Boulders 9/28/2015

Boulders at the falls

An unusual thing happened yesterday morning. When I woke, my cell phone app clock (I use my cell phone as a bedside clock as it charges), read one time, and the cell phone itself read another. We are probably parked just yards away from the line between Central and Eastern time zones, and my phone was confused!

This was another lovely day in eastern Tennessee. It started out cloudy, and evolved into a warm, sunny day. The hikes we had planned today were in the southeast area of the park. The first was a 4 1/2 mile walk along the Big South Fork River to Angel Falls, essentially an area of hazardous rapids in the river. In the 1950s, some local fishermen figured they would be doing a good thing by blowing up some of the big boulders in this area to improve the course of the river, and also the fishing here. What they actually managed to do was to create some of the most hazardous rapids in an eastern river.

The path along the river was pleasant, following the river the whole way, with some interesting rock walls alongside. We passed a coal seam in the rock wall just short of the falls. If we hadn't walked past the falls overlook area (a small opening in the trees), we would have missed the larger attraction on the trail. Just a short distance down the trail, we descended to the boulder-strewn river bed. This time of year, the river had shrunken to a fraction of its springtime flow. We were able to hop from boulder to boulder along the stream bed and track back up the river to the place where the  falls (rapids) were easily visible. The massive boulder field must have been rock fall from the surrounding hills. After poking around the boulder field for a while, we retraced our route and returned to the car, and drove to a gorge overlook where we ate lunch.

We then decided to hike to what was billed as "an outstanding view of the Big South Fork River", a short 2.6 mile hike. That view might have been "outstanding" many years ago. The trail ended in a rocky outcropping that did, at some point in the past, probably offer a lovely view of the river and gorge below. Now tall trees have obscured the view almost completely.

Coal seam

We returned to the campground, had a beer, and then took a stroll around the campground loops. In campgrounds we like, we like to scope out which sites are best if we decide to return some time. Most of the spaces here are large and private, but after looking, I think we got one of the best spots. Since it was Sunday, most of our neighbors had packed up and left, leaving us almost alone in this loop. All we can hear are crickets and cicadas. Lovely!