July 3: Waterfall Hike

There's a wonderful group called the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy that is working to buy private land for preservation, especially in the North Carolina / Tennessee highlands. We are lucky to have ties to this group, because their land is open to the public but unknown to most hikers...beautiful places that you need person-to-person directions to get to (i.e. turn right by the church, stop at the metal gate on your left after three more churches...).

We took the boys to Molly's Ranch, one of SAHC's properties, in October. It's a beautiful mix of woods, meadows and a series of rushing waterfalls and crystal-clear swimming holes along a cold mountain stream. The boys got soaked then, in the cool fall weather, so we wanted to take them back in bathing suits and summer warmth so they could swim more comfortably.

(Above) Along the way: blackberries grow wild all over these mountains. We were just a bit too early.

Trying to find the right path down to the creek can be tough. Adam took Isaac rock-hopping to the waterfall, but I wasn't ready to do that with Jonah yet. So we found this path, with twisted lines of barbed wire across it about halfway down. We had to sit on our bottoms, lean back and slide under it through the mud...not ideal, but we got there.


Then we were at a beautiful waterfall and a clear swimming hole full of rocks.


The boys loved it.









Adam showed them how to build dams and change the flow of the water.


We'd seen a baby snake slither across the trail on the way to the water, and then we found a crawfish. I'd never seen one alive before - I think the closest I'd come was a po' boy in New Orleans. And luckily, it didn't look like this on my sandwich.


We could see straight through to the bottom.


We played until the boys were tired, and then we headed back for lunch and naps. Adam carried Jonah back across the rocks, which was much easier.




I walked with Isaac and was so impressed with his navigation skills and coordination. He, like I, was scanning the stream and finding the route he wanted to take. I'd picked the easiest route, and he kept wanting to go the hard way - climb the big boulders and go through the deep pools - so we did, and he did great.
In the little pools, I showed him the water striders - one of my favorite insects. Sometimes people call them Jesus Bugs, and you can see why.


The path home...