June 28, 2015 - Preparing to Leave Big Creek

I could not figure out what the emergency rescue was that was going on this morning. There was an extraordinary amount of talk on the radio for that hour.

We ate half of the cantaloupe that Boss Larry brought us yesterday. It was cantaloupe perfection. Andy raved about how it tasted like cantaloupe to him. He was thrilled and talked about it the rest of the morning. I guess taste buds do gradually recover from radiation. Thanks again Larry.

The morning campground walk went well. People were looking for sites and the campground was full before we left. I don’t think dispatch heard me when I gave the morning vacancy report.

We did a lot of talking with campers, but I was anxious to get back to the motorhome to prepare for leaving tomorrow. Andy packed up all the exterior things, except the folding chairs. I did laundry all day, including all the park shirts and fleece jackets.

We ate our meal earlier than normal and then I started making a batch of pecan praline cookies. I’ve made this same stupid mistake before, but was in a hurry and did it again. I toasted my pecans in the oven, but did not let them cool before adding them to the cookie dough. The hot pecans melted the butter and made the dough too soft. I suppose I could have put the dough in the fridge to firm up, but was in a big hurry. The cookies were flat and crispy. They were also delicious.

Spence and Linda arrived with a trailer carrying a Gator from Cosby. I hope that means they will take Spence’s Gator back to Cosby with them to get a new muffler. They used it to clean the ashes from the fire rings in the campground. With Spence spending so much time in Cosby this week, the fire rings were quite full. He is supposed to clean them out when the campsites are empty, however, the sites are only empty for a short time before new campers come in. They enjoyed some cookies before they left.

I packed up my camp host office and put everything into the car to take to the ranger station. Then I packed all my nature books (birds, trees, mushrooms, wildflowers) and park books (waterfalls, day hike, trails) back into the cabinet.

Rangers Heath and Will were supposed to come here to pick up money envelopes, but Will got diverted to the ongoing crisis. Heath came alone and told us the rescue on the radio all day was a girl, who is a classmate of his oldest son. Yesterday, she decided to climb up (I think Alum Cave) bluffs and, at some point, could not go up or down. She spent the night stuck up there. They got her off with a helicopter today. We had a nice campfire going even though it took us forever to get it started with the damp wood. Andy made a fire starter with some cotton balls and petroleum jelly wrapped in a paper towel.

We had heard Heath on the radio before he arrived. Some hikers had called the park to report that a horse, without a rider, had followed them off the trail. Dispatch called Heath to respond. Horse and rider were eventually reunited and then Heath called into say he was transporting some hikers to the Big Creek parking lot. We knew we would see him soon.

Andy and Heath went to the campground to get the money envelopes out of the iron ranger while I tended the campfire. Then we had coffee and cookies around the fire.

June 21, 2015 - Bears at Backcountry Sites

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.

June 20, 2015 - Sunbeams in Site 7

 It was a dark and dreary morning, afternoon, and evening. Actually, the sun did pop out between the heavy clouds one in a while. I must have predicted eminent rain ten times today. I never went anywhere without my umbrella. It never did rain for real even though I felt a few drops once or twice. I’m going to stop forecasting the weather.

It was Monday for Spence and he dropped by for a coffee refill after he had cleaned the toilet building in the horse camp. There is not enough ventilation in the toilet buildings and the walls are always wet with condensation in damp weather. He wiped them down today. The park visitors track in mud and forest debris on the wet floors. After coffee, we headed to the campground and Spence headed to the picnic area toilet building to repeat the cleaning. We could hear him blowing debris off the sidewalks while we were in the campground.

Andy finished planning our trip for the rest of the year. We leave here on June 29 and head for Maryland for some family visiting. We still have not done some of the sightseeing I had hoped to do this year. We have not gone around the opposite end of the park. We haven’t visited the banjo player who lives on Tobes Creek Road either. I don’t know where the time goes.

Ranger Heath stopped by in the evening and gave me some files about Search and Rescue so I can learn about all the training and requirements that go into it.

I did not take many pictures because it was so dark and dreary. I did capture this little brown mushroom growing alongside the path in the campground.

 

This two-year-old in Site 10 saw the camera around my neck and wanted me to take his picture. He must get it taken regularly because, when I picked up the camera to my face, he started posing. I did not get a good picture of the little model though.

 

We took the opportunity to walk around the campground when the sum came out briefly. People were starting campfires and making a lot of smoke with their wet wood. The sun came through the trees and turned it into a special effect. There should have been an angel or some other kind of alien appearing in Site 7.

