Laurel Falls deux....

Just in case I forget where I am I remind myself daily by looking at this....today the view was covered with fog. each picture I have taken has been from a different vantage point and vista. I will however never remember which and what mountains are which. I really honestly have decided that living here may not be cool after all....I would never want to become numb to this and start taking it for granted. Although I would love to live close enough to hike weekly. J. and K. messing around. I got J in one of my shots, and then playing around asked him to do the Cap'n Morgan pose. To which my pop-culture ignorant husband said, who? And did understand after I explained, but could not hold the position, so K helped him out.


This is at the trail head....we did hike up 300 feet in elevation in just 1.3 miles. It was steep...teh drop offs to our left were incredible. while I am not afraid I did keep my doppick footed 11 year old to the inside of the trail!

Then this one, made my heart skip a beat! Not in fear - in excitement! Maybe today! Maybe today!

Did I get your attention? Notice - no bear photos...my near misses when it comes to bear sitings are going to be legendary int hese parts. Once again, missed it by mere minutes! min-utes I tell you!! as we were coming back down the trail, a gentleman passing the other way told us he was just taking photos of a bear that was around the next bend.....literally not 100 feet further down the path for us! But of course, by the time we got there, he had disappeared into the woods. *sigh*


So I will just comfort myself with these pictures.....

This is the top half of the falls...there is a foot bridge across the middle of the falls...

My little climber giving a very panicky lady near us heart failure. Believe me these rocks were not slippery in the least and mostly large and flat. He made it up to that large flat rock half way up in the falls picture.

This is the bottom half of the falls. The actual trail does not actually go here. We found a small side trail that we had to clinb down to get to it....again freaking out the panicky lady. Good thing she didn't see me standing with my children with our toes on the "Danger" sign at the adge of the rock at the top. I KNOW I took a picture of our feet but it is not on the camera....if you are level headed and careful there is no danger. they are there for all of the idiots of the world that think they can climb down the fall.

And here we are at the bottom.

The kids had a blast climing around. Thought it was really cool. Tremendous attitude change in K. this hike, and in general. No longer premenstral and not one bug bothered her this trip apparently.

Once again, I am sitting here listening to day four of RAIN...it did hold off for us yesterday until the afternoon, so we got the hike in. Today we are supposed to head to Cade's Cove - where THREE groups of people I saw yesterday say they saw the bears...also has soem tremendous views of the mountains, for the base, real and true. The cove is a flat area literally amid the mountains where families lived 100's of years ago. The forecast for Th, Fr, and Sat was "clear and sunny" - ha! I am trying to remain optomistic, and make the best of it...but we are out of indoor things to do. The cove is 30 min away, so I am hoping by the time we get there things will have stopped raining. we have never in 13 years of vacationing had this much rain. Tenn. has been near drought conditions all summer, and we arrive and mother nature decides to remedy the situation. We did comfort ourselves by checking the Myrtle Beach weather and it is raining there too.

Off to pack our picnic lunch and start to rouse the troops.

As ordered, a picture with me in it. (looking very bedraggled with my humidity stringy hair, and shorts that are to big)

No fits today!

And if I have anything to do with it, my kids will never suffer from Nature Defecit Disorder. No matter hwo many times I drag them kicking and screaming up a trail.