Still Gravity

View from the summit.  This walk covered over seven miles roundtrip. It started at our campsite and we reached the Historic Cumberland Gap Pass and the Tri-State Peak where you are a step away from Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky - or even can put a foot in one state and the other on another one.  Trailhead by the campground.  The trail was closed by a broken bridge and we had to make a detour through the small town of Cumberland Gap - photos of this place in the next post.  We climbed back up to the trail through the Iron Furnace trailhead.  Beautiful forest in this trail.  On the route, we passed a secondary trail that goes to the site of Fort Foote, an old fort from the Civil War - we didn't go.  The point of intersection of three states.  The Cumberland Gap was a crossing point of the Appalachian Mountains used by Indians and white settlers during the 1700s. It opened the Ohio Valley to a wave of migrants.  The gap is deeply associated to the explorer Dr. Thomas Walker and th

Breakfast in the camp.  We got three nights in the campground of the national park to explore the historic gap in these mountains - it's named Cumberland Gap Wilderness Road Campground. The campground is huge. 154 sites, but only 41 with electricity and most are pretty sloped. We had to compensate with the traction recovery boards under the front wheels.  The truck camper in the first campsite.  Next day we switched to a flatter site and this made a big difference. Not perfect flat, but flat enough for a good sleep.  Our second campsite.  The rangers were very helpful with this change. Nice place.  (Posted from the phone.) 

One of the doors to the fort.  This is an interesting historic place we found by Vonore, Tennessee: A British fort built in 1756-57 at the outset of the French and Indian War. The barracks.  Fort Loudoun was captured by the Cherokee and, of course, what we see today is a historical reconstruction made in the 1930s. Cherokee house.  The following map shows the British forts at the time.  C added a new member to our truck camper crew in Fort Loudoun, a British teddy bear. The cute bear ready to travel.  (Posted from the phone.)

The narrow bridge over Citico Creek.  One of these days of camping in Indian Boundary , we took a long walk to the Citico Wilderness - over seven miles roundtrip.  The path was the Citico dirt road up to the bridge over Citico Creek.  The twisting road down to the creek.  What a beautiful spot by the creek with a few sites for dispersed camping.  We stayed at the shores of the creek for a while to rest and eat some snacks.  All is peace at the beautiful creek.  On the way back, we saw a deer mom with a baby drinking water at the creek. Also two wild pigs speeding up through the forest after they sensed us.  Walking on the bridge.  We were the only hikers through the area and only saw a few pickup trucks and SUVs.  The original plan was to go to the triple waterfalls on Doublecamp forest road, but they were too far for a hike and we woke up lazy to move the truck camper. (Posted from the phone.)

View from one of the overlooks of the Cherohala Skyway.  Traveling north through southeast Tennessee, we stopped at the small city of Tellico Plains, place of one of the biggest villages of the Cherokee Indians named  Great Tellico.  We got some maps at the visitor center in Tellico Plains.  There we visited the Cherohala Visitor Center. The modern building has a small room museum with displays about bear safety, a few items about the old inhabitants of the area - the Cherokee Indians -, and stuff related to the construction of the Cherohala skyway.  The tamed bears of the visitor center.  Then up we went through the twisting scenic road up to the mountains, stopping at mostly every overlook.  The truck camper in an overlook of the Cherohala Skyway.  Up there we stayed three nights in a campground at the shores of Indian Boundary Lake. Our campsite on Indian Boundary.  The hike around the lake was wonderful. Easy, flat, and fresh trail that crosses some small creeks. Great 3.2 mile loo