 

We were headed toward Site 12 when I realized there were three sets of legs under a small tarp. We decided not to go any closer and wake them up. I hope it doesn’t rain tonight; they don’t look very well protected.

 

On the radio

A ranger came on the radio and asked dispatch if there were any permits for a wedding at the overlook in Cades Cove. It brought too many questions to mind. Did the ranger come upon a wedding?  There was a permit for a wedding, but it was at one of the churches. Would the ranger bust up a wedding for lack of a permit? Would he wait until they were done and them chase them away?  Would they get a ticket?

June 19, 2015 - Ranger Heath Gives a Lecture

The morning walk to the campground was sunny and wet from last night’s rain. It is a beautiful combination here when all the wet leaves sparkle in the sunshine. The emerald boulders lining the campground road were brilliant again.

 

This is my favorite sunny branch over the campground road, taken as we walked back down toward the picnic area.

 

A small ditch runs through a culvert under the campground road. I have never noticed water in it before, but today it is a regular stream. This is where it comes back out and heads to Big Creek.

 

We walked out onto the bridge to look at the creek. The water level was only up a small amount. A woman was standing on the bridge with her dog. She had her hand held out for the small blue butterflies. I don’t know if any landed on her arm, but several took a liking to Andy’s hat.

 

These butterflies are a beautiful sky blue when they fly. When they land, they close their wings and they are mostly gray. I have yet to get a good picture of one flying. Here is a close-up I cropped out of the other picture so you can see how pretty it is.

There is a whole new patch of the slimy white fungus on the huge log in the group picnic area. I haven’t touched it to really know whether they are slimy. They always look wet and slimy even in dry weather.

 

It rained a good bit of the day so we stayed inside most of the time. I swept and mopped the floor but, this evening, you cannot even tell. I spotted this doe in the woods by the campground road as we walked up it in the afternoon. She stood perfectly still.

When some campers came down the road in their car, she carefully lay down among the boulders to hide. I don’t know why the second picture came out so blue. I took it soon after the first one.

 

We were standing at the campground registration board when a man came up and asked if we were rangers. I said, “No, but we can call if you need one.” He needed one. He lost two teenagers on the Big Creek Trail. Their group of eight was walking up the trail and the four children walked ahead. When the adults got to the Midnight Hole, only two were there. The oldest two had walked ahead of them and passed the Midnight Hole. The parents had waited for a while and then the fathers went looking for them up and down the trail. They had been missing an hour and a half at that point. I called 700 to report. (I never know which of our rangers are on duty, but know whoever is will hear me call dispatch.) Dispatch asked if Ranger Will heard and Ranger Will said for Ranger Heath to respond.

Andy finished talking to the campers who were asking him questions while I walked with the father to the trailhead. I assured him that it is very difficult to get lost in Big Creek; there are steep mountainsides on both sides. We met the mother and the other teens in the parking lot. The mother and I went to the trailhead to wait for Ranger Heath. I also assured her that they probably did not get lost. They would have to walk five miles to get to the first trail intersection and it is only 1-1/2 miles to the Midnight Hole and two miles to Mouse Creek Falls. The mountainsides are too steep to go off trail without some effort. This was our view down Big Creek Road at the trailhead.

 

One of the other teen children came up and told us she had received a text from the missing teens and they were on the way down the trail with the other parents. I called Ranger Heath on the radio and he responded that he was right around the curve. He drove up to the trailhead about thirty seconds later. When the missing teens and a set of parents arrived, Ranger Heath gave them all some education about hiking in the mountains. Have a plan. Stay together, or wait periodically for the slower hikers. Read the trailhead sign. Think. The athletic young man should have known he walked more than a mile and a half. They said they saw the Midnight Hole and Mouse Creek falls, but did not know that they were THE hole or THE falls. They are not marked with signs. Ranger Heath explained that the national park is preserved wilderness, not your state park. If someone gets hurt on the trail and they are unprepared or don’t have a plan, it could take hours or longer before help came. And it would be cold and wet spending the night up there. The parents got just as much of a lecture as the teens.

The group thanked Ranger Heath and went on their way. Heath leaned against the trailhead sign and I took his picture.

 

Then he made a funny smile face so I took another picture.

Heath said he was going to the Pittman Center firehouse for their monthly fund-raising supper. We jumped in the ranger truck with him and he took us on some back roads that we had not seen to get there. This month’s supper was chili, corn bread, salad, red velvet cake, and a drink. It was $7 a person. Judging from all the cake on the table, they were expecting a lot more people than showed up. The supper ended at 1900; we got there a bit after 1830 and only one couple arrived after us. It was good. I would go back every month if we lived here, to support the fire department of course.

