I had already been to one state park and this is where I began my second adventure of the day. Too bad it was 'smoky' or whatever as this was one heck of a view. I'm parked outside the ranger station which is my first stop at all the parks I visit. From here I actually drove back down the mountain a bit to the trailhead that would take me to the cache.
Somewhere along the hike up the mountain. This was not an easy walk! There were a few very nice places to take a breather and this was one of them.
Same place but this time a view uncluttered by a human.
At one point the trail came close to a road and I saw this sign. I didn't know there was an "Eastern" continental divide. I thought there was just one continental divide. Learn something new every day.
At the summit and not far from the cache location. This is the first time I took a picture of myself using this nifty little tripod I got. I fastened it to a tree and voila! I may be hard to see what with the camouflage shirt and all.
Same location but I wanted to make sure you noticed the elevation.
At the next park... Tallulah Gorge... and this beautiful scene made even better by the noise made by the rushing water. This was really something.
Just another view as I meandered along the rim.
I noticed this bridge down near the bottom and continued walking to see how to get down to it. I did zoom in on this shot so the bridge looks much closer than it was.
Found the steps down to the bridge and the water... and numerous warning signs.
Being the good person that I am and not wanting to cause the rangers any troubles I chose to bypass the 620 steps to the bridge and 1062 steps to the base of the next falls. I'm sure there are some really great postcard shots of it. Besides, the GPS was NOT pointing in this direction to the cache... happily!
I did get to see this rather neat, and noisy site a bit further on. It's a dam that was built to control the waters flowing through the gorge. This sucker was quite tall and the sound of the water coming from it was really something.
The next stop was the park that I was going to spend the night at. My first stay at a state park campground and my first adventure in the van. I was very satisfied on both counts. I had plenty of room in the van and was quite comfortable. Curtains... a reading light... fan... cooler... what more could I ask for? Nothing :)
Midway through my first campout supper. I decided to keep it really simple and just grilled a couple of hotdogs on the little George Foreman. Worked darn well. The Pringles were awful and I will work on that for next time. I learned a few things, which I expected, that will make my next outing even better than this one. Looking forward to it already!
Next morning I closed up shop and headed to the cache at the park I stayed at. I knew ahead of time that driving through this little creek crossing was necessary to get to the cache but coming up on it early in the morning was kind of a surprise anyway. I thought this was so cool. Water was about axle depth but it was moving right along. Fun :)
And the last cache of the first part of this trip. Six parks... six caches found... wonderful sites seen. This makes 24 state parks visited and state caches found. My goal is to get to at least 6 more this calendar year. Piece of cake :)
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