May 6 to 10, 2015

Wednesday, May 06, 2015 – Big Creek

Spence stopped in at 0830 for his cup of coffee. We sat outside in the delicious sunshine and talked while we drank it. The subject of hair came up and Spence undid his ponytail to show me how much his hair has grown since last year.

I was surprise to see Junior in the tent campground parking lot, though I should not have been. It’s that I had just mentioned to Spence that we had not seen Junior yet this year. He is a regular camper here and lives just over the mountain in Cosby. He pays for a campsite and puts a tarp, and sometimes a tent, up. Then (I’m pretty sure) he sleeps in the back of his pickup truck. He will often leave a day early and give his paid campsite to newcomers. He was talking to Spence at the registration kiosk. That’s his pickup parked in the background.

The three Kroger employees from Cincinnati in Site 5 left this morning. They left a home-made set of tongs leaning up against a tree. It is made with two thin pieces of wood with a small block of wood tied between them. At the top end, a binder clip is tied to one of the pieces so that it acts as a spring.

Andy was enamored with it and brought it back to our campsite. He played with it half the morning. We figured they used it to turn hot dogs on the grill or, maybe, to dig one out of the ashes.

Since Site 3 was empty, we walked through it to the creek path. I decided to walk down the bank to the creek. Then I walked out on a couple big rocks into the creek and found a comfortable place to sit and take pictures. This is looking upstream.

This is looking across the creek.

And, this is looking downstream toward the pedestrian bridge.

I took this picture of Andy on the creek bank.

I discovered these two Thyme-Leaved Bluets on the creek bank. The flower is ½ inch across. I did not get them in good focus, but I did keep my hiking boots dry.

This Meadow Parsnip is growing next to the creek path.

This millipede was walking across the road in the horse campground. He was not talking on the phone, as far as I could tell, for those of you who are curious.

Andy is turning into a high-maintenance man. Today, he had to go back to Walgreen’s for some ear-cleaning solution. He needs to use it one a week so the hearing aids will fit and work better. Since we were going out, I took the computer with me and we stopped in Subway again. This time we ate lunch and I sent out yesterday’s log. I also pasted two days of logs into my blog at http://bigcreekjournal.blogspot.com/. My hope was to get everyone on my distribution list to “follow” the blog so they would be notified when I update it. It would make it easier for me to send it out each night and, I think, cost me fewer bytes of data on my Verizon data plan.

When we got back to Big Creek, we saw that Spence had used his leaf blower to blow the leaves off our outdoor rug.

On the radio:

There was an injured hiker on the trail in the Tremont area. A medic was sent to the scene, but we never heard what happened. The person was part of a group and got separated from them and apparently fell.

414 reported a bear jam at Laurel Falls Trail. VP1 was sent to get people moving. Later VP1 called to ask where that bear was supposed to be. Ranger Heath came on the radio to say that some wildlife guys had already cleared it up. It was a sow with two cubs that stopped the traffic. Maybe about 20 minutes later, VP1 came back on the radio to report that he was with the 350 at Laurel Falls. From his call number, I’m guessing that VP1 is the number one volunteer in the park. We hear him on the radio all the time. There is more than one VP1!  I just heard a woman call in as VP1 to say that they are clear of the 350. There is obviously something here I don’t understand. Boss Larry will set me straight, if I remember to ask him.

Dispatch announced a BOLO (be on look out) for a green Kawasaki motorcycle stolen by a person a few days ago who is known to carry weapons and drugs. The rangers on duty then gave their call numbers to signify that they had heard the message.

Just before 1800, there was an accident on the Blue Ridge Parkway near the Balsam Mountain Campground road. Several rangers were responding. Dispatch said he had gotten word that fire and rescue emergency vehicles were already on the scene and were calling for park rangers to come help.

A commercial tractor-trailer was stopped by a ranger for driving in the park. After the driver was given a ticket, the ranger escorted him out of the park. We hear this occasionally, especially if there is an accident on I-40 and truckers are looking for an alternate route.

