Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #32
Back in Boone, NC - Sat, 7 Sep 2024. 6pm

The plan for today, our last full day in North Carolina, was simple. We'd enjoy a fun and fulfilling hike at Catawba Falls then two-fer the day with a visit to nearby Mt. Mitchell. At elev. 6,684 feet (2,037 m) it's the highest peak in the eastern US.

Weather forecasts said it would be a clear afternoon at Mt. Mitchell. It didn't take a degree in meteorology to recognize that as we climbed from the foothills there were thick clouds clustered around the 6,000'+ peaks around Mt. Mitchell.



We drove up the access road into Mt. Mitchell State Park. We wondered if maybe the highest peak would poke above the clouds or if we could wait out the clouds for them to burn off on this otherwise sunny day. Alas, neither happened. (The clouds shrouding the valley around Catawba Falls stuck there seemingly all day, too.) The top was completely socked in with clouds. And it was cold. And windy! We waited in our car for about 30 minutes with no change before heading back down. We figured we'd enjoy the rest of the Blue Ridge mountains in the sunshine.

We drove the scenic route home, sticking to the Blue Ridge Parkway almost the whole way. The thing is, while it's the scenic route it's actually not that much slower than driving regular highways since there are no traffic lights or stop signs. And heck, there was barely even any traffic— surprising for a Saturday afternoon.

Now we're back at our hotel in Boone. We're taking it easy this afternoon but also cleaning and arranging our gear to pack it up tomorrow morning, when we begin our trip home.

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #30
Old Fort, NC - Sat, 7 Sep 2024. 12pm

We got up and got going early today! We were rolling in our car by 8:45am. Partly that's because the hiking trek we'd picked for the day was an hour and 45 minutes away by car and was expected to be crowded by midday on a weekend. Sure enough, the parking lot was nearly full when we arrived at the Catawba Falls trailhead just before 10:30.



The trail along the Catawba River starts off easily at first, staying mostly flat for the first 1/2 mile or so. In the next half mile it starts sloping upwards. In this area we enjoyed a small falls just off the side of the trail. It was a good excuse to stop and catch our breath.

Above this the trail gets steep enough that the Forest Service recently built wooden stairs.



The stairs don't look that intimidating at first. At first. At least they lead to more falls!



The stairs also include a deck of sorts that leads out to the base of the falls. Then a short flight of steps drops down to the bare rock at the edge of the pool. It's a nice view up at the falls from here. Fortunately I was able to capture this picture just before a family of hicks put all their kids wearing nothing but diapers into the pool to splash around and climb on the rocks.



We headed back to the stairs and started climbing up alongside the falls. There were plenty of views to stop and appreciate along the way. At least here there are plenty of views. A bit further up.... Ooh, boy, it turns into quite a workout.

Update: The adventure continues! Keep reading in Up, Up, Up to Upper Catawba Falls.

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #27
Blowing Rock, NC - Fri, 6 Sep 2024. 2pm

Today we got out of the hotel even earlier than yesterday. Today we were on the road before 10am. 😅

There's a waterfalls hiking trail that starts right in town in Blowing Rock, NC. And it's not just some walk-in-the-park bunny trail, it's a genuine hike with an ascent of over 600' on the return. How cool is that?



The first falls on the Glen Burney Falls trail isn't Glen Burney Falls. It doesn't really have a name. It's not even a falls. It's just "Cascades". Okay, but it's more than 4' tall, like the photo above implies. There's actually a pretty good drop here....



What I usually say about the view from atop a falls not being very enjoyable is different here. These falls— I mean, cascades 😅— are horizontal enough that there's a good view from above. And it's nice with the view of the trail around to the left and the canyon dropping away below us. Oh, and the fact there's no way to stand at the bottom of the falls without trampling a restoration area.



Further down the canyon is the namesake of this trail, Glen Burney Falls. It's taller than this photo (above) gives it credit for. Like the cascades, these falls are horizontal enough that the view from below doesn't show everything. And the water flow today is light. I wonder what this was like 4 days ago, after rain the day before.



There's a bonus falls further down on the Glen Burney Falls trail. It's Glen Marie Falls. This falls is actually the tallest of the three, by fair margin. I figure it's over 60' tall. But it falls in kind of a crooked path over the uneven rock face, and at a low flow time like this it doesn't show well. As much as I don't like hiking in the mud, hiking this trail a day, maybe two, after a rain is probably the best way to enjoy it.