 

On the radio

Laurel Falls Rover (a volunteer) reported that a woman slipped and fell at Laurel Falls. She apparently broke her ankle. Two rangers responded. They carried her out with some sort of chair that only required two people to carry. The woman did not request an ambulance; they would drive to the hospital on their own. A bear was hanging around next to the trail about half way up just to make the rescue more interesting.

A woman slipped and fell on the rocks at the edge of the water in the Chimneys picnic area and could not get up. The initial assessment was that she broke her leg. Dispatch called for a rescue squad from Gatlinburg and they took her to the hospital.

Park visitors reported that a motorhome ran into a bridge. Dispatch called a ranger to check it out.

There was a power failure in the Abrams Creek campground. They closed the campground, but I was not sure that meant they kicked the campers out or whether they just closed the toilet building for lack of water or, more precisely, lack of electricity to operate the water pumps. Some telephones lines were down too. The power company had the road torn up to fix the lines in the late afternoon and was estimating several hours to make the repair and reopen the road. It was 2105 when someone reported to 700 that the power was restored and everything was up and running.

May 02, 2015 – Camping Oven

Saturday, May 02, 2015 – Big Creek

Two more campsites were filled after we made our walk-around yesterday. I adjusted the numbers on my census form this morning. Campsite 10 was rather smoky as we walked by.

I got a picture of their camp stove.

We had to move on because the smell of breakfast was driving Andy crazy.

We took the path along the creek to the bridge for a look at the creek before continuing on to the horse camp. It was a beautiful, clear, blue-sky day and we marveled over it at least once an hour. I took a few more yellow trillium pictures. Andy suggested I take one with the creek in the background. The only problem was standing back up; I should have had my walking stick with me.

Since the sun was shining, I went back to the large rock in the woods to get a better picture of the little spiky white flowers growing on it.

Here they are from the side. Of course, they were not in my Wildflowers of the Smokies book. They are about three or four inches tall.

Rather than taking the horse trail back to our campsite, we walked out of the horse campground onto Big Creek Road (that’s what I call it anyway). The road is in fairly good shape this year except for usual rutted curve down by the ranger station and the pot holes at the end of the one-lane bridge over Chestnut Branch.

I spent far too much time this morning trying to get on line and eventually gave up to fix dinner. I had told Spence on Wednesday to come here at 1400 today for some beef stew. I used the leftover pot roast and added some vegetables. Then I made a pan of biscuits to go with it. It was one of my better efforts at both.

Ranger Heath and Boss Larry showed up just before 1400 to empty the pay envelopes out of the iron ranger. Andy served them cookies, since they both refused beef stew. Heath had already eaten lunch and Boss Larry does not eat meat. They did sample the biscuits. Ranger Heath asked me if they were hard to make “or can any fool do it?” I assured him that any fool can.

Boss Larry is a Visitor Use Assistant. He takes care of us.

I told Ranger Heath that I had made the cookies for him since he would have to wait three weeks for Andy’s monthly birthday cake. He said he had cake last week for his own birthday. He had turned 48. His oldest son is graduating from high school this month.

Ranger Heath also announced that his wife Dana, the park’s Public Information Officer, was named Park Employee of the Year a few days ago. She is the one who recommended Big Creek to us as a place to volunteer in the park. If I ever get a phone signal, I’ll call and congratulate her.

After eating cookies and biscuits, Ranger Heath told Boss Larry that he needed a nap and Larry would have to drive his ranger truck back to Cosby. Boss Larry asked if he would be allowed to flash the lights and sound the siren. Then, he told of a time when he was riding with Ranger Jared and tried to talk on the car radio. He was calling Dispatch, who did not respond to his call. Then, Ranger Jared noticed that Larry was using the microphone for the exterior loud speaker and not the park radio. 
When they left, Ranger Heath was driving and said good-bye to us with the loud speaker.

We took the MiFi to the Verizon store in Newport, Tennessee in the late afternoon. The young man who served us said we were due for a new one anyway and replaced it with a newer Jet Pack. While he was looking at our account, he said we were also due for a new phone. We got another basic Samsung flip phone. He said the newer one had a better antenna. I was sorely disappointed when we got back home and still could not get a signal on the Jet Pack or the telephone. We were able to get on line last year sitting in the very same spot (when it wasn’t raining).

Ten of the twelve tent sites were occupied in the early evening. We chatted with everyone and handed out the Smokies Guide newspapers.