Hiking Section 1

It was time to get back in the woods so Randy and I took a backpacking trip on the Foothills trail.  We hiked part of the first section of this 76 mile trail.  Section one starts at Table Rock State Park and heads toward Sassafras Mountain.  The stretch is roughly 10 miles long, but we had a shorter hike in mind.

Boulder that looks like the bow of a ship.

Camping in the state park is only allowed in their campgrounds.  Backpacking, or trail side camping is not allowed so we decided to hike the trail for about five miles.  That was far enough to get us outside the boundary of the state park.

Taking a break on the trail.

We hiked uphill all afternoon and we were rewarded with some great views.  The dog was doing pretty well overall.  There were a few times when she was on the leash that she would pull me one way or another but once we cleared the park and I didn't anticipate many other people and released her to walk on her own.

Standing on a large bald area looking back toward Table Rock.

We walked near the top of the Drawbar cliffs and then started downhill for about a 3/4 of a mile.

Looking over Drawbar cliffs.  Somewhere below the rock wall is where we would camp.

As we arrived in an area of huge boulders it started raining.  Within a few minutes it was thundering and the rain was coming down pretty steady.  I covered up our packs and Randy grabbed a tarp.   A few minutes later we had the tarp strung up between some trees and we watched it rain from there.
This would be our camp.

Our camp.

Fooling around under the tarp while it was raining.

Another angle of our camp.  Notice the large boulders surrounding us.

I tried a fire after the rain and actually got it going pretty well after a lot of work. After dinner we walked down the trail a little ways and hung our food.  It's kinda like a pinata for bears.

Follow the white rope in the center of this photo.  You will see a small bag between two tree trunks.  That's how you hang food!

Shortly after getting our food hung it started raining again. The rain steady rain was enough to completely wipe out the fire.   By 9pm we were in bed.

Getting dark.  This was before the final rain.  You can see the fire glowing on the left. 

Randy was in a hammock under his tarp, my tent was nearby, and the dog slept under the hammock.  Everything seemed great.  Everything except the giant root that I had placed my tent over.

At midnight I awoke to hard rain.  Did I mention there was no rain in the forecast, yet this was the third rain of the evening? Randy was getting some water in his hammock so he ran into the tent with me.  The dog stayed under the tarp.  There was no way I was letting a dog in my tent.

Thankfully no bears ate us or our food through the night.  After recovering our food bag and having breakfast we broke camp and headed back the way we came.  It was a quiet morning on the trail and we didn't see too many people on our way back to the car.   We did see a few small snakes, including one that had me scream like a girl when I almost stepped on it.

This is known as the Lighthouse.  It's a shallow cave at the base of Drawbar cliffs.  This was about a tenth of a mile from our camp.  With all the rain, we should have probably taken shelter in there.

Here's Randy collecting some water from a (low flow) waterfall into his filter bottle.

Our total trip was around 10 miles long and we saw some amazing scenes of nature.  Even with the rain we had a fantastic trip.  It just reminded me how much I missed being on the trail.

 This is looking back toward Table Rock.