The return hike up the canyon was tough. I felt badly winded getting up past the three falls. The trail gets a lot easier above that, though. Even though there were another 300 vertical feet past that I was able to pick up my pace substantially.

Back at the trailhead we discussed what to eat for lunch. There actually aren't a ton of restaurants in this touristy little town of Blowing Rock. We didn't French cafe food (too French), we didn't want a brewpub (too early for beer), and we didn't want Mexican (too inauthentic— like, they use American cheese in enchiladas 🤢)... so we went back to the pizza place we visited a few days ago. Hawk's rarely in the mood for pizza, but they actually offer a style she enjoys— and the cook nailed it with her special requests. Plus I had a beer, because screw it, it's not that early. 😂

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #24
Linville, NC - Thu, 5 Sep 2024. 7pm

In beginning this hike toward the end of a long day, we hoped we'd get a good view of Linville Falls after the first 1/2 mile of Linville Gorge trail. Alas, it was not to be. The upper viewpoint was directly above the falls. Above the falls is almost never the vista you want for appreciating the falls. Fortunately the trail continued to two more viewpoints, at least one of which seemed sure to offer a good view. But would we have the stamina for the extra distance and ascent?

We first walked out the to the most distant of all the viewpoints. It seemed like it was actually easier, as a hiker near the intermediate viewpoint , the Chimney View, cautioned us that the it was steep and narrow. It was so steep and narrow that she'd noped out of it, opting to wait up on the canyon rim while her partner risked life and limb climbing below. So we continued on to the far viewpoint. It was... too far. Yes, we could see the falls, but only in the distance. We returned to the Chimney View... and found that the trail down was nowhere near as tough as that one hiker opined. There were lots of stone steps, and a wooden staircase in the steepest part, but we've hiked far worse.



From the Chimney lookout we enjoyed a pretty good view of the falls. Would it be better from closer up and down in the canyon? Sure, but it's prohibitively difficult to get down in the canyon. There is a trail that descends around the other side, but it approaches the falls from an angle far to the side that makes it not a great view. I know, because I now remember hiking that trail 30 years ago when I came here with a grad school friend.



Of course, if it's not reasonable to hike closer to the falls, I can get closer to them, virtually, with the help of a zoom lens. Yes, I carried my long zoom lens, the one I use for close-ups of birds and flowers, on this hike. It was part of the tradeoff I chose to make back at the trailhead.

The other part of that tradeoff, BTW, was not carrying any water. 🥵 Hawk had one bottle of tea in her sling, and she agreed to share it with me. I rationed my sips carefully to help make it last for both of us on a hike that ended up being 2 miles roundtrip.



Linville Gorge isn't just about Linville Falls. There's also, well, the gorge. In places it's over 1,500' deep. The photo above shows a stretch of Linville Gorge just below the falls.

After resting at Chimney View for a while we began the hike back to the car. It was late, and we were tired after a long day. We were in the mode of just putting one foot in front of the other. Back at the parking lot it seemed almost comical how ours was one of about 5 cars in a huge lot built for well over 100. I'm glad we were here at a sparsely visited time. Places like Chimney View would have been a lot less enjoyable with dozens of people lining up and waiting turns to cram into a narrow spot.

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #22
Jonas Ridge, NC - Thu, 5 Sep 2024. 4:30pm

Upper Creek Falls turned out to be more than we expected— both in terms of the size of the main falls and the length/strenuousness of the trail. At the bottom of the big falls we weren't thinking about the latter, though. Yet.



Yes, this is the same falls I finished with in part 1 of this hike. Here I'm photographing it with my ultra-wide zoom lens. This is at 10mm with my camera's APS-C sized imager; it's a 15mm equivalent on a traditional 35mm camera. I slowed the shutter speed down to 1/5 second with a neutral density lens. And, yes, the camera is hand-held because I didn't lug a tripod down here and didn't even have my hiking pole monopod to use.

As you can see in this photo versus those in my previous blog entry the sun was in and out of clouds, but mostly behind the clouds, this afternoon. Changing light makes photography challenging... but also more fun, as it exposes different views of the same scene.



Soon enough it was time to head further downstream. There are more falls down there and a pretty clear path, marked with reflector blazes on trees, to get there.

On the way to these falls (photo above) we saw the couple who were previously enjoying the big falls 50' away from us coming back up the trail. Why come back up the same way? The trail loops around back to the parking lot. We said as much in chatting with them, wondering if maybe the creek crossing was too dangerous to ford.

