Last month, Mom and I went to Wells Hill Park in Fayetteville, TN to hang out with friends. The last time we saw them was right before the COVID-19 pandemic started. We arrived at the park before them and waited in excitement. Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait long. They arrived a couple of minutes after us. In the parking lot, we all excitedly greeted each other with long-overdue hugs and immediately started to talk. We moved our conversation to the adjacent pavilion where we savored delicious Crumbl cookies. Yum! There is no such thing as a favorite Crumbl cookie because they are all way too yummy.

I wish we were Hansel and Gretel because we needed a cookie crumb trail to follow since it was a bit hard to tell where the actual trail was at first. So instead, we walked in the mostly dry creek bed. As we wandered through the creekbed, my friend and I talked about books, school, and our new friends. Along the way, we saw flowers here and there scattered on the bank. We were so engrossed in our conversation about the Hunger Games series that we almost got separated from our moms. It was fortunate our moms were keeping an eye on us and alerted us to come back. We reunited with them by following a branch of the creek bed where it rejoined the trail.

They stopped us in the creekbed in order to take a picture. That’s when things went awry. While we stood in the creekbed surrounded by the high bank, my friend heard a hissing sound near us and yelled ‘Snake!’. We both immediately darted to safety (next to our moms) on the path. We were scared, but mostly startled. The snake was only a couple of feet away from us and didn’t look venomous. Just like us, the snake darted to safety, but not to its mom. It was also scared, but mostly startled. I hope it knew humans aren’t venomous.

After our reptilian encounter, we turned left at a bench on the trail. Soon after that, the trail became challenging where it crossed a small ravine. Our friends aren’t experienced hikers, so we all decided to go back the way we came and turned right at the bench instead. We did not regret going this way. Along the trail, we saw a giant patch of trilliums and other flowers, which were all gorgeous. The trilliums we saw weren’t exactly common. In fact, the specific species that we found, the sweet white trillium, is actually quite rare. For more information on the sweet white trillium, click the link here.

We continued past the beautiful trilliums and heard the sound of falling water. To me, it sounded like a loud, fast-paced pattering. When we heard this, we knew it was a waterfall. We looked down and saw a creek. Unfortunately, if we wanted to get to the creek, we would have to go down a slippery, muddy, and wet slope. Thankfully, there was a handline, which is basically a rope used to help someone climb. Using the handline, we slowly and carefully inched down the hill one at a time. After finally reaching the bottom, we walked a short bit and saw a pretty, tiered waterfall. Despite all of the bugs, the falls were still beautiful. After our moms were done taking pictures and my friend and I finished singing “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Encanto, we went back up the muddy hill singing “I Want It That Way”. After we finished singing, my friend and I started to talk about more music that we love. After a little bit, we started to chat about school, and before long, we were back at the parking lot. We sadly had to say bye, but we promised to hike together again in the future.

Hey guys! 

On Day 3, we completed our High Divide Loop camping trip. We were originally planning to stay on the trail for one more night, but we all wanted to get off the trail. The downhill terrain gave us confidence that we could easily complete the High Divide Loop on this day and not need to camp an additional night. The night before, as I mentioned in the last post (go read if you haven’t yet), I was doing calculations on how long the hike back to the car would be. It was 7-8 miles and I guessed we would get back to the car by 5:00 if the trail was downhill or flat.

We were expecting warm and clear weather, which was a happy change from the last two days and nights. We were still high up on a mountain, therefore, it was still cold when we woke up and got ready to leave. This was when we all noticed the gorgeous view at our campsite. In between some trees, we could see Mt. Olympus and Blue Glacier. Once we saw Miss Shanna again, she mentioned how she heard that the view was a rare sight. We didn’t see it when we arrived because it was dark and cloudy. After we finished packing up and admiring the view, we started the third section of our hike.

As we slowly went down the trail, we finally saw Heart Lake. As expected, it was heart-shaped until we got further down the mountain and hiked closer to the lakeshore. When we reached Heart Lake, the lake appeared to be more of a U-shape. We stopped to fill our bladders and explore the lakeshore. While we were there, we found out that we stayed at the wrong campsite. This was where we were supposed to stay the night before. As we were filtering water, Mom and I watched a little bird bouncing around in the lake. It was adorable. It dived, stayed under for a couple of seconds, then jumped out of the water.

As we continued on the trail, the lower in elevation we got, the less ice and snow we encountered. I thought the third day was a lot easier than the other two days, other than the distance of course. Unfortunately, after we entered the forest, we didn’t see a lot of great views, but the few we saw were of snowy mountains. They were pretty, but we had been in the snowy mountains for a couple of days by now, so it wasn’t anything new. It would probably have been more impressive if we had hiked the other direction toward the snowy mountains. We continued to make our way through the forest and eventually decided to take a snack break. After a while, the trail temporarily flattened where we had to cross a wide creek, but thankfully it was shallow. Soon enough, we reached Rocky Creek.

