St George's Island, FL

Thanks to a tip from the other Airstream person in GA we managed to get a reservation online for 1 night at St George's Island State park. All the FL State parks are basically empty becuse it is their off season....UNLESS they are an island... then they are booked.

Lucky for us we manage to get a different site with 2 nights when we arrive instead of our reservation.

The State Park is at one end of the island and is really nice.

We end up with one of the better sites in the park with only one neighbor instead of two. St George's Island is big island but there isn't much there except condo's and houses and a maybe 5 businesses.  We hit two of them also on recommendation. First we had a great dinner of Oysters, Cievieche and Fish Taco's on the water at the Blue Parrot. After which we hit Eddy Teache's Raw bar for some more local color and a couple of beers. After those two there is a BBQ place a gas station and a tiny store.

We spend the next day riding our bikes on the island it was about a 16 mile round trip ride. Basically to "town" and back.

We also drove into Apalachicola a bigger nearby town.  It was much bigger than St George's Island but still pretty quiet as the summer is Florida's off season.

The town clearly needs a good vet and animal shelter as there are stray cats roaming everywhere!

They are kind of cute.

The is a waterfront tourist area with a few bars and places to eat but we just walk around town and check it out without any fanfare.  Golf Carts are the primary means of transport around town which is kind of odd and we see several probably drunk yahoo's cruising around town.

I nice nature trail lead a couple miles from our campgound (there was a more direct way too) to the beach so we hiked it with our beach backpack chairs one day.

The beach was really nice with white sands and lots of crabs popping in and out of their crab-holes. The water is pleasently warm and we relax for a few hours of sun.

Finally some warm sunny weather.. this was the whole point of heading south for the spring.

Some time in Georgia

After two fairly strenuous hikes we stopped for a couple nights at a campground in TN with a pool and relaxed. It rained a bit during that time but we managed to chill out by the pool a bit before heading to Georgia.

In Georgia we stayed at a C.O.E. Park which is a campground built by the Army Core of Engineers. Their parks tend to be really nice and spacious and often on lakes like this one.  There was another airstream in the park with us.

Pretty muche every site in this park is on Lake Lanier which is a man made lake. We barely even have neighbors and the site is humungous.

However the rain continues to dog us and the lake rises in what is now an all too familiar maner.

You can see a lot of the shoreline is flooded and we hear the lake hasn't been this high in many years.

We spend a day shopping and such and eventually spend the evening at a friend of mine from High School.  It is good to see Tom and his family whom we haven't seen in I think 8 years or so.

Finally the rain lets up enough to have some fun outside. We head to Atlanta to Stone Mountain and hike up to the top.  After enjoying the view from the top we walk around the entire park which is actually pretty far.

This big carving is dedicated to some people from the civil war and was done by the same guy that did Mt Rushmore.

Tomorrow we are heading farther south but probably just for a Walmart overnight someplace in GA as FL is too far away.

More hiking on the AT.

Today we started at almost the same place as yesterday. Technically we started in Newfound Gap which is about at the bottom of the road to Clingman's Dome.

Here a sign shows how much of the trail is left till it end in Maine.

Today's hike is only about 8 miles round-trip.

We are hiking to Charlie's Bunion and back to the gap.  It is a long but not steep walk up to a bald then a quick down to the bunion.

Something odd was up with my camera this day and all the pictures came out exposed funny. I did my best to correct them but they still look odd.

It was a very cloudy day and almost a bit chilly.

Will doing his best impression of a Janaese tourist... He is saying "I'm flying".

 Now he is just contemplating the view.

It is another out and back hike, but since it was mostly up on the way out the back was mostly down!

 After the hike we tried to head back to Cherokee to the Casino to have dessert at Paula Dean's restaurant but it was closed...

An exhaustive search of cherokee yielded almost no place with dessert. Sadly we ended up at The Little Princess Restaurant and Buffet where they had Pecan or Vinegar Pie. Not knowing what Vinegar Pie was we had the pecan which was blah.