The author dressed with a kooletah, an Inuit coat made of caribou skin - Photo from the book.  In these days of traveling and camping I finished the book My Arctic journal: a year among ice-fields and Eskimos.    The author was Josephine Diebitsch Peary, wife of the Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary. She accompanied her husband in the expedition to Greenland of 1891-1892.  Josephine was a keen observer and took notes of many details of the life of the Eskimos - the Inuit.  She explained their process for building tents from seal skin sewed with narwhal sinus and for poles using narwhal tusks - wood was precious in Greenland and probably it's now.  Warning: her views of the Eskimos may offend some readers in our times of snowflake sensibilities.  Enjoy these experts from the book:  Her first time inside an Eskimo tent.  ...to my dismay the Eskimo ladies belonging to the house took off all of their clothing except their necklaces of sinishaw, just as unconcernedly as though no one were

It goes from the Chilhowee campground to an outlook on the ridge with a Gazebo.  The gazebo on the mountain ridge.  The map of the forest recreation area says this trail is intermediate. It's short and easy - a mile roundtrip? A gentle slope.  Great views of west Tennessee up there. Looking west towards Tennessee. Thunderstorm late in the afternoon. We got hail. The new gazebo tent managed all well. We remained inside, but with the high winds got wet. Lot of rain water running down from the mountains through the hiking trail. In the middle of the hailstorm seated in the tent. (Posted from the phone.)

Cool waterfall in Cherokee National Forest . Benson falls in the summer.  Easy hike. Three miles roundtrip with only over 300 feet climb. The worst section is the steps down to the fall.  High smooth shower. C had a blast getting wet in a big shower of cold water. I was the photographer, so didn't follow. This spot is beautiful, but someone tried to make it awful.  Someone left an undesired present at the waterfall. And then, we got the rain.  Looking at the rain from the truck camper. (Posted from the phone.)

Cherokee National Forest.  Four nights at Chilhowee, a recreation area in the mountains of the Ocoee District of Cherokee National Forest - southeast Tennessee.  Our campsite at Chilhowee.  The campground is at 2000 feet and we got a small break from the summer heat.  There is a small beach at McKamy Lake. After the Florida beaches it's not appealing.  McKamy Lake at Chilhowee.  The most popular trail in the area goes to Benton Falls, a cascade at a high of 1600 feet.  There were warnings of active bears all around. A camp host told us of a 300 pounds male that came wandering through the campground.  We ran the 3 and 5 watts fans all night long from the small power station. It still holds 70% of charge. The freezer is fine running from the more powerful Bluetti. (Posted from the phone.)

A state park in northern Georgia between the Allatoona Lake and the Etowah River.  Beautiful forest, beautiful lake.  The red comes from the iron rich soil - it was once a mining area.  We hiked the trail from camp to the old cabin - the 3.5 miles Sweet Gum Trail. Many deer along the way.  The cabin is of the "dog trot" type typical of the southeast.  The old cabin by the shores.  We saw this design in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. It has two rooms separated by a hallway that allows air to flow. One room is kitchen and the other bedroom.  The lake is beautiful and many go for fishing and watersports.  Our camper in the park campground.  (Posted from the phone.)

The campground is in a forested area, but our site didn't has much cover from the sun.  Overnight stop in southern Georgia. We arrived two hours before the sunset.  This park is around a lake created by a dam of the Little River - another Little River. There is at least one river with this name in each state we've visited.  Good clean camp, but the heat... 96 degrees with a feeling of 103. Sum mosquitoes galore at sunset and you get a close picture of Hell.  A gopher tortoise burrow with its characteristic apron of excavated soil was close to our site.  The slow moving fella mowed a lot of grass around. I took a bunch of photos of its eating frenzy with the DSLR - images not available yet for the blog.    This park should be a good place to come in the fall or the winter.  (Posted from the phone.)

The house over the Native American mound.  Part of Canaveral National Seashore, the small park preserves two Timucuan mounds with an old house seating on top of each one.  The Timucuan Native Americans came here to fish since 500 AD. The discarded shells and trash became the small hills - we visited once a huge mound  on the other side of Mosquito Lagoon by Apollo Beach. There were many other mounds here, but all were destroyed to use as construction materials. Thank the houses for the two survivors. A paradoxical way to preserve ancient remains. (Posted from the phone.)

