Goodbye cruel world...Well, for 8 days at least.

Toyman01 wrote: Must be time to look into moving to the mountains.

I second this vote. Tired of the heat and flatness of TX!

That's what I been tellin' ya for a while now... Screw that Lowcountry crap!

Kia_Racer wrote:

Toyman01 wrote: Must be time to look into moving to the mountains.

I second this vote. Tired of the heat and flatness of TX!

That water is about 60 degrees. It was like standing next to the biggest air conditioner in the world. The water was crystal clear and beautiful. It was wonderful. I could throw a rock and hit the nearest campground, I had all my camping gear in the back of the truck and enough food for a few days in the fridge. It took major will power to not say screw it, take another week off and launch the boat. What a beautiful place. It's marked on the GPS and I will be back.

Curmudgeon wrote: That's what I been tellin' ya for a while now... Screw that Lowcountry crap!

Yeah. I'm thinking Spartanburg or Hendersonville. Maybe Saluda, NC. You didn't move far enough when you left here.

Now, what kind of business to open up there...

8 days? Bah. That is nothing. I did a month in Northern BC just after high school. Now that was interesting. Got home to find a bunch of messages from my ex wondering where I was. Granted this was also back when you didn't need a passport to cross the border.

Toyman01 wrote:

Curmudgeon wrote: That's what I been tellin' ya for a while now... Screw that Lowcountry crap!

Yeah. I'm thinking Spartanburg or Hendersonville. Maybe Saluda, NC. You didn't move far enough when you left here. Now, what kind of business to open up there...

Yeah, I know I didn't. But Phase 1 of my evil master plan is nearly concluded.

OK, I got about 100 photos uploaded. These are all off a new camera. My Nikon P500 is a great camera, but I hate taking it in the boat or kayak, for fear of getting it wet; and when your camera is in a dry box, it never gets used. So enter a new camera.

It's a Nikon AW120 point and shoot. 16mp, true HD video, water proof to 59', shock proof, dust proof and almost idiot proof. It's also stupid fast. It can go from off, to shooting the first frame in under a second. I love this camera. I took more pictures on this vacation than I have ever taken before. It stayed in my pocket or around my neck no matter what I was doing. Swimming, hiking, walking up a mountain stream. No worries. Consequently I shot over 1000 pictures.

Here are some of them.

We left town Saturday, the 2nd, headed for Cosby Campground in the Smokey Mountains NP. On the way up, we stopped by to see Curmudgeon and harass him about playing sick in the hospital. I didn't take any pictures of that, for fear of breaking my new camera.

A couple of stops were made for fuel, for us and the truck. Plus another couple of stops to change a blowout on the trailer and pick up another spare.

As a side note, the truck has a 460 in it. We averaged between 8 and 10 mpg. We made a lot of stops for fuel.

For some reason, people look at you funny when you are loaded like this.

We rolled into camp about 5pm and started setting up. The boys immediately started collecting wood for a fire. The campground is very nice. I'll be coming back to this one at some point.

Yes, the fire building was successful, even though most of the wood was wet.

That's it for Saturday the 2nd. More to come.

The Smokies are beautiful. See any moose up there? Uh, other than in the mirror?

Not this time. We did the last time we came up here.

Love the Smokies. This is the first summer i have missed taking my daughter (11) there in the last 6 years.

Sunday was a long one. It started here.

We were loaded up and on the road by 10. Check in at the cabin we rented was 2pm so we weren't in a big hurry. The drive wasn't too bad. I40 through the mountains can turn into a mess in a hurry but we managed to miss all of it. That put us at Center Hill Lake about 3pm.

Our destination was the Edgar Evins State Park. It looks great online, in person it kind of sucked. You would think a state park, located on a lake, would be designed and built to give access to the lake. This one was built to keep you away from it, unless you had a boat. The only places you could actually get close to the lake (boat ramps and docks) were marked "No Swimming." This is the lake view from the balcony of our cabin on the lake.

My plan was to drop the boat in the water, tie it up to the courtesy dock provided to cabin users, and leave it in the water till Thursday morning. The canoes would be dumped and pulled up on shore by the cabin. Yeah, that didn't work. The courtesy dock was 500' below the cabins. There was no way I was carrying a cooler to the boat down those steps. There was also no place to pull up the canoes. Scratch plan A. I wasn't very happy about it, but we made the best of the situation and had fun anyways. Sunday night we dumped the canoes and kayak in the lake and spent a couple of hours paddling around and swimming. It's a pretty lake. Too bad you can't see it from the state park.

That pretty much wraps up day two. More to come, but not tonight. I'm beat.

Monday the 4th. I ignored the lack of lake view and enjoyed a cup of coffee on the balcony. It was cool, the birds were singing and all was right in the world. The plan for the day was to get the big boat in the water and see things. So that's what we did.

On the way to the landing we saw this.

Judging by the spots, one of this years crop. There were two little ones but the other was camera shy. Then mom checked us out as well.

We saw her every morning on the way to the landing.

The landing made me a little nervous. The truck turned 170K on the way up there and I just gave the brakes a cursory glance before the trip. Backing the boat down had me imagining all kinds of things failing.