At 2005, a ranger called dispatch and said he heard a lot of sirens in the distance and wanted dispatch to call Cherokee to see if they were responding to something inside the park. Dispatch came back on a few minutes later and said the emergency was outside the park.

I got this great email from Jane Wilmer today:

hi....a guy who writes about nature in the newspaper here has botanist friends who describe the slow pace of their walks and explorations as "moving at the speed of botany.". That made me think of you guys!

jane

I does fit us. Andy says I have two speeds: slow and stop.

I stumbled over this row of bricks set into the ground near our motorhome while I was picking up some sticks for firewood. They look like the ones my mother would put around her flowerbeds. I used a stick to brush away the dead leaves. Spence thought they might have lined a walkway to a house.

I spotted something bright metallic blue high up in the trees as we walked out of the horse camp and onto Big Creek Road. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but it is a helium balloon.

There are plenty of flowers growing along Big Creek Road too. White ones.

And purple ones.

Then I noticed something else high up in the trees. This time it was a bug catcher. We wondered how in the world they got it up so high. I used all my zoom power to get this picture.

This is one of my favorite sections  of the road into here. I love the way the trees make a natural guard rail on the downhill side.

We got some new campers in the afternoon. The large tarp in Site 3 signifies people who camp here often enough to know to be ready for rain.

Two Texans were camped in Site 10. They had been visiting the sister of the man on the right in North Carolina. Now they are camping their way back to Texas. The man on the left has one of the best smiles ever. He oozed happiness.

We had another surprise camper in Site 12. We met this man last year on July 4. He has Parkinson’s Disease and tries to get out walking as much as possible. Last year, he told me he had just been switched to a new medicine and was feeling much better. I thought he looked much better this year albeit a bit thinner. His daughter, in the background, drove him here today.

                                                                                                                               

He has good days and bad days and wonders what is going to come next. I suggested that he not waste a good day worrying about what is to come. Just enjoy it as best he can. I so admire him.

I am suffering from internet withdrawal. I seem to have something about every hour I want to look up on Wikipedia. I can’t check the Barton Sprout blog to see pictures of my Exceptional Grandsons. I can’t look up the flowers!

  

Thursday, May 07, 2015 – Big Creek

We have seen campers drag big logs and hang them over their fire rings. This morning, the folks in Site 2 had the log propped up on the tent pad with rocks to keep it in place. Andy said the log was the one the three men in Site 5 had left.

The park rules have changed this year. Campers are only allowed to bring in store-bought kiln-dried firewood with a government seal on it. I am watching to see how that will change camper behavior. So far, they expect to be able to buy it here in the campground or close by. Neither of those options are available. The closest is the convenience store at the Hartford exit of I-40. It won’t be long before every twig around the ground around the campground is picked up. I am half expecting to start hearing chain saws for the logs in the forest.

Someone left a tent stake on the side of the tent pad in Site 11 a few days ago. I was worried about someone scraping the side of their ankle on it and asked Andy to pull it out. He tried, with his hands, his Leatherman, with his walking stick and could not budge it. He went back to Sao and got a crow bar and walked back up to the campground. He came back with the tent stake in his hand. Some big galoot had pounded that stake about four inches into the side of the landscaping-tie tent-pad edge. Andy said it was hard to get it out even with a crow bar; he had to use a rock for some leverage.

We have intended to go to the post office in Hartford, Tennessee every day that we have gone out to Walgreen’s, but forgot to stop every time. This morning, we drove the car to the tent campground and, after  we finished walking around, we drove straight to the post office. The postmaster remembered us from last year. I filled out the form to register for General Delivery and then called the UPS store in Marathon to have our mail forwarded. I had intended to take my computer to send/receive email, but forgot that.