"Oh, the trail crosses the creek?" they responded. "We didn't even think of that!"

"Yeah, it shows it right here on my GPS-enabled trails app," I said, pointing to AllTrails running on my iPhone.

"Oh, I'm using AT, too," one of the hikers said, showing me his phone with the same app open.

How can you use the same app and not see the trail marked in bright green?! I wondered to myself. This dude is literally holding the map in his hand and can't figure it out. Sheesh, it's like holding in your hand a device with access to the sum total of human knowledge does not make everyone smarter, it just makes the average person more confident of their dumb ideas.

Anyway, back to the falls. 🤣



At the crossing there were more falls both above and below. I explored down the creek a bit further, but not too far as I was starting to get a sense of how much climbing out there'd be. And, more importantly, Hawk was already aching pretty badly from a long-term issue flaring up. I wasn't going to leave her in the middle of the wilderness to go hiking on my own.



We enjoyed the falls at the crossing a bit more before beginning the arduous climb up out of the canyon. And yes, it was arduous. It was 8-10 long switchbacks up the canyon's sloping side.

Back at the car, now, we're discussing what's next. Earlier in the day we were thinking to do a bit more driving to another remote falls but at this point, with the clouds overhead, it looks like it might get dark too early to want to do a lot of driving before a hike. There's just enough signal here at the trailhead to search for other trails on AllTrails, so I'm checking out Linville Gorge and Linville Falls. That's a big falls, and it's really not that far from here; maybe just 15 minutes of driving.

Stay tuned; the adventure continues!

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #20
Newland, NC - Thu, 5 Sep 2024. 2pm

After hiking at Otter Falls this morning we drove west, around the base of Grandfather Mountain— which we hiked yesterday afternoon. Grandfather's nearly 6,000' peak was shrouded in clouds at noon. It's a good thing we were only looking for lunch. As we ate at a restaurant in nearby Banner Elk the clouds burned off— not just around Grandfather Mountain's summit but those over pretty much everything in the area. We enjoyed a sunnier drive as we headed to our next hiking destination, Waterfalls Park.



Otter Falls was in the oddly named town of Seven Devils. This time we're in a blandly named town of Newland (but at least it's not named Bland) at the oddly named Waterfall Park. ...Okay, that's more bland than odd, too. The town has a small set of waterfalls on a creek, and they've nicely made a small park around it. There's also a grave memorial in this park, so possibly the land for the park used to be privately owned but then was donated.



A short trail leads up past various small tiers of waterfalls. Signs indicate that Boy Scouts built it and the fire department maintains it.



The trails continue farther up the canyon around the stream. We explored them for a bit but realized they were all diverging from the creek, and returned back down to appreciate the falls again.



This little park in an out-of-the-way small town had a decent number of visitors this afternoon. There were two other small groups when we arrived, and it looked like 3 more by the time we left. The visitors split into two categories: Those who, like us, were there to see the falls by hiking the trails; and those who were just there to sit at the picnic tables on the grassy lawn below, content to enjoy the falls as background sound. There may come a time in my life when I can't to venture further than the gravel path to a picnic table.... I plan for it not to be anytime soon. In beauty I walk.

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #16
Blowing Rock, NC - Wed, 4 Sep 2024. 1:15pm

After lunch today in Blowing Rock (and a bit of shopping) we're feeling more ready to go hiking. Except we're starting it easy, with a not-hiking hike. There's a drive-to waterfall just outside of town, Silvervale Falls.



Although this falls is right alongside the road it's a bit hard to find which road it's on. GPS maps indicate it's off the main highway, which... it's not. Unless you drive through some trees and over a cliff. Even walking over this cliff seems dicey. You might break more than a hiking pole trying that with how tall these falls are. 😂

Just because I barely had to do any walking for these falls doesn't mean they don't count as In Beauty I Walk. One, the word "walk" in the Navajo prayer I'm referencing is used broadly to mean the journey through life. And two, I did literally walk. It was all of about 50 steps round trip from my car to the base of the falls and back, but that's still walking. 😂

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #12
Afton, VA - Tue, 3 Sep 2024. 4:15pm

I've mentioned the Skyline Drive in my past few blogs. I should describe what it actually is, for those who don't know. The Skyline Drive is a mountaintop road that traces 105 miles through the length of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. In the north the road starts in Front Royal, VA at highway US-340 a few miles from the junction of I-66 and I-81. In the south it ends in the tiny town of Afton, VA at highway US-250 near the junction with I-64. It traces along the ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, generally above 3,000' elevation though it dips lower at a few passes it crosses.