Originally, we planned to camp at Rocky Creek and hike for four days rather than three. We could’ve stopped because we had a permit to stay here for the night, but we all wanted to get off the trail. As we resumed hiking and said goodbye to what would have been our campsite for the night, we were surrounded by the forest. It was pretty with all of the greenery and mossy rocks. We soon reached one of the Sol Duc campsites and decided to stop for another snack break there. Afterward, we continued hiking for one to two miles and then saw a little hut we saw on Day 1. This meant we were close to Sol Duc Falls, which meant we were close to finishing the High Divide Loop. We were soon on a wider trail; that’s when we started seeing more people, a very good sign because it meant the parking lot was getting close.

We soon got to Sol Duc Falls, but I was super tired so we took a quick break. After we finished the break, we persisted because we wanted to get off the trail. When we ran into the little bridge we saw at the beginning of our hike on Day 1, I was happy. We were so close to the end! I started walking faster until we reached the last hill where I practically ran up it. And that’s when we saw the most glorious sight of all …the parking lot. We hobbled over to our car and put away our packs. I was so happy about being able to sit on something soft.

Because we finished the hike a day early, we had to find a place to stay. We tried the lodges in Olympic National Park, but they were full and had no more rooms. So we went back to Port Angeles to find a place to stay. Thankfully, we found a room at the Quality Inn where finally got to take showers! We were also grateful for food. I was excited to eat something that wasn’t freeze-dried. When we were picking up dinner, we found an ice cream truck called Welly’s Real Ice Cream. It was the best ice cream I’ve ever had! It tasted fresh and natural. I got the strawberry. Usually, I don’t like strawberry ice cream, but this was amazing. This was the perfect way to end our day and hike.

Hey Guys! This post is just in time for Valentine’s Day! Read on for my heartache and foot ache hiking to Faux Heart Lake.

Day 2 was less eventful than Day 1, except for when we parted ways with Miss Shanna and discovered Mom’s big camera no longer worked. Miss Shanna returned to the trailhead the way we came, and we continued on the High Divide Loop. I was kind of sad to say bye for now. After saying goodbye, our family explored the Lunch Lake area and admired the ice formations. That’s when we discovered that Mom’s camera wouldn’t turn on. Unfortunately, the night before Mom forgot to put her camera into her sleeping bag, and it settled into retirement as a very expensive brick. At least she had her phone and she could still take pictures with that.

We thought the trail was going to be 4 miles going downhill, but you’ll soon see that was a lie. When we left Lunch Lake, we had to backtrack UP the icy, stone stairs. I thought that was fun; Mom not so much. I practically ran up the stairs, which I later regretted when I became hangry. Once we got up, we continued past the boulder sandwich and back onto the High Divide Trail. I didn’t eat much for breakfast and burned my energy running up the stairs, so I was kind of tired and cranky plus I wanted a real sandwich. 

We continued on the High Divide Trail, sandwichless, and saw stunning red fall foliage and towering, snow-capped mountains. This part of the High Divide Trail offered views towards the southwest over the Hoh River and Hoh Lake until you reach Bogachiel Peak. It was nice to finally see the scenery I hiked so hard to reach instead of blizzard conditions like the day before. Eventually, we took a break at a scenic overlook to eat a light lunch of salami and other snacky foods. Not a sandwich, but still good. I’ll take it, mostly because I didn’t have a choice. During this break, I also played in the snow. 

As we continued past Bogachiel Peak and crossed the ridgeline, our view changed to the north and we could now see down into Seven Lakes Basin. I was so tired and cranky (still) that I didn’t fully appreciate the spectacular view, but I did count more than seven lakes. As we continued, I got even more frustrated because there were a LOT of PUDs (pointless ups and downs). When we saw a lake that looked like a heart, we all got excited because we were planning to camp at Heart Lake campground. Turns out it was a different lake, and I started to feel hopeless and we would never reach our campsite. Shortly after Faux Heart Lake (really called Lake Number 8), we got to somewhere that looked like our campsite. Since it was getting dark, we set up camp here. 

The campsite was nice except there was no water source nearby. It had two trees perfectly spaced for the hammock fly that we use for sheltering our cooking station. There was a big empty, flat spot for our tent. Water wasn’t a big issue that night because we still had plenty in our bladders. That night, we didn’t know about the amazing bonus we’d get the next morning.

I don’t remember what we ate (according to the photo, we had beef stroganoff), but after we finished dinner, we all started getting ready for bed. When we were all settling into our sleeping bags, I stayed up for a little bit, looking at the trail map for Day 3 because I didn’t want to be disappointed again. Once I was done, I put the map in one of the tent pockets and went to sleep. Not too long after, we heard noises outside of our tent. We heard leaves crunching and twigs snapping like something or someone was walking through the forest. We also heard some snuffling and shuffling. We think it was a BEAR, right outside of our tent. Thankfully, we didn’t end up becoming a triple-stuffed bear burrito. And that was the end of Day 2. Have a Happy Valentine’s Day! Read the next post about finding my “heart” on the High Divide Loop.

Hey guys! I finished another post about the Smokies. In this one, I’ll be talking about hiking up Mount LeConte using the Alum Cave Trail. It’s a classic Smokies hike and I hope you enjoy reading about it!