I glanced out the front window while doing something else and saw a branch that had fallen off a tree behind the group campsite. I walked over and dragged it back to our site for firewood. It was not a huge branch, but it was all I could do to drag it. Andy got out his circular saw and cut it up in the afternoon. My job was to stack the pieces on the woodpile.

On the radio:

A woman broke her wrist on the trail. A medic responded. Later, he reported that the family was driving her to the hospital in their own vehicle.

A green Ninja-style motorcycle was seen driving too fast. A ranger waited for it to pass and then followed. Dispatch checked the record for the BOLO from yesterday. After the ranger was following the motorcycle for a bit, the motorcycle pulled into an overlook. It was a Honda and not the green motorcycle of interest yesterday.

The Cataloochee trail crew asked for a ride back to their starting point.

On occasion, a park employee will somehow unknowingly press their talk button on their radio. Then everyone else in the park (excluding park visitors, of course) can hear them talking, usually about nothing in particular. When that happens, 700 will come on and ask everyone to check for an open mic. That usually solves the problem in seconds. Today, a ranger called for a wrecker for a disabled car. After he got the particulars from the ranger, we could hear Dispatch talking to a tow truck company. He was the one with the open mic. Someone else, maybe the same ranger, said, “Open mic!  700, you are talking on the radio!” When they finished their business, 700 came back on the radio and said, “Testing 1, 2, 3, testing, 1, 2, 3”.

BOLO for a hit and run by a green  Chevy truck with some damage on the front end in Cherokee. They were not sure whether the truck had come into the park or not.

Dinner conversation was “purchase”. Andy has a problem with that word. He thought that people say “purchase” when they mean “leverage”. I don’t recall hearing the word very often, but thought maybe it meant something more general than leverage, maybe more like “mechanical advantage” or “grip” as in, “I can’t get enough purchase on the screwdriver to turn the screw”. Then I lamented that I don’t have a cell signal and can’t ask Google or Wikipedia.

Today was the first day we have seen people in the creek. The two boys sitting on the rock ledge were soaked. That mountain water is cold!

I walked up to the group of people around the picnic table and told them they are the first picnickers we have had this year. One of the men, probably the preacher, said they are having a baptism. I told him my faith is not strong enough to get baptized in Big Creek in May. I would have to wait until August or September when the water is slightly warmer.

The smallest attendee was a nine-month old girl in a portable crib. She was perfectly happy to be rolling around, kicking her legs, and chewing on a baby hairbrush. She returned great big smiles when I talked to her. Her Daddy, who was to be baptized, said we could tell from her knees that she is crawling now.

I noticed that the path to the horse camp was littered with blighted and shriveled sweet gum leaves yesterday. Today I saw more in the tent campground. I hope I can remember to ask Larry about them when he visits next. I haven’t heard of a pest destroying sweet gum trees.

The Daddy Long Legs have arrived, or come out, or whatever they do. We counted a dozen of them on the inside of the screen room while we were eating our dinner. This one was along the creek path. It was too dark for a clear picture.

We took the car down to the river just as it was getting dark so I could get a phone signal and call Son Christopher to wish him a Happy Birthday. We had a nice conversation and then I did the email send/receive. It was odd to drive back up to Big Creek in the darkness. The pot holes and rough spots on the road are much more visible at night in the headlights.

Friday, May 08, 2015

The campground had been full last night. A few campers arrived after we made our last walk around.  Here is the walk up the campground road. Maintenance Richard (or Junior, he doesn’t care which you use) lined the road with boulders last summer to keep park visitors from parking on and destroying the vegetation.

Here we are approaching the registration station. The “Stop Pay Here” sign is confusing to me. You are supposed to set up your gear on your chosen campsite, and then return to pay. So, in my mind, people should park the car and unload it rather than stopping and paying.

I took these pictures as I approached the board in the morning. Every day, I use a red marker to mark the date people paid through, or are leaving. When I get to the board in the morning, I pull the tabs for that date. Even though it looks as though everyone is leaving, some paid for another night and the vacated sites were occupied. At the end of the day, the campground was full.

