Day Thirteen

Today we went looking for waterfalls. We started at Laurel Falls, a simple 1.3 mile hike along paved trail off 441, the main cross-park thoroughfare. The accessibility was not lost on The Masses. The trail was clogged with families with small children, grandparents with canes and teenagers decked out in bikinis. This was not our cup of tea, but we pressed on to see what was touted as the tallest falls in the park. Rob dealt with the crowd by walking as fast as is humanly possible in sandals. "Excuse us," was heard repeatedly as we flew up the trail. One amusing sign along the way was: Caution. High vertical drops. Falling deaths have occurred. Control children. We got to the top shortly and were wholly disappointed. The falls were less than spectacular, water just slipping over a jumble of rocks, made even less spectacular by the hordes of children playing in the water and parents taking postcard shots of their chitlins by the "falls." We asked a man to take our picture though, climbing up next to the falls like everybody else. He handed the camera back to us apologetically, "I couldn't figure out how to zoom." We are in the frame and so are the falls, so we were satisfied.

We decided to drive to the Rainbow Falls trailhead before eating our tabouli lunch, so off we went. After a stop in Gatlinburg so I could call Benboy for his birthday, we found the trailhead disappointingly jammed with cars like Laurel Falls. We were surprised since this falls requires a 2.7 miles hike in. We decided to try it anyways. Like a good omen, Robert spotted a three and a half foot long black snake. He was very tolerant of our picture taking and didn't even really want to move away from the trail when Robert poked him with a stick. He did eventually move though back to his tree stump home and then rattled his little tail out his hole like bait trying to attract a meal. It was cool and a great start to a hike.

Around the next corner we got another treat. We met a father/daughter pair and asked about trail usage to find out that there were actually not too many people on the trail, the falls were worth the hike, and they had seen a bear a mere .8 miles up the trail! My face lit up like Christmas in June I'm sure because we hadn't seen a bear yet, despite all the talk about them. I practically ran up the trail.

Despite Robert's and my best efforts, we spotted only Beardeercats. Eventually we gave up and picked up our pace. Notable along the trail were the occasional log bridges helping us cross the stream we were chasing up the hill. Life Lesson 21: waterfall trails tend to go uphill. On one such bridge, Robert managed to knock his camera lens cover loose and it dropped into the stream. There was an exciting sequence of events as he made chase since it got stuck by a rock for a bit before rushing downstream to find a new home (first casualty of the trip). This would have been a bummer except that it got us down to the stream where we found scads of salamanders playing at the juncture between air and water. We spent a good thirty minutes taking their picture, chasing them (Robert was successful!), and trying to feed hapless flies, of which there were many, to terrified spider friends.

Once the flies became too obnoxious we continued on our merry way, neither of us much remembering that the camera lens was now dangerously exposed. It took us a fair bit longer to reach the falls, but it was entirely worth the walk! The water came cleanly off a forty foot precipice and dropped onto an exposed rock ledge. We of course climbed up to it to take an impromptu shower. How can you blame us? Beautiful waterfall, no other people in sight, no proper shower in over a week and no promise of one to come...it was inevitable and wonderful. We even waited around for the sun to dry our sweat soaked shirts so they were warm and dry for the hike down.

One final surprise colored our decent...a BEAR! Another set of bikers up asked us if we had seen a bear because they had been told about a sighting early, but we wrote them off as just getting excited for nothing as we ourselves had earlier. Neither of us remembers who saw it first, but an adolescent sized bear was foraging about thirty yards off the trail. He smartly turned around to leave when he saw us, so we were welcome to watch him depart at our leisure. I was giddy. There was a family behind us that I creeped out by snapping at them to alert them of the bear, but they just came closer to show their kid - not afraid in the least. They were locals so they were accustomed to bears. I on the other hand was not and enjoyed it greatly.

We saw another bear on the way down from the trailhead in the car. About five cars were messily stopped in the road and gathered fearfully, but curiously on the shoulder, cameras at the ready. I got out to gawk as well, but the poor bear was hiding behind a tree to get away from the terrifying tourists. I quickly rejoined Robert, too cool to get out and gawk with the rabble he was still sitting in the car.

Dreaming of how were going to cook a big pot of red beans and rice, we returned to our campsite famished to find our stove was leaking propane at an alarming rate. After engineer-boy took it apart, we discovered the broken copper tubing and cursed our luck. Dinner was then prepared using our two backpacking stoves, burning the snot out of the bottom of Robert's thin backpacking pot and smoothed over with a couple of jiggers of whiskey. All and all a great day.

Then we went to bed...to find our air mattress incapable of holding any air. Thermarests saved the night and for once we were glad we brought about two of everything!