Best hiking to date!!

This was definitely the best and most fun hiking I have ever done!  Warning, there will probably be a lot of pictures :)

My dad, oldest son, Kyle and I went camping at Hot Springs for 5 days/4 nights.  We had a blast!  Kyle has only been hiking a couple of times so I wasn't sure if he would have as much fun as my dad and me, but he is a hiking machine and ready to do a thru hike.  

We arrived at the Hot Springs Resort and Spa on Wednesday just in time for the rain.  The campground was nice, but nowhere on their website did it mention the train tracks.  We were probably camped about 150 feet from them.  It reminded me of one of our stations at work.  Luckily the train didn't come thru as often as it does at the station.  It did come thru nightly, usually several times.   

My worry with this trip was that I would hurt myself and be out of work for awhile.  Little did I know that I would injure myself at the campground!  The first day there I was walking down to the river in my flip flops, twisted my ankle and nearly busted a toe.  It was bruised and sore but nothing a little tape couldn't fix.  I wasn't about to let it ruin our adventure.  

French Broad River next to the campground

The weather was supposed to be questionable on our first day hiking so we decided to head out to Max Patch and hike part of the AT.  The views from the Bald were amazing!!  And Kyle had a couple of girls stalk him but he was pretty oblivious to that fact.

We didn't make it to the shelter before the rain started, but that was half the fun for the first day!  We enjoyed lunch and good conversation (and yay it had a privy) while we waited for the rain to pass.  The rhododendron tunnels were so cool!  It was like everything I've read in the trail journals and books.  We would have kept heading North but I think my mom would have tracked us down and had a few choice words for us :)

I don't know how he stayed so dry!

After an awesome first day hiking, we headed back to the campground to build a fire and cook some sausages over the open flame.  One of my favorite things about camping :)  We also taught Kyle how to play Backgammon and he taught us the strategy to Chinese Checkers.  

Our second day hiking we headed back out to the AT to find the fire tower on Rich Mountain.  I have never climbed such a steep trail!  We told Kyle to HYOH and we would meet him at the tower.  Being young, it didn't take him nearly as long as it took us.  I was a bit of a nervous mom telling him to head out, but I figured he would either be at the tower when we arrived or somewhere in TN, but eventually would backtrack to get more food from me.  

Kyle was at the top of the tower waiting on us when we got there.  We met several thru hikers and section hikers along the way and had lunch with 3 of them.  That was a lot of fun!  I also got to do my first trail magic YAY 

The 360° view from the tower was awesome!  I'm really glad we chose this hike for day 2 since the weather was perfect!

On the way back down we found a stealth campsite and had a snack and some fun taking selfies

Day 3 we chose a nice trail along the Laurel River.  It started out as a nice flat trail.  Then we came to the storm damage.   This was actually the easiest part to go thru.  We went under, over and around many trees.

We found a nice spot to have a snack and cool off.  Then the rock skipping contest began!  I lost very early. Apparently they are supposed to skip at least once and not just KerPlunk into the water!  We declared Kyle the rock skipping champion.  I was just having fun playing in the water and soaking my feet.

There were so many beautiful flowers along the trail.  I didn't even get pictures of all of the varieties.

   

  

I thought we were going to lose Kyle here.  This is called the "Stackhouse"  It's a popular place to jump off the rocks into the river.  The paramedic in me was cringing watching this because it doesn't go straight down. You have to jump far enough out to miss the actual stack of rock.

Another view of the river.  It was sooo beautiful!  I love walking near water.  The sounds could lull me to sleep in a minute!

We eventually came to the end of the trail where it is supposed to loop around from the railroad tracks at the French Broad River.  At this point none of us wanted to wander around in the heat to look for where the trail goes back into the woods.  It was probably about an 1/8 of a mile that we missed and nobody was disappointed!  

A few more selfies on the way back (that was fun teaching dad how to do a selfie!  I won't show the ones he took with my phone hehe)

We did decide that we should rent this cute cabin for mom next time....so she'll let us have a next time :D

Planning a trip to Fontana Dam next....

Happy Trails!