After the camper puts money in the envelope, they put the envelope into the slot in this “iron ranger”. It is made of very heavy steel. There is a handle on the top for pulling the money box out of the top of the post, after it is unlocked at the bottom, through the round hole. I wish I had gotten a picture of Ranger Heath last year when he pulled his arm out of the round hole and had a big spider on it. Yes, Ranger Heath danced a jig. A second key is required to open the money box after it is taken out of the post.

This happy camper couple has been here most of the week in Site 10. They have completely mastered the art of relaxation. They do also get out and hike.

Maintenance Richard/Junior arrived while we were walking around. It is Spence’s day off. We were chatting with him in front of the registration board, when one of the campers drove out. When she moved her pickup truck, this mouse scurried across the road and hid its face behind the registration station post. If I had internet access, I would try to figure out what kind of mouse it is.

I asked Richard if he knew why the sweetgum leaves were turning black and falling off the trees. The one where the trail meets the horse camp has dropped blighted leaves all over the place. And, one along the campground road has dropped some too. Richard said he would take some leaves back to the tree man to see if it is something to be concerned about.

Then, I mentioned that there is debris in our water. He looked in his drink cup that he had just filled and thought it had stuff in it too. That shot his eyebrows to his hairline and he said he would meet us at our site. When we got back to Sao, we got out some clear plastic drinking “glasses” and got water from the bathroom sink (where I have noticed the debris), the shower, the kitchen sink, the faucet outside, and the faucet in the group site. The only one with floating things in it was the one from the bathroom sink. Uh oh. Another problem. Richard suggested that we run the water in the bathroom sink for about 20 minutes. That cleared it up, but it is still an RV mystery.

We were headed down the horse trail to the horse camp to show Richard all the sweetgum leaves on the ground when Boss Larry showed up. Boss Larry said he was going to Gatlinburg (park headquarters) and would take the sample leaves to the tree man.

I mentioned to Larry that he appears quite dull in my journals and he should tell me something about himself. He is 67 now and was born in the house on the corner at the exit from the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail so he is a Gatlinburg native. I supposed Gatlinburg was a much smaller town then. Then Larry told me about him and his brother hunting for rabbits in a big field that is now shopping mall.

They had a couple dogs out in the field chasing rabbits while the boys stood on a rise watching the dogs. Larry’s brother had his gun down by his side, with his arm relaxed. A rabbit came out of a hole and had his nose right up the barrel of the gun. They must have been quite surprised because Larry said his brother did not shoot the rabbit. That must be a great family story.

Larry also told us about going off to college, enlisting in the marines, and going to Vietnam. He also moved to Washington, DC for a year or so and worked for a restoration company. They did some restoration in the Watergate complex after the incident that made it famous. I should have recorded the story of doing some restoration project at the Dulles Airport terminal building because I’ve forgotten the details now.

They were using a new machine to spray some product onto the underside of the huge overhand on the front of the terminal. Larry said the machine probably worked well in the lab, but it was clogging up on site. They tried to add some (silicone?) to keep it from clogging. Then , the product was dripping onto a big, new, shiny fire engine. The fire marshal was most displeased. The project engineer got some acetone to clean off the windshield of the firetruck. It ran down the front of the truck and red paint flowed onto the pavement.

The project went way over budget and the company was sued. Larry said the president of the company got himself on some review board or committee and the charges were dropped. Larry came back to Tennessee. Gosh, I wish I had gotten all of this story better.

On the radio:

A hiker was missing on the trail, possibly on Mount Buckley. He got separated from his two buddies. Dispatch called 512 and Clingman’s Dome to ask if there were any medical issues. Seven minutes later, Clingman’s Dome called 700 to report that the missing man had just come down the trail.

Two rangers in the Cherokee area were talking. One said “Where are you?”