Today we drove the Skyline Drive from its southern end, above the cities of Waynesboro and Charlottesville, about 25 miles north to the trailhead for Doyles River Falls.



The Skyline Drive isn't just a route to get from Point A to Point B, though it does serve that purpose, too. Along its length are some 75 scenic overlooks where motorists can stop to enjoy the vistas. We didn't do much of that on our trip today, as we have a fairly full itinerary with a big hike earlier today and a long drive ahead of us to our next stop in North Carolina tonight. But just driving the road, which itself is scenic with its old-timey construction from the 1930s and the Civilian Conservation Corps, and stopping at lots of the scenic pullouts, can be a vacation in and of itself. I know because that's the first vacation I ever remember having!

I think I was about 8 years old at the time, though I could have been 7 or 9. It was the first actual vacation I remember my parents taking with my younger sister and me. Actual, meaning we didn't just go visit my grandparents' house for a week or a weekend. We stayed at a hotels. Just visiting a hotel was a new experience, and splashing around in the Howard Johnson's kid-friendly swimming pool was practically a vacation unto itself, but on that trip we also drove a good bit of the Skyline Drive out and back. I'd never seen mountains before. Mountains were amazing. That first vacation kindled my interest in the great outdoors, and mountains in particular, something that's never left me in over 40 years since.

My family returned to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Skyline Drive a few more times during my childhood. The memories are almost all positive. One, though, is bittersweet. I was reminded of that one today, too.

A Bittersweet Stop on Memory Lane

At the southern end of the Skyline Drive, near Interstate 64, is a hotel on a hilltop. Once upon a time it was a Howard Johnson's hotel. We stayed at a lot of HoJo's hotels (as they were casually known) back in the day. They were family friendly, had a decent standard of quality, and always had a HoJo's restaurant attached, which was also very family friendly.

Today the hotel stands empty and abandoned. I'm not sure what happened here, as it seems like a good place for a hotel. The HoJo's brand did run into difficulties years ago. Part of my childhood experience with them was seeing their quality start to slide downhill. Their once ubiquitous restaurants, with the orange and teal roofs, started to close down.



What's bittersweet is not just that the HoJo's chain deteriorated and closed, or that this particular HoJo hotel and restaurant are long abandoned and overgrown with weeds. It's also that my memories of staying here are mixed.

We stayed here at part of a short vacation my parents took us on at the last minute. Vacations of any kind were rare enough in my family growing up. This one was also spontaneous. Like, my parents decided on a Friday, "Let's take the kids and go to the mountains this weekend." My parents were never spontaneous.

Car Trouble (Almost 40 Years Ago)

Things were going well on the trip. We checked in to the hotel on top of the hill then drove back down for a meal at the HoJo's restaurant (the one now overgrown) below. But as we piled back into the car after lunch to drive up the hill, the car couldn't make it. It lost power on the hill, and my dad carefully reversed it back to the parking lot.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and in this small town there was no place to get a car fixed until Monday. Actually there was no place to get this car fixed anytime in this small town. The closest shop was down the mountain in Waynesboro. And they weren't open until Monday. So we had a longer-than-planned stay at this mountaintop hotel.

As a kid, the stay was great. Swimming in the pool was fun, having an extra day was fun. Eating dinner at the steakhouse in the hotel was fun— we didn't eat every meal at HoJo's restaurant— especially laughing to myself about why the restaurant found it necessary to post signs on every wall inside telling patrons, "DO NOT ORDER STEAK 'WELL DONE'". Like, that's their usual clientele: braying jackasses who think bellowing, "And make it WELL DONE!!" when ordering a steak shows what sophisticated customers they are. Stay classy, small town America.

As a kid, it was good times. But I wasn't just a kid. I was a teen. I was mature enough to think about situations from other people's perspective. From my parents' perspective this had to be worrisome. Were the kids going to be okay here? How long would it take to get the car fixed? Would my dad miss more than one unexpected day of work? And how much would this all cost? Not just the car repairs, but also the extra hotel night and all the dining out. Money was tight for my parents. That's why our vacations were few and simple compared to many of my schoolmates' families, and why spontaneity wasn't really a thing for us.

The good thing with this star-crossed trip is that the car got fixed quickly on Monday morning. The cost wasn't huge though it was certainly a lot for my parents' already strained budget. And we kids had a good time hanging out at the hotel's pool for an extra day.

