A new crop of mushrooms
has popped up by the tree near the toilet building.
The guys in Site
2 left three freshly made hiking sticks in their site. I liked the way two of
them looked against the tree. One of them was too big and heavy for me; it must
have been for a really big guy.
This is the view
as we were walking back from the campground. Straight ahead is the parking lot
and the path to the right goes to the picnic area and bridge.
Spence was on
his Gator in front of the day area toilet building. He waved when he saw me
point the camera at him.
I saw this
father and daughter pass our site on the horse trail. They must have made a
trial run and it didn’t work out. That is the dad’s arm holding the pony’s lead.
The little girl was hanging onto dad. A short while later, I saw them heading
back up the horse trail with a group of other riders and without the pony. The
girl was still behind her dad.
Last night,
Ranger Heath shamed me into taking Andy out for a Father’s Day treat. I didn’t
have to ask Andy where he wanted to go. I just drove him to the Mellow Mushroom
in Pigeon Forge. Andy was thrilled with his Father’s Day pizza. This month’s
birthday cake is going to be peach cobbler, so we stopped at the produce stand
and bought a flower pot of peaches. The strawberries were so beautiful that I
had to buy a bucket of those too. We are going to be fruity this week.
We were driving
back into Big Creek when we heard Ranger Heath calling Spence on the radio, but
Spence rarely hears his radio. We passed him driving his Gator toward the
ranger station and told him to call Ranger Heath. Heath was in Cosby and was
hiking up to backcountry Sites 36 and 37 to close them, due to an aggressive
bear. He wanted Spence to post some campsite-closed posters for the Big Creek
trailheads. I got out the printer and made some, enclosed them in plastic
sleeves, and gave Spence a roll of packing tape to put them up.
We offered to
dog sit this puppy in Site 3 days ago. It has been raining so much that the
couple has not gone out. She barks at us every time we go near Site 3.
We were chatting
with three men in Site 12 when it came up that they were going to be
backpacking for the week. We told them that Sites 36, 37, and 38 were all
closed due to bear activity, which screwed up their itinerary. I gave the man
the backcountry office phone number so they could change their reservations. Two
of the men headed to the river for a phone signal while the third studied their
trail map.
We saw this man
and three boys walking up the creek when we walked out on the bridge in the
afternoon. Mom was sitting on a rock near the bridge.
I love the sunny
branches on a tree in front of the toilet building.
About 2020, I
heard Heath on the radio with the rangers who had gone to Cosby for the dog
fight (see On the Radio). He said he was hiking back to Big Creek with hikers
he had evicted from the backcountry sites. He asked the rangers to come pick
him up at Big Creek and give him a ride back to his truck, parked near a
trailhead somewhere. I got on the radio and offered Heath a ride, if it would
help the other rangers. I figured there was no point in two rangers hanging
around for Heath to get off the trail when we could drive him to his ranger
truck and the rangers could go do their ranger thing.
We had quite a
storm with plenty of thunder and the usual heavy downpour. Heath knocked on our
door at 2215 soaking wet. I already had the decaf coffee brewed and gave him a
cup. Then Andy offered him a slice of leftover Father’s Day pizza, which he
accepted. What he really wanted was a towel. He dried off his head and then sat
on the towel on the sofa. A rivulet of water ran across the floor. He said his
boots were full of water. After a short while, there was another knock at the
door. It was Walt, a hiker who had come down the mountain with Heath. He was
happy to get in out of the rain and drink a cup of coffee too.
They were tired.
I offered to drive Walt up to the campground to help him find a campsite. When
we got outside, I realized that the family in the group site was still up and
asked them if it was all right if he stayed on one of their tent pads, since he
was evicted from the backcountry because of a bear. The woman questioned,
“Bears?” three or four times. Walt went to the parking lot to get his gear out
of his truck. I put another towel on the car seat to help dry the seat of
Heath’s pants. He loaded his huge soggy backpack into the back seat and sat on
the towel in the front seat.
We saw lights in
the parking lot. I shined my new super flashlight in their direction. One of
them was Walt. He came over to the car to tell Heath that the other hikers had
made it down and were going to a hotel. We left for Cosby.
We dropped Heath
off at the gate across the trailhead on the B Loop of the Cosby Campground. He
said his truck was a ways up and the road was too rough for my car. The rain
and fog had cleared off a good bit for the drive back to Big Creek. We were
both still wide awake from the evening’s adventure when we got back to Sao
about 0030.
On the Radio
The Cosby campground host called 700 for a ranger to
come do a report on a dog-on-dog attack. Ranger Heath was up the mountain at
campsite 37, closed due to aggressive bear activity. Dispatch then called
Ranger Will, who was apparently off duty. Then he called a ranger from another
region. That ranger said he would go to Cosby when he was finished with what he
was doing at that moment. Dispatch called the Cosby host to let her know that
it would be 60 to 80 minutes before a ranger would be there.
Someone called in to the park to report smoke, but
he wasn’t sure whether it was a fire in the park or not. A ranger went out to
investigate and found the smoke near the Foothills Parkway, West, but he could
not tell whether it was in the park or not either. A few minutes after 1900 the
ranger asked Dispatch to call the county to respond since they could not
determine exactly where the fire was. He said they did not have the manpower to
find the fire tonight. Another ranger came on the radio to offer to go to a
different vantage point to help pinpoint the fire. A ranger came on and told
dispatch that he had studied his maps a little more and is confident that the
fire was not in the park. Dispatch was going to call the county. One ranger was
going to stand by in case the county needed help locating the fire.
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