“I’m at the gas station and I see somebody. I’m going to stay here and watch him to make sure he doesn’t go in the park.” We figured out that they were talking about a tractor-trailer. A few minutes later he said, “When he saw me he ducked over” some “bridge and now I’m in front of him. They did eventually stop the truck and I believe there were some issues with tags.

A ranger called to report a car off the road and in the water, up to just above the tires. He was requesting a wrecker. Apparently, no one was hurt.

A BOLO was announced for a robbery suspect in a Black 1997 Cadillac Escalade with 20-inch chrome wheels and a gray interior. The subject, a white male named Michael, has lots of tattoos with a Chinese symbol on the back of his neck. The suspect was attempting to sell the Escalade when he choked and robbed the victim of his money and left him at a gas station in Sevierville.

Ranger 412 had a park visitor whose auto registration and driver’s license were both invalid. The license had been suspended for failure to pay a fine. 412 took the keys to the vehicle and would hold it until someone with a proper driver’s license came to drive it for them.

In the evening, two campsites had illegal firewood. I told them to burn it right away. Site 11 had left out two small coolers full of food. Andy carried them to the bear locker while I wrote up the courtesy notice.

Saturday, May 09, 2015 – Big Creek

Spence was back to work this morning after his weekend. When I asked him how it went, he told us that he had played in a fundraiser, memorial golf tournament. Spence loves to play golf, but had not done so in over a year. The memorialized was one of his foursome that played every weekend. Spence said that he is not a good golfer, but he enjoys drinking the beer that makes him feel better after missing a shot. Andy and Spence talked about golf and the tournament for a while until Spence declared, “Golf is a sissy game anyway. It’s not like the manly sports we used to play like cow pasture football. The best part was when you got to mash the other guy’s face in a cow pie.”

We headed up to the tent campground and Spence got his leaf blower to blow the leaves off our outdoor mat.

Someone was in a hammock hung between two trees in the parking lot.

A party of backpackers was asking us some questions as they loaded up for the trail. We finished talking with them and continued toward the tent campground. Just a few yards farther, at the beginning of the campground road, Andy stopped in his tracks and said, “I lost my hearing aid”. And that set the tone for the rest of our miserable day.

We retraced our steps back through the parking lot. Andy recalled that he was fiddling with the hearing aids while we talked to the backpackers. That would mean it would be in a stretch of about 20 yards. Just in case, he remembered wrongly, we looked all the way back to the RV. Spence joined the search and feared that he had blown it off the mat along with the leaves. He and I both searched around our campsite. I even looked in the hearing aid case to make sure he actually put it in his ear. He had been listening to the golf story as he was putting them in this morning. The three of us searched the whole route over and over while cars pulled through the parking lot and in and out of parking spaces. Hikers were walking everywhere in boots. Sometimes, someone would ask what we were looking for and would search for a while with us.

It was a needle in a haystack kind of problem. The hearing aid is small and a brownish gray or maybe a grayish brown. Whatever the color, it is about the same as much of the gravel on the road and in the parking lot. Or maybe it’s a bit closer in color to the myriad small leaves and bits of wood scattered over the gravel. As Andy and I passed each other at one point in the day, I told him that this was one of my weakest points. I’m not good at scanning a bunch of icons on the desktop. I would rather click my way through nested folders. Back at work, years ago, I had trouble searching for a value in a spreadsheet. And worst of all, I never could find Waldo.

Ranger Will and Boss Larry drove in to empty the money envelops from the iron ranger. When they stopped by me, I told them of the hearing aid. Larry quipped, “Andy is lucky. Now he doesn’t have to listen to Spence.”

Andy paced the parking lot most of the day. I stopped to walk around the campground a few times. We took a break to fix dinner and eat. Spence searched between doing his routine cleaning chores.