It's a lot steeper than it looks in the pictures. The lack of decent dock meant 6 trips down and then back up. They were all successful, which isn't a bad thing.

The lake is very beautiful. There were a lot of cliffs like this. They must have been amazing before they filled the lake. With the nose of the boat almost touching the rock, the depth sounder usually showed at least 80', 17' away, at the back of the boat. In a couple of places it was over 100' deep at the cliffs and the deepest spot I saw was 160'. That's a fair amount of water.

Our destination for the day was waterfalls. I love waterfalls with a passion. If I'm headed to the mountains, there is a good chance I'm going to go looking for them. There were three on the lake that were supposed to be accessible by boat. So we set out to find them. First stop was Fancher Falls, which was about a 1.5 hour run by boat. 80' tall, and the pictures I have seen were stunning. Unfortunately the lake levels were down about 25'. A mile short of the falls the water was under 2' deep. I put the kids on the bow looking for rocks and stumps and we eased on up stream. At the 1/2 mile point it was too shallow to use the engine so we got out the paddles and paddled until we ran aground. That left us a short walk up a cold stream. You can just see the falls in the picture below.

For some perspective, my middle son, standing closest to the falls is almost 6'

Beautiful. I even shot some video for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR5zRVxlQ_c&feature=youtu.be

The next set of falls was Myst Falls, which turned out to be right beside Fancher Falls. They almost fell into the same pool.

These two alone were worth the trip. Simply stunning.

Post break, back in a few.

Next stop was to be Burgess Falls. This one turned out to be a bust. We boated as far as possible and were going to walk up, but the rocks were so slick that there was a real chance of a broken head or leg, so I called it off. The next time we go visit her sister, we will hike in from the top of the falls instead. I did try my hand at kayaking down that river. No luck, it was too shallow.

Back out and on the lake we went.

I do love boating in the mountains. These were more like really big hills, but close enough. Compared to my normal boating area, they were huge.

On the way back toward the state park, we started looking for a cliff to jump off of. The first stop had this guy hanging out.

For some reason my wife didn't want me staying there, so we moved on. We eventually did find a good spot but I'm pretty sure y'all don't want to see a pale fat guy jump off a rock.

That pretty much wraps up Monday. Next installment to come.

Tuesday and Wednesday were much like Monday. Exploring the lake, swimming and teaching my 11 yo how to ski.

These rock walls were amazing to someone from the flat lands on the coast. There were miles of them on this lake.

This is the "cabin" we stayed in. Other than the lack of view of anything other than the pool, they weren't too bad.

Next comes Thrusday.

Thursday we were loaded up and back on the road, headed to Nashville for a family wedding.

This is a 65 mph shot of the Caney Fork River as I40 crossed it about 5 times. This is the river that flows out of Center Hill Lake. The entire river had a layer of fog floating above it that was really pretty.

My sister in law was getting married and since I wasn't going to be attending, or chauffeuring my wife, to all the girly events, I dropped her at Enterprise to get a car, dropped the boat at the hotel, and the boys and I went exploring again. Off into the woods we went.

First stop was something I had seen on Google Earth. The Narrows of the Harpeth State Historic Area contains the Patterson Forge Tunnel. For some reason the pictures I took of it turned out like crap so here is a generic internet shot.

We spent a couple of hours walking around there. I really wanted to launch the canoes, but there wasn't enough time, so we took the scenic route, back to the hotel, through the Cheatham Wildlife Management Area. The plan was to cut through the WMA on dirt roads on the way back to the hotel.

After 15 miles of gravel roads, we came to the paved road we needed and found the gate locked. So I mapped out an alternate route and back into the woods we went.

This time the road got a little skinny and steep. Luckily, it was dry and the truck has a LSD, or we would have never made it up some of the steeper clay parts.

After that it was time to get ready for the rehearsal dinner, that killed the rest of Thursday.

More to come.

Friday we had free until 3:00pm so the boys and I went downtown and visited the Tennessee State Museum. It was a good way to kill a cloudy morning.

I shot a ton of pictures. Here are a few of the more interesting ones. No flash photography was allowed so some of them look a little weird.

Hand crank wood lathe.

Matched set of pistols.

Peddle powered metal lathe.

Rifling a barrel.

The rest of the day was spend doing wedding stuff.

Saturday we got up early, loaded up and hit the road headed back toward South Carolina.

This time we went around the other side of the Great Smokey Mountains NP and that put us on the Dragon.

Not the twistiest road I've ever been on, but not bad. The old tuck managed it with no problems. We stopped and visited the Tree of Shame.

Took the required picture with the Dragon.

Then we made it here.

At this point I almost called my business partner to let him know he was on his own for another week and backed to boat in the water. There was a campground on the edge of the lake, beautiful mountains, cool, then I remembered I'm pretending to be a responsible adult. So we piled in the truck and headed to Maggie Valley to crash in a crappy hotel.

I can't come through the Waynesville area without taking a cruise down the Blue Ridge Parkway. So Sunday morning found us climbing into the clouds. We ran the parkway from Maggie Valley all the way to I40.

It was very cloudy and rainy. Still beautiful.

Then it was I40 and home.

It was a good trip. I'm ready to go again.

Cool trip. I love the area around the Smokies.