounded, and many over 100 hostages were taken— both military personnel and civilians mostly civilians, whom Hamas deliberately slaughtered. As fighting continued Saturday and into its second day on Sunday, Israel declared war.

One of the first questions people ask is, "What started this war?" Well, there are different answers one could give to that depending on whether one looks back 2 years, 20 years, 75 years (specifically to 1948), or 1,000 years. Oddly Hamas itself gave an answer that looked back a mere few days: Israelis had defiled the very holy Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. That's what news headlines on Saturday morning repeated.

Let me continue, for the moment, with the argument that the attacks were in response to damaging a holy site. That prompts two questions: 1) You expect me to believe that? An attack of this magnitude clearly was months in the planning. There's no way it was cooked up in two days in response. 2) How was the holy site defiled? A bit of digging beneath the headlines on Saturday morning revealed this ruse for what it is. The defilement was that a few Israelis prayed in the temple. Obviously they were being provocative by doing that but all they did was pray. Though that's obviously not the true cause of Hamas's acts of war on Israel, just think about whether any reasonable person would want to support the side that presents as its justification for war, "Someone prayed to the wrong god, so we killed over 100 900 people and took hostages."

Now, anyone who wasn't proverbially born yesterday, or at least anyone who can grasp that history goes back more than about a week, will spot that Hamas's attack occurred on nearly the 50th anniversary (50 years plus 1 day) of the Yom Kippur War. Likely that's what Hamas was aligning the timing of its attack to.

As for why now, one could look merely at the worsening Israeli-Palestine situation over the past several years and assume things simply came to a head. The increasingly hardline political rule in Israel under PM Netanyahu has made things tough for Palestinians. But there are also significant things afoot outside the borders of Israel and Palestine that affect the situation.

In recent years some Arab countries have normalized political (and economic) relations with Israel. Following the Abraham Accords in 2020-2021, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan normalized ties with Israel. Lately Saudi Arabia has been moving to do the same. If the Middle Eastern economic powerhouse— and custodian of several of Islam's holiest sites— Saudi Arabia were to officially eschew "Death to Israel" as its foreign policy, it would remove a lot of fuel from the fire of supporting Palestinian militants. It could even start a domino effect that brings many other Arab nations toward peace with Israel. The smart money is on Hamas attacking now to derail these moves toward peace.

Edited to add:This geopolitical view also explains Iran's alleged involvement. Hamas's multi-pronged attack indicates a near certainty of external funding and organizational support. Iran has long been involved in propping up Hamas, along with other anti-Israel/anti-secular-rule terror groups. Iran also benefits from derailing rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Iran's economy is failing due to a combination of its own corruption and the weight of US sanctions. It would be further left behind if its rival, Saudi Arabia, were to see an economic boost from trading with Israel.

Update 2: Casualty counts from Hamas's initial attack increased in the following days. It's not assessed that their initial attack killed over 900 Israelis, many of them civilians. Hamas deliberately targeted civilians at parties and homes, busting through doors and slaughtering everyone inside. Over 100 hostages were taken, many of them also civilians.

Easy Weekend at Home after Busy Week of Travel

We decided at some point at little over a week ago that this weekend would be an easy weekend at home. Wow, what a good choice. After a busy week of travel Mon-Thurs this past week I was more tired than I expected. Friday was an unexpectedly busy day at work, not a "catch up on odds and ends" day as I'd planned a week earlier. After that I was bushed. I went to bed early Friday night and slept in 'til 8 Saturday morning.

Our previous plan had been to spend the weekend traveling and hiking outdoors, probably in the deserts around Las Vegas. I'm so glad we didn't do that. I probably would've wanted just to sit around the hotel pool/hot tub. Then I would have felt lame for not taking advantage of the trip to go out hiking. Instead, by staying home, I spent the weekend sitting around our pool/hot tub, and it felt great.

Not everything was awesome just because we stayed home. I was a bit sick on Saturday afternoon. It delayed me going to the pool for two hours, and when I did go I (a) missed the hottest part of day, a high of 92°, when I most wanted to be in the pool, and (b) had to take it easy rather than getting exercise in the water. Partly to make up for that I went back to the pool on Sunday afternoon. I was feeling 100% by then and was able to get some exercise, though the temperatures outside had cooled off to a mere 80° and no longer screamed, "Awesome pool weather!"

Sunday evening we got an unexpected call (well, text actually) from some_other_dave. It was too late to meet for dinner, but we hung out at our place for a while after he ate. It was good low-key socializing.

I've also used this weekend to catch up a bit on my blogging. Oh, I've posted no shortage of blogs recently. Between Monday and Friday I posted 12. Between yesterday and today I've posted 7. Despite all that I've still got a backlog of blogs from our WV/NC trip. Yes, the one that actually finished two weeks ago now, on Sept. 24. I posted an entry from that trip this morning and aim to push out about one a day as part of my blog roll over the coming week.