I’m EXHAUSTED. We did a 12+ mile hike, and I didn’t get much sleep the night before. Only 3 hours! I couldn’t sleep and we had to wake up early, so we would finish by sunset. The first half of the hike was very steep and uphill. Sounds like a lot of fun (sarcasm). First, we hiked to the halfway point, called Alum Cave Bluff, to eat a snack and take a break. The terrain was wet and muddy. We also saw a lot of plants and trees.

After our break, we continued up the mountain. It’s very steep so we had to be careful of our footing. We were hiking high up on a mountain, which meant we were in the clouds and our hair got wet. When we were close to the top, we took a quick bathroom break at the LeConte Lodge. The lodge itself hadn’t opened for the season yet, but we could still use one of the pit toilets. I’m so glad that they were available so I wouldn’t have to pee on the trail. Afterward, we continued up to the summit, but there was no view there! It was just a pile of flat rocks. Less than a mile past the summit, we finally got to our true destination, Myrtle’s Point. It was beautiful! We got lucky because when the clouds lifted, we could see the valley below. YAY! I’m glad that we could see a view instead of milk soup, like we saw at Charlie’s Bunion.

When we were leaving, we were all kind of sad and said bye to the spectacular view. We went back to the lodge and took another quick bathroom break, before starting the hike back down Mount LeConte. The trail was REALLY slippery and steep, which is much more dangerous when you go down than up. Thank goodness there were stairs or I would have probably slipped, fallen, and broken a lot of my bones. There were also ropes and cables to keep us steady. Once we reached Alum Cave Bluff, it was mostly easy downhill hiking. We picked up the pace and hiked at 2 mph instead of 1 mph like when we went up the mountain! Not to mention there were LOTS of people, and I got to pass them instead of the other way around!

After we passed Alum Cave Bluff again, we went through a cave tunnel thing again. I didn’t talk about it before because I totally forgot about it! The rock was gray with a layered, pointy pattern and it was really cool. We had to be very careful when walking through the tunnel because the path was wet and slippery.

By the end of the hike, I could barely walk because I was so sore from hiking 12+ miles up and down Mount LeConte. We got back to the car by the time the sun set. Whew! Our goal was to get back by sunset so we weren’t stumbling through the dark on a steep mountain trail. It felt amazing to finish such a long hike in ONE day. As a reward, on our way home, we went to a gas station/store. While Daddy got gas for the car, Mommy and I went into the store and got some well-deserved Rainbow Belts and deli meat. It was only the second time I’ve ever had Rainbow Belts, so it was a big deal for me, and it still is. Sadly, it’ll probably be another 5 years until I can have them again. We continued driving back to the cabin where we ate dinner. So it was an exhausting and sore-ta fun day.

Thank you for reading this post and I hoped you enjoyed this post. I’m hoping to post the next post soon. Onward… to the next post!

So, I kept my word. In the last post about Charlie’s Bunion, (go read if you haven’t yet) I said I would do another one about my trip to the Smokies, and here it is.

This hike was a lot more relaxing compared with Charlie’s Bunion. It’s called Mouse Creek, and there were three waterfalls in 4 miles. At the parking lot, we even saw tadpoles before we began our hike. 

At the first waterfall, we stopped and ate lunch because Mom was shaking from hunger. Sitting near the waterfall, we could barely hear each other talk because the thundering cascade was deafening. We found the perfect picnic rock that was conveniently placed in front of the waterfall, and it was a pretty cool view. It was perfect because it was big, dry, and flat. For lunch, we had our usual sandwich and chips. Mom even got to eat her Funyuns, but sadly not on a Bunion. It was more of a callous rock.

After lunch, we took a family selfie, which is when we pose for the camera. Thank goodness for a tripod and the Magic Clicker(remote trigger). Before Mom got the Magic Clicker for Christmas, she would have to dash across rocks and water in 10 seconds before the camera timer went off. So much safer with the Magic Clicker. 

At the second waterfall, we just played, and my right foot got soaked! There was also a big pool of water in front of the waterfall. I tried to take soft-water photos of the waterfall, but it was too far away. I was probably pretty small too.

 When we got to the third and final waterfall, it blew me away. It was HUMONGOUS! We hopped around on the rocks and took a few pictures there. We sat around waiting for Mom to finish taking pictures. We were there for about 15 minutes.

On this hike, we could’ve kept on going to the campsite. Of course, we were not camping, so we didn’t see any point in going, so we headed back.

After we got back from the waterfalls, we looked at the tadpoles again. Mom checked out other hikes in the area. We decided not to do them after looking at the map and saw that the hikes were long, and we went back to our car. When we got back to the car, we said bye to the tadpoles and went back to the cabin. When we got back, I talked to one of my friends and ate dinner. We had pasta, asparagus, and something I don’t remember. The next day, we had a long hike, so I had to go to bed early. In general, it was a fun day and thankfully not just sore-ta fun.

I hope you enjoyed this post and I will most likely do ANOTHER one, so stay tuned. Onward!