Cumberland Mountain State Park

What a great weekend! We spent the past weekend with our friends from Alabama in Cumberland Mountain State Park near Crossville, Tennessee. We arrived on Friday, after our visit to Ozone Falls and set up camp and ate a delicious dinner of rainbow noodles (Sierra's favorite camping food) and rainbow cupcakes for dessert. We then tried to get to sleep after playing for a bit in the campsite.

On Saturday we went for a hike on the Pioneer Trail's short loop.

We saw lots of geese

on the dammed Byrd Creek.

We stopped quite often to look for animals with our binoculars!

We also saw some flowers blooming: a type of milkweed

and some flame azalea.

The highlight of the hike was the bouncy suspension bridge that crossed Byrd Creek.

Sierra liked it so much she wanted to cross the bridge twice! After crossing the bridge for the second time, Sierra agreed to take a ride in the backpack.

She didn't really want to, but she was hungry and since we had brought no snacks we told her we would get to food much sooner if she rode. It was a quick second half of our hike!

After lunch at our campsites, we headed over to the pool for a refreshing swim. For dinner it was hot dogs on the grill and s'mores for dessert! It was Sierra's first time eating s'mores. I think she liked them! We sat around the campfire a bit and the kids played with their glow stick toys, before heading to bed in the tents. It was a busy day, and Sierra slept well.

Today we packed up camp, said goodbye to the local wildlife,

and then headed over to the playground to swing and slide (and rest on a tree stump)

for a bit. At 11 there was an owl demonstration. I think Sierra really enjoyed it. The naturalist brought a barred owl

and a screech owl.

We got to pet the barred owl!

Besides the owls, there were some grazing geese to look at and a dragonfly as well.

We ate lunch in a nice shady pavilion and then said goodbye to our friends and hit the road for our drive back to Greeneville. Sierra fell asleep almost immediately and slept most of the way back home. We ended our mini-vacation with blizzards at Dairy Queen before getting home to unpack.

Ozone Falls State Natural Area

Out long weekend road trip has begun! We packed up the Subaru and headed west for once. For the two-plus years we've been in Tennessee we have not done any exploring in the Volunteer State west of Knoxville. Today we changed that. Our first stop, on our way to Cumberland Mountain State Park, was Ozone Falls State Natural Area. We parked near a railroad trestle across the street from the natural area and then hit the trail. Our first stop was the brink of the falls.

It was a little bit scary looking over the precipice and with Sierra in the back pack I stayed well clear of the edge. From the brink of the falls we followed a "trail"

(in most spots it was more like a marked route down rocks and roots) down to near the bottom of the falls.
With slippery rocks and precious cargo in my backpack, we opted to not climb down to the bottom of the falls, but admired the impressively tall Ozone Falls from a spot close to the bottom (and close to a photo shoot).

We then climbed back up the roots and rocks, past some small rock shelters,

to our car.

All said, the waterfall was very impressive, but given its close proximity to the road and Interstate-40, the area sees a lot of use. Some of that use is in the form of partying and basically trashing the area. It's a shame because the falls would be much more enjoyable if there were not as much trash. Still, it's worth a visit, if you happen to be in the area.

Pisgah National Forest: Moore Cove Trail

After our delicious meal at Sierra Nevada we were ready to burn off some calories. We headed over towards Brevard to do a short hike to Moore Cove Falls. We parked in the lot, just off the highway and hit the trail, immediately crossing a stream on a footbridge. The trail was wide and a bit muddy in places. We crossed a stream several times on bridges

and passed some large boulders. Soon we were at the falls.

The waterfall did not feature a large volume of water, but was still scenic. We walked to the back of the falls,
and I narrowly avoided disaster when I slipped in the mud while holding Sierra. There was a group of Germans who stripped down to their skivvies and showered in the cold water.

After a few minutes, we started to make a our way back to the car.

We stopped at a convenient stream crossing to play in the water. Sierra demanded to take her sandals off.
She threw some rocks in the water

and Noelle picked up some rocks to look for salamanders. We found a few, mostly small ones. We also found a little crayfish.

