Our plan was to hike a moderate difficulty 3.2 mile up and back hike on Lonesome Lake trail. Lonesome Lake is a somewhat isolated mountain lake on the path of the Appalachian Trail.
One cool feature was that it left from the campground so that meant no driving needed. We got started up this rocky, rooted, and muddy trail and noticed right away how foggy everything was.
It looked as if the clouds stretched right down to the mountains. Everything was very wet - a small shake of a tree would give you a tree shower and the rocks were pretty slippery.
The hike up was fairly challenging and with the humidity, it didn't take long to be covered in sweat.
Our mid hike reward was supposed to be a beautiful view of the mountains across Lonesome Lake. Kind of like this:
Instead what we saw was this:
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| You'll have to trust us. There's a lake behind us. |
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| We're just glad we aren't being photobombed by a moose. |
The top of the hike offered several different choices of side hikes but we choose to walk around Lonesome Lake. This path was largely made of large wood planks resembling railroad ties.
We saw moose tracks and you had the sense that a moose could come walking through this dense and foggy area at any moment. We came upon Lonesome Lake and could on only see about 10 feet as it was covered with fog. Rogan yelled "Echo!" across the lake and we were surprised to hear a loud and clear echo come back.
We eventually came to a station for the Appalachian Trail. This is an area where hikers can stop for a night's rest and even order some food to be delivered.
We were amazed at how nice the shelter was. It had solar panels on the roof, electricity, bathrooms, and even hot showers. These were more amenities than we had enjoyed for the past couple weeks!
As a small aside, I saw on CNN after we returned that a woman had broken the record for fastest ever to complete the approximately 2,200 mile Appalachian Trail. She did it in just 6 weeks traveling an average of 45 miles a day! Considering how tough and vertical many of these trails are, that is really impressive.
Later that day we took a drive to an area called "the basin" just a mile down the road. (Greg and Jen actually rode their bikes.) This hike was really beautiful with many smoothed rock formations created by various flowing mountain streams. The cool, clear water tempted the kids, but we cautioned them to stay out as signs warned that they were not allowed to swim there.
At one particular spot, we spread out to explore a little. I suddenly heard Beth shout, "Rogan fell in!" I turned to see Rogan struggling to stand in a waist deep stream by the bridge. I hustled over to give him a hand out of the water when I stepped on the same slippery spot that he fell on and I, too slid into the water. When we both get out, we are both soaking wet up to our waists.
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| The scene of the accident. |
Rogan is crying because he was scared and doesn't want to continue the hike. I suggest that the others go on and we will stay there and dry out in the sun. It takes Rogan awhile but he eventually gets over the event and sees the humor in it all. We decide to catch up to the others on the trail. We find them and we hike on the a neat area where water flows into many small pools over smooth rock. The kids are begging to get in to the water now and the adults relent. They have a blast sliding on the rocks into a small pool.
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