I didn’t take many pictures although I probably should have taken some of gravel. That is mostly what I saw today. A woman was standing behind a stroller with a two-year-old boy and holding a baby on her hip, as I was scanning gravel behind the cars. The baby had an interesting shade of hair that we could not name; not brown, not blonde, not even dirty blonde. The two-year-old had the most beautiful head of golden hair. He saw the camera and said, “Take my picture”. I took one and showed it to him.

He looked at the back of the camera and I asked, “Do you like it?” No. I took another one and asked, “How’s this one?” I got a non-committal “OK”. What a critic!

The musician campers in Site 9 were playing music by the campfire. I don’t know how they could do it in all that smoke.

Marsha and her daughter Ella were in their hammock in Site 11.

We continued searching until nearly dark. It was a discouraging and frustrating day. Andy has only had those hearing aids for a little over a month.

On the radio: I didn’t hear much today because Andy was wearing the radio and we were not often close enough together for me to hear what was going on.

An elderly woman had fallen off the trail and become wedged between some rocks and could not get out.  They thought she had hit her head. She was near Little River Road. A rescue team was assembled to get her out.

A motorhome hit a car in a parking lot and was apparently leaving the scene.  When they realized that other park visitors were taking down their tag number, they stopped.  The owner of the car was not around.  There seemed to be some confusion between the reporting party and dispatch over what was happening.  Eventually dispatch understood. A ranger went to the scene to figure it out.  In the end, the driver of the motorhome got a ticket.  Later in the day, a ranger called dispatch to check to see if the car belonged to someone registered for a backcountry campsite. It did not.

Sunday, May 10, 2015 – Big Creek

Spence must have stayed awake last night thinking up more things to gross me out.  He and Andy were sitting outside with their coffee this morning.  When I came outside to join them, they were talking about football again. Well, as though they had been talking about football anyway, Spence said, “Yeah.  The important part of cow pasture football in to find fresh cow pies.  The main objective is to smash the other guy’s face into a fresh cow pie on the first play.  The second objective is to keep your own face from getting mashed into a fresh cow pie. Eeewww.  Yuck!  Spence succeeded in grossing me out twice in two days.

This moth was on the car tire along with some gravel.

Scout Troop 1882 from Knoxville’s Beulah Methodist Church was all packed up in the group site.  When they had all left except one man and his son, I walked over to compliment them on how well behaved the boys were. He appreciated the remark and said they had to stay after the boys to not get too wild and hurt themselves out in the forest. They had overestimated some of the boy’s abilities and did not make it to the top of Mount Cammerer as they had planned. He also told me that they made a change in their camping operation this time.  They did not bring any paper plates, cups, plastic utensils, or plastic water bottles.  It made an amazing difference in the amount of trash they generated.  They usually have two large garbage bags of trash.  This time they only had two small trash bags.

We studied the gravel in the parking lot some more before we went up to the campground this morning. The hearing aid is about that size and color.

When we got up to the registration station, Andy turned to me and said, “Today must be the tenth”. Ten of the twelve tabs had the tenth as the day they were leaving.  That is how it usually is on Sunday. The picnic area, on the other hand, is busiest on weekends.  And, this being Mother’s Day, the family groups were arriving early to get a picnic table.

The woman is Site 8 was moving the gear to Site 11 while her husband took one of her rear tires to get repaired.  It was flat this morning. The interesting thing about this flat is that the tire was punctured by a rock. One of the pieces of crushed gravel on the road, shaped nearly like an Indian arrowhead, punctured the tire, at the edge, with a triangular-shaped hole.

Spence arrived at the campground and I asked him what he made of this patch of grass next to the parking area.  He thinks there was a house there in the past.  That makes since as there was a whole town here name Crestmont in the logging days. Andy added that some GPS and mapping programs still have this area named Crestmont. I remember an old photograph that shows the train depot with Mount Sterling on it.  But, maybe that was farther down the creek.  We can only guess.

We studied the gravel some more after our walk around the campground.

I took my eyes off the gravel to talk to this group with all their gear laid out on a tarp. They were preparing for a multi-day hike and had several questions.