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #10
Afton, VA - Tue, 3 Sep 2024. 1:30pm

Today we've driven up to the Skyline Drive northwest of Charlottesville, VA. We're not here just to drive the Drive, though that is a worthy thing to do on a pleasant late-summer day. We're going hiking on the Doyles River Falls trail in Shenandoah National Park.

Because the Skyline Drive roughly traces the crest of the Blue Ridge mountains, many of the hikes from up there are "upside down". Meaning, we hike down on the way in... and up on the way back. Years ago an outdoors writer quipped it's like going on vacation on your credit card. You pay when you return.

Indeed the first part of this trail was down, down, down... and not just down but steeply down. In the first 10 minutes we'd already descended 300 feet. I figure it's going to take a lot longer than 10 minutes to climb that last leg of the trail on the way out.

Well below that point, more like 800 feet down from the start, we reached the first of three waterfalls.



This is the smallest waterfall of the three and is unnamed. I'd say it's a nice little reward for the energy we'd expended, an appetizer for the main course, except that we haven't really expended any energy yet. I mean, hiking downhill is tough in its own way—tough mostly on knees and toes— but it's not the cardio workout that climbing back up will be.



Not far below the unnamed falls is Upper Doyles River Falls. Yeah, the people responsible for naming things here were really phoning it in. They went from an unnamed falls to an uninspiringly named falls. But hey, it's a double falls. Yes, both the lower and upper halves are Upper Doyle River Falls. Uninspired.



Someone was already splashing around beneath the lower falls with their dogs, so we scrambled up the rocks on one side to get to the base of the upper tier.

It was nice here, so we stayed for a while. I'd say we were resting our aching muscles, but again, our hard work was yet to come.



As other people arrived we swapped places to the lower tier of falls so someone else could enjoy the upper tier.



Of course, from below the lower half we can still enjoy (as in, see) both halves.

Soon enough it was time to continue downhill. Lower Doyles River Falls awaits!

Keep reading: Lower Doyles Falls & back to the top!

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #7
Montebello, VA - Mon, 2 Sep 2024. 4pm

This afternoon we hiked Crabtree Falls in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest in Virginia. It's said to be the tallest waterfall east of the Mississippi, falling over 1,200' in a series of cascades. IMO the cascades are too far apart to really call them one waterfall, but hey, a series of smaller waterfalls? Sign me up!



The first viewing platform for Crabtree Falls is a short distance up the trail. The trail is paved to this point so it's relatively easy. It is up, though. Taking pictures at the falls was a good excuse to stop and catch my breath. 😅

The trail to the top of the falls is not that long. It's a 3.6 mile round trip hike from the parking area. It's a climb of over 1,000' feet, though. The trail helpfully has little mileposts every tenth of a mile to let you know how far you've gone— and how much is left. I found these useful for pacing myself as the hike is also over 1,000' of ascent. I was huffing and puffing a lot though managed a better pace than I expected.

A lot of the falls on this stream are hard to see. They're behind heavy tree cover, they're around the corner from rocks, the viewing points are mostly above them, etc. As a result the next spot I really enjoyed stopping was almost at the top.



This is the uppermost cascade of Crabtree Falls (above). Well, it's part of it. The water cascades down a fair bit below here. The viewing platform is kind of in the middle, and I can't get all of it in one frame. And it's hard really to see the part of the falls below me, anyway. That's always the problem with hiking up above waterfalls; often enough it's a poor view from above.

Speaking of above, Hawk continued up the trail while I experimented with different vantage points for pictures here. She waved to me from the top of the slickrock. As expected, the view from above wasn't great, she told me when she got back. I mean, there's a good view out across the valley and to the other hills in the area, but not a good view of the falls.



On the way back down the trail I poked around at hiking some of the use trails to get closer to the water. The main trail, like I said, often didn't afford great views. But this spot (photo above) was maybe just 20 steps off the trail and didn't involve particularly dangerous terrain to get to. I mean, a person could slip and fall anywhere. This just isn't as dangerous as getting too close to the edge at Yosemite Falls (1,000' straight drop) or hiking in 110° heat with insufficient water.

We're done with the hike now and back in civilization... sort of. There's a general store and post office in the tiny town of Montebello, Virginia, a few miles back up the road. There's no cell signal here; that's how small and remote of a town it is. But it's a good place to buy an ice cream bar and sit on the porch to enjoy it.