Gasoline vapors bulging the rotopax with the heat.  Florida temps this summer are over the top. The feel is usually over the 100 degrees.  Gasoline vapors expansion in the rotopax have been brutal - you can see the bulge in the photo.  I had to vent vapors from the container one or twice a day in previous years. Now I'm doing it four times. What a nuisance!  No escape. This happens to all gasoline tanks when it's too hot -no matter which brand. Also happens  with high elevation. It's physics. (Posted from the phone.)

Sunset in Flagler Beach, Florida.  Back to the road. Again traveling and camping.  Some days at the shores of the Atlantic. Flagler beach is all coquina sand. Means reddish sand from pieces of shells and mollusks.  Not many people here these days. Should be the heat of this summer. But it's windy and the beaches are always fresher - just a bit.  With the twilight, dolphins hunting in the ocean. One jumps here. One jumps there. What a show!  The sea. And the wonderful sound of the waves tonight.  Getting sleepy now. (Posted from the phone.)

Of course, beauty is not meaningless. Just ask these flowers.  Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some beauty is poisonous, or at least toxic. We grabbed all these pics in the Kanapaha Gardens of Gainesville, Florida.     Beauty works for many things - including love, decoration, sales, and manipulation.  But there is some truth in the meaningless of beauty in the sense that it's "meaningless until it is shared". Not sharing it means keeping the "beauty" just for yourself.  George Orwell wrote about this in  Burmese Days , his first novel.   So often like this, in lonely places in the forest, he would come upon something—bird, flower, tree—beautiful beyond all words, if there had been a soul with whom to share it.  Beauty is meaningless until it is shared .   Well, in 1934 there was not social media. Now it's different. Everybody shares beauty and ugliness.  What's the meaning of beauty when we can't share it with others?  In those cases, be

This one is not venomous. But if you don't like snakes in general, neither will like constrictors. We found this dead Burmese phyton in a trail of South Florida.  Snakes need sun and heat to warm, so the general rule is that traveling further north implies less snakes around the camp.   The advice on national parks where we don't need to worry about snakes comes from a herpetologist - means, someone who knows a little bit about snakes.  Check his list if you suffer of ophidiophobia in this article .

Looks like this is the case. The environment has a saying in human evolutive adjustments.  New research on a tiny bone of one of the hobbits - Homo floresiensis - of  Flores Island suggests that this happened there.  Move to a remote island with no threats and limited food and, with time, people may shrink in size - including the brain.  Could this explain the small height of some eskimos of Greenland in the 19th century?  The explorer Josephine Diebitsch Peary with a family of eskimos in Greenland in 1891.   Check the whole tale about the new findings about Flores Island in this article of Nature . 

Polar bear killed by gunshots in 1891 - from the book of  Josephine Diebitsch Peary , "My Arctic journal: a year among ice-fields and Eskimos". The web is full of anecdotal evidence and regurgitation of anecdotal evidence. Should we believe web tales or scientific research? Once in a while, it's healthy to check what the experts in a topic say.  Chuck Bartlebaugh - the man with 30+ years of taking photos and monitoring bears - said once,  Being well armed with knowledge is the greatest asset for safe travel in grizzly country. Being ignorant is dangerous. So, the first think is knowledge. About means of self-defense for most people, he advises bear spray.  Dr. Lynn Rogers - the guy studying black, grizzlies, and polar bears for 48+ years -, bets on protecting food and controlling odors in the camp. He also favors bear spray for deterrence.  This guy points that when bears trust people, they tend to ignore them. Fearful bears are prone to attack. The aggressive reaction d

You see them in a trail and you know that water is close.  Why? Because dragonflies need water for reproduction.  These fellas have 360-degrees vision thanks to big eyes with thousands of lens. They can fly as a helicopter and used to have a wingspan of two feet millions of years ago.  Check this photo  and the beauty of their wings.