Mother had a happy day.  Andy said he was taking me out to lunch on behalf of my children.  We don’t usually leave the park on weekends, but Mother’s Day is an exception.  Andy wanted to go to the Ingles grocery store in Waynesville, NC so he looked up restaurants on Trip Advisor while I drove in that direction. He directed me to the Haywood Smokehouse.  Waynesville is in Haywood County.  The restaurant in on a residential street.  The parking lot is in the back and there is a patio out there, so we decided to eat outside and listen to the music. I really enjoyed The Sea Notes.  They played bluegrass, but not a single sea shanty.  Two of them were in costume. The guitar player did the singing and everything they played was lively.

The fiddle player was adorable.

The guitar player also did all the talking.

“Buy your Mama a Margarita today.  You’re the reason why she drinks.”

“Get your tongue out of my mouth baby; I’m trying to kiss you good-bye.”

“I hope you enjoyed the food and may the Good Lord take a liken’ to ya”

There was a large family group sitting near us who was celebrating a birthday of an old man in addition to Mother’s Day. A woman from that group walked up to the stage and then the guitar player said, “You want us to play Happy Birthday?”  She said yes and then he responded, “You have to sing it”.  The woman said she could not sing and Andy pointed to me and yelled out, “She’ll sing it!”  So I got up on stage and belted out Happy Birthday to Calvin while he admired his cake.  The woman was so grateful.

A girl from another table wanted a chance on stage too.  The guitar player told here to find an instrument in a large tote bag they had sitting on the stage.  She chose a tambourine.  We gave here rousing applause when she was done.

A bit later, a woman got up and danced.  I took about 30 pictures of her but did not get one with her face.

The best part of the man’s costume was his boots.

They are made of that soft vinyl that Halloween masks are.  When they finished playing and were packing up, he pulled the Velcro back seam open and exposed his regular shoes underneath. I asked him where he got those boots.  “On the internet.  You can buy anything on the internet!”

The food was fabulous.  My smoked brisket was the best I have ever had. Andy had the smoked meatloaf, but after we had exchanged bites, said he should have ordered the brisket too. We went to Ingles when we finished eating.  I sat in the grocery story café to do a send/receive of email while Andy bought his bread and some fruit.  Then we headed back to Big Creek.

One the radio:

One ranger called another one and said, “I have the half burned the tickets you issued.” He also had something else the people had thrown out the window.  Some other park visitor witnesses saw it and retrieved it.  Then he said, “You are going to have some other charges to make”. We have some guesses what they must have thrown out the window.

We saw a man arrive in the campground in a big U-Haul truck.  He is taking his son’s belongings to Jacksonville, Florida and will ride his motorcycle, which was also in the truck, back home. His son is a teacher.

This delightful couple has been here for most of the week and today was their last day.  They hiked six or seven miles up the Big Creek trail and back again.  This evening, they were relaxing.

We scanned more gravel in the late afternoon, to no avail. I found a tiny battery and thought I was on to something, but Andy said that battery was too thick to be from his hearing aid.

Ranger Heath pulled into the parking lot and I told him I hoped he hadn’t driven over the hearing aid.  Next, I said, “I bet you aren’t going to be coming to visit us anymore.” He immediately quipped, “Why? Did your oven break?”  I wanted to know who told him, but he said he was just being funny.  Ranger Heath never forgets Andy’s monthly birthday cake. Unless we get the oven fixed in the next week or so, it will be banana pudding for the May birthday.  The meringue might not be browned though.

The two young women from Site 2 had tried to reserve backcountry campsites with the phone number I gave them, but had no success.  Ranger Heath got out a map and recommended a different hiking itinerary than they were planning.  They followed us to the motorhome and I lent them my hiking trail book to study tonight. I also gave them the correct phone number for the backcountry office. They said they would drive down to the river (to get a cell signal) to try to make their reservations on line tonight.