A Hike on the AT

Finally we've got some great weather. Today we planned to hike part of the AT.

We are starting right at Clingman's Dome which is one of the highest mountains in the east.

We aren't really climbing it because the trail parallels the road and it didn't sound too pretty.

Not to mention you can also basically drive up to the dome and park, and "hike" a 1/5 mile paved trail to the top.

Instead we are parking there and hiking about 6 miles down the AT and turning around and returning to Clingman's Dome.

Although the tree's are just budding there are wild flowers everywhere.

In some places like this there are so many flowers it almost looks like a dusting of snow.

The trail is very up and down following the ridge of the mountains which is also the border between NC and TN.

Along the way we are lucky to be in the area as a lot of Thru-hikers are passing by. They attempt to hike the entire AT from GA all the way thru to ME (2174 miles).

We get to see their trail log notes to each other at one of the shelters along the trail. This is how they communicate which each other as over 3000 hikers are attempting the feat this year.

Long ago I really really wanted to try it. I know some people who have done it and other long distance trails.

This shelter was pretty nice.

We hiked as far as Siler's Bald, the peak you see here in the distance is Clingman's Dome where we have to hike back to.

For a 12 mile hike we feel pretty good at the end. We climb the observation town and get a good look around.

In this picture the 5 people sitting around the circle are thru-hikers. Having reached the dome they are about 200 miles or 1/10 of the way on their journey.

Many thru hikers take a day off the trail here to head to Gallingburg for a resupply and shower before continuing.

There is a great 360 degree from the top. With panels describing the various mountains we can see.

These two just got dropped off after their trip into town for a show and are happy to be back on the trail

Later as I write this I know why as Gattlingburg is about the most abnoxious tourist town I have ever seen. And after 2 or 3 weeks in the woods (or even anyplace else) it must seem horrible.

Rain Rain and more Rain!

To say it rained a lot the last few days is a joke. It rained and rained and rained. A little cabin fever was setting in. We did a lot of driving around and eating out and visited a few art galleries.

On the final night of rain we noticed the river lever rising quickly. So did our neighbor, who knocked and said the river might flood and he was hooking up in case he had to drive away quickly.

After that I started monitoring the river on-line. You can see how fast it was rising at one point. Our campground is right on the river and it would have started getting flooded in the yello action band of the graph.  Lucky for us the T-storms broke up that night and the river crested about 1 foot below that level.

As we were leaving one night we saw this Argosy pull in. It is pretty groovy.

Our neighbor who warned us about the river had also pimped his trailer removing a couch and island and replacing them with hand made cabinets with thick chunky solid wood countertops. Pretty nice!

Well at least the rain stopped for my birthday. Both of us did some work this morning about 3 hour or so while the last of the rain dropped down.

Here is a picture just to proved some work took place.  There was also a trip to the Post Office involved.

Once the business we done we got down to some delicious business finally eating at 12 Bones. On two previous trips to Asheville we failed to eat here because they are only open limited hours on weekdays!

My ribs were great! Oddly we ran into someone we know from Boston who was visiting some friends he know in Asheville.  His friends had just moved here about a year ago from Houston and really like it.

After lunch we went to the Asheville Arboretum. It is right near and entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway and nestled in some mountains.

They have a production greenhouse and a big collection of Bonsai both inside and outside.

The formal gardens are really nice. They have a quilt garden where they plant flowers in classic quilt patterns.

A number of the Bonsai were planted up like this one on a flat slab of rock. It looks pretty cool but you must have to water it very often.

More Bonsai!

The water gardens weren't grown in yet but that made it easier to find the very very loud frogs.

We are dinner in the trailer and went out to get dessert for my birthday at the end of which of course we got a little more rain. But it was sunny most of the day so that is good enough.

Tommorow we are off to the Great Smokies Nationa Park for some hiking so hopefully the rain is all done.

We got a nice rainbow out of the rain as well.