Day #149 – Big Creek Trail

Gatlinburg TN

Today we hiked the Big Creek Trail, in the North Carolina portion of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Kelly had found a book of hike-related scavenger hunts, so we used that to keep us busy on the trail.  We had to find trees growing out of rocks, rocks that looked like a school bus, bear-proof trash cans, and so forth.  We also took a book for wildflower identification.  We looked up, and photographed each new flower we saw.  This was Kelly’s project.  She made me look them up while she took photos.  I didn’t know there were so many different flowers in the Smokies that bloomed in April.

We stopped at Midnight Hole for lunch.  This is a very deep pool at the base of some falls.  The Hole is reportedly dark blue in winter and green in summer.  We saw a couple trout, which got us extra points in the scavenger hunt.

Next stop was Mouse Creek Falls.  This waterfall was the last item on the scavenger hunt.  Since this feature wasn’t as far up the trail as we’d hope, we turned on the GPS and kept going.

Because this trail is so wide, horses are allowed on it.  All day, we hopped from one side of the trail to another, trying to keep our boots clean.  Some of the poop did not look like it came from horses.  We guessed there were bears in them thar woods.

Again, photography got the better of our time management planning.  We turned around at 5 P.M. in the hopes of getting out of the deep valley before dusk.  By the time we’d worked our way down the trail, the mosquitoes had come out and we were slapping ourselves silly.  We made it back to the truck before dark.  Our GPS indicated we’d hiked five miles – our longest hike yet.

Neither of us was as sore after this hike as we’d been on previous ones.  It was just as strenuous in terms of elevation, and longer than any of the others.  Maybe our bodies are bouncing into shape more quickly than we’d thought possible.