Spontaneous Hiking

Jarred had his fantasy football draft this past Sunday so Jack and I went over to Popo and Moma Jo's to just hang out and play around. When we walked in, Moma Jo said, "I was thinking about a picnic in the mountains." Who am I to say no to a trip to the mountains so we packed up a lunch and headed to the Smokies. We took a gravel road along side the river and found a nice spot to picnic. After lunch we drove to the end of the gravel road and took the hiking trail for a little ways into the mountains. Jack kept saying, "We're going up, up, up." and to him it probably looked pretty steep. We didn't hike far since we really weren't hiking prepared. Kelly and Abbott are coming over this weekend so we might try again. What little time we did spend was very nice and the weather was cool.

Popo Pondering.

The river spot we ate lunch by.

There were tons of butterflies all around and they weren't shy.

Jack was excited about this waterfall in the mountain.

Isn't it pretty?

We were brave and tested the water. It was really cold, but after a few seconds you got used to it. This was actually a place in the river that was more like a pool and would have been fun to swim in if it was warmer... like 105 degrees instead of 80 degrees.

Another waterfall in the mountains.

At the beginning of our hike we took time to read the signs and decided we would not camp at site #28.

Jack is trying to decide which trail we should take. He wanted to hike to the Appalachian Trail, but we decided to try it next time.

We were also going to take the quiet walkway, but we couldn't because we had Jack with us. :)

They are so adventurous.

I had to stop and rest on this nice reclining rock.

Dad was able to coast down the hill and get excellent gas mileage.

We stopped at a popular swimming spot and a place where lots of people tube and float the river. There were a lot of people swimming and we thought they were crazy because the weather wasn't even normal swimming weather and the water was very cold!

We waded in it for a little while, but when our feet turned blue we got out.

Popo is showing Jack how to skip rocks, but we think he needs to learn from Aunt Kelly. She gave a very good lesson on a video from Red River when she was little and could be an expert rock "skidder".

We had a great day and we're looking forward to a fun weekend with Kelly and Abbott. We'll get to see fireworks on Sunday and we're planning to spend a lot of time outside. If you want to see a slide show from the hike, check out dad's blog here.