After about 20 minutes of playing in the water we started to make our way back to the car again. We crossed the bridges

and made our way past the large boulders

before we found ourselves back at the car for our trip to REI and the long drive back to Greeneville.

Sierra Nevada Brewery Complex at Mills River, North Carolina

We finally made it to Mecca!

I've been wanting to visit the Sierra Nevada Brewery for a long time now. Long before a North Carolina brewery was even the seed of an idea in Ken Grossman's head, I had wanted to head out to Chico, California and see where one of my favorite beers of all time was brewed. We made the drive down from Greeneville and arrived just as the taproom and gift shop were opening. We parked in the shade of a panel of photovoltaic cells and headed inside the taproom.

We had a delicious lunch. It was the cauliflower steak sandwich for Noelle and the shirt steak sandwich for me. I drank two pints: Torpedo IPA

and a Kolsch. Both were delicious. After our lunch and beer we bought a pint glass in the gift shop and then did a self guided tour of the brewery operation.

Then we headed back to the car, past some cool keg bike racks and Bigfoot tracks.

House Mountain State Natural Area

With Mom and Dad G in town, Noelle and I were afforded the luxury of time alone together. For our date we opted to go hiking and our destination on this fine Sunday was House Mountain State Natural Area in Knox County. It was an hour drive to the natural area. We parked the car, changed into our hiking boots and then hit the trail.

The lower stretches of trail featured some wildflowers,

including lots of spiderwort,

and some large boulders scattered here and there along the side of the trail.

We ascended to the ridge of House Mountain on the Mountain Trail. For the most part it was a pretty gradual ascent, except it got a bit steeper as we approached the ridge.

At the intersection with the Crest Trail we made a right and headed over to the East Overlook.

It was a beautiful spot with distant views to the high mountains of the east. We ate a snack there and then moved on heading west on the Crest Trail. We took a short detour up to the site of a communication tower and what appeared to be the former site of a fire tower, we then backtracked down to the main trail, past more large boulders,

and over to the West Overlook.

The West Overlook was not nearly as open as the East Overlook had been. We did not stay there for long, but started our descent on the West Overlook Trail.

The West Overlook Trail was very steep at times. Luckily we had no major problems on the descent. The trail passed alongside an interesting cliff line

and past bunches of Indian Pink in bloom.

Soon we were back at the trailhead and the car for our drive back to Greeneville.

The Botanical Gardens at Asheville

We finally had a weekend to get out together as a family and enjoy the late spring weather. Our previous two weekends our plans were thwarted, due to Sierra being sick. Today she seems well on the way to recovery and so we headed over the mountains (luckily without any instances of car-sickness) into North Carolina to explore Asheville a little bit. Our destination would be the Botanical Gardens which we had never before explored.

The Botanical Gardens were very pleasant. We stopped at the gift shop to use the restroom and then headed over to an interesting bird feeder that was suspended by a cable and had small tree branches attached to it that birds could perch on.

We then headed over to the main trail, a half-mile loop that passes some of the most interesting attractions in the gardens. We immediately crossed an interesting wooden arch bridge

and then made a right at the trail junction. There were lots of wildflowers in bloom. Some we could identify, like Carolina allspice,

Jack in the pulpit,

flame azalea,

fire pink,

and mountain laurel.
Sierra even found a tulip poplar flower lying on a rock wall.

Other flowers we were not successful in identifying.

The trail passed under a rustic looking shelter.

Then, at about the half way point of the hike, we found the Hayes Cabin.

Just past the Hayes Cabin we took a detour into a field

which Sierra enjoyed running in.

We then found ourselves close to a small creek. There was a set of stone stairs that led down to the water. We took advantage of them and looked for small fish in the stream.

We also enjoyed the ambiance of the location for a bit before moving on. We passed a small rock shelter that Sierra said "looks like a cave". There was some interesting stratification in the rock here.

Soon we found ourselves back at the start of our hike. We would continue into downtown Asheville to eat lunch and walk around a bit. Then it started to rain on us and so we headed back to the car for the drive back to Greeneville.