Southverve

(Below is the final blog about the hike to Brushy Mountain in June) We keep going.  The hike always becomes this – keep going no matter how tired until you reach the top of something.  On this day, it started with the four hour drive from Cincy to the trailhead in the Smokies and up.  [...]

(Below is another blog about my trip to the Smoky Mountains in June) Coming up on Grotto Falls, the sound of the creek rushes stronger.  Then we come around the last turn of gnarled roots and wedged boulders.  It’s not the highest falls in the Smoky Mountains, but a great sluice of water comes down [...]

(Below is another blog from my trip to the Smoky Mountains in late June) As soon as we unload the luggage and food into our room, we get back in the car and drive up Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail until we reach the trailhead to Grotto Falls. Several years ago our first hike in [...]

We drove down to the Smoky Mountains for a week—my wife, my son, and I—a week away from Cincinnati, a week for hiking.  Always, going across the Ohio River is transformative.  I look to my left for barges of coal and the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, which resembles Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge, and the new [...]

For a week in late June 2009, I went to the Smoky Mountains with my wife and son.  Included here are a series of interconnected blogs about that journey.  In late July I’ll be heading deeper south for a longer stay.