Peaches the Pitbull just turned 10! To celebrate her tenth-of-a-century anniversary we took a trip to Sweetwater Creek State Park, one of my personal all-time favorite recreational havens just west of Atlanta (and Peaches’ too!).
Peaches’ Birthday Bash at Sweetwater Creek State Park
30 miles to Shuckstack: A journey thru the Great Smoky Mountains
The sky opens up with a light rain as we head out out on the Lost Cove Trail around Fontana Lake. This short stretch of dirt will connect us with the Eagle Creek Trail, which we’ll follow into the remote stretches of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was 90-something degrees when we left the valley surrounding Knoxville, but here’s it’s pleasantly hovering in the mid-70s. I can’t complain.
On its face, a 30-mile hike in three days seems like a piece of cake. Equally divided, that’s only 10 miles daily–but as we’re about to find out, legs of this trip aren’t equal, campsites are sporadic, and there’s 5,000-feet of near-vertical mountain between us and the finish line.
Adventures in sound: Big Ears 2016
You don’t always have to travel to some far-flung destination to experience something new and adventurous. Sometimes those experiences find you, and this past weekend was one of those times. The Big Ears Festival transformed downtown Knoxville into an otherworldly soundscape.
The path to Chaos Crags at Lassen Volcanic National Park #TBT
After moving to Redding, California in September 2013, this hike to Chaos Crags in Lassen Volcanic National Park offered my wife and I our first real dose the stunning beauty Northern California is known for. According to this old Word document I found, we undertook this hike in late October, 2013, a couple of years before I launched this little travel blog. So here it is, my first and possibly only #TBT (Throw Back Thursday) post of a hike from yesteryear:
The highest point in Knox County, Tennessee
When January gives you a 60-something-degree weekend (and just a week after snow at that!), you don’t ask questions and you go outside. My wife and I didn’t argue. We grabbed pit bull Peaches and set our sights on House Mountain, a pointy bit of hill just eight miles outside of Knoxville that also happens to be the highest point in Knox County, Tennessee, and off we went.
To the bayou at Fontainebleau State Park
A night’s antics on Bourbon Street was still taking its toll when my wife and I reached Fontainebleau State Park on the north banks of Lake Pontchartrain around noon. Thankfully our hikes — or strolls, rather — through the marsh lands turned out to be easy to navigate and not at all strenuous, even being a bit hungover.
Into the wild at Slickrock Creek
We would have made it into the woods before dark, but instead we stopped at the Tapoco Lodge right over the North Carolina border to see an old friend there cooking pizzas. It was Friday night and we ate sandwiches and drank IPA until sundown, then we made for the Slick Rock Creek trailhead and headed in.
By the time my wife and I made it onto the trail it was nearly pitch black. For a few minutes we could see the fog rising thick off the Little Tennessee River, then nothing but the 40 feet of trail lit by our headlamps. The fog eventually made its way to the trail about 50 feet about the river and visibility dropped even more.
Arachnophobia on Sharp’s Ridge
Editor’s Note: Have I been slacking? It doesn’t feel like it. Even though I haven’t posted in nearly two months now, I’ve been busy. You may remember in one of my last posts I laid out our month-long itinerary for a trip across Europe. We made the trip, and as soon as we got back to the states we hit the ground running, officially making the move to Knoxville, Tenn. and starting work in a four-day window. At any rate, expect journal-style entries from our European adventure to start popping up soon, and for now there’s this:
I can’t believe there’s nobody else on this trail. It’s 10 a.m. on a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning in Knoxville, Tenn. and the pooch and I are virtually the only ones out here at Sharp’s Ridge Memorial Park just north of downtown. What’s going on here, Knoxville?
This place is a mountain biker’s paradise. The first thing I see after finding my way onto one of the unmarked trails running the south face of the ridge is a sign for the expert-level mountain bike trail that cuts off to the right. “No foot traffic” it warns, so I go left.
Gail talks about making a Savannah Rose
For six years now (roughly since 2009) this gal, Gail, has been making palm roses and selling them on the streets of Savannah, GA. Also known as the Savannah Rose, Gail was folding flowers in a park along River Street on a Tuesday morning when my wife and I stopped to take things in and chat a bit.
Dispatches: Trucking from Redding, CA to Knoxville, TN
It was a grueling six-day journey to pack all of our earthly belongings across the United States from Redding, California to our soon-to-be new home in Knoxville, Tennessee, but by some miracle of fortitude my wife and I managed to survive the roughly 2,700-mile trek. We lost four tires on the Penske Big Bird moving truck along the way and — while we aimed to just spend eight hours on the road each day — some days the sun beat us to our destination as our trip ran long. (See our full trip itinerary)
Inevitably the days start to blur together when you’re punching the pedal for 500+ miles every day, so I decided to keep notes each night (or most nights, at least) during our travels. Looking back it’s a great experience to remember, but at the moment you couldn’t pay me to be stuck again in that 16-foot box truck in the middle-of-nowhere Texas. These are dispatches from our misadventures and ultimate salvation, from camping on the road back east and some of the sights we’ve seen along the way.