EMBC Fall Festival

Batty @ the Townsend Wye || 10-15-08

We planned tonight to go to the Royal Blue Wildlife Management Area to see the elk. That didn't work out, so we planned to go salamander searching on the Finley Cane Trail near Cades Cove. My brother had to be dropped off at work at 5 and picked up at 8, so that was out. Hmmm... What to do?
For plan C, we made our way to Townsend without a clear goal. We stopped at the Subway (the same one that once told my mother-in-law that the toasted sandwiches had fewer calories than the untoasted sandwiches) and then bebopped on down to the National Park and set out to picnic at the Townsend Wye. Aside from ending a hike there once, I've never just hung out at the Wye. Whenever it's warm outside at all, the Wye is packed. Tonight, it was the four of us and another family of four. After dining on the riverside, we went down to the water to throw rocks in the water (it will keep us occupied for hours). Two cool science moments we played with. If you bang two pieces of quartz together it makes a spark. It's not a "start a fire" spark, but a "mobile electron" spark. Pretty cool. BTW--it needs to be dark to see it. Second moment--while crawling around on the ground looking for good picture angles, what did I see? One bat? Two bats? Oh, about a dozen bats flying around. The nice thing about where we were is that the Y, where the prongs of Little River meet, affords a large open space surrounded by trees. The open space made it possible for us to the see the bats with pretty good detail--especially the low-flying stunt bats that flew between us to show off their mad ecolocation skills. To teach the young uns about ecolocation, we were probably environmentally negligent and threw pebbles up in the air to show how the bats would swoop at them thinking they were mosquitoes. We only did this a couple of times, though, because we didn't want to be responsible for a bat eating rocks.

Maple Lane Farms Pumpkin Patch || 10-12-08

What's Halloween without picking out your own pumpkin? Maple Lane Farms in Greenback is great. For $2 a person over 6, you get a hayride where you can pick your own pumpkins (priced between .50 and $10 ea).
The Pumpkin Patch is always a great trip, if for no other reason than to watch Myers pick out a pumpkin with the shrewd discernment of a used car dealer inspecting a trade in. He goes to extremes, first looking at the pumpkins, first feeling them, then knocking on them, then hugging them. If the pumpkin passes all of those tests, he gives the all-important taste test (yes, we have pictures). We're always worrying that Baiely is getting too old for stuff like this, but thankfully we had another year of childhood magic. If nothing else, having Myers around prolongs and enlivens that magic. Just as Jodie and I like to live vicariously through the kids, so does Bailey live vicariously through Myers. He's been a blessing for us in so many ways, if for no other reason than how he has influenced the development of Bailey's personality and growth of her confidence.

Cherohala Greatest Hits || 10-7-08

Ever have one of those weeks? Staggering workload, crazy students, paperwork galore? Couple one of those weeks with an extra personal day and a daughter's fall break, and voila--you have October 7 for me.
We got up and hit the road a little after 9 on Tuesday--Jodie, Bailey, Myers, Jodie's dad (Dexter), and myself.
We took 411 South until we hit Tellico Plains and then the Cherohala Skyway. For the first stop, we went to the Hooper's Bald Trailhead and walked the quarter of a mile up to the bald. The trail is a nice, wide, graveled walkway. Considering the bald is over 5000 feet in elevation, the trail wasn't very steeo due to the fact that the parking lot was also over 5000 feet.
More later... have some pics for now...

Chilhowee Lake Low Water Paddle || 10-4-08

Saturday Sam and I made the trek up to Chilhowee lake to check out the low water. The water level has been brought down 29 feet to facilitate work on the dam this fall/winter. This is the first time water has been this low in 51 years. Woo doggie!
We put in at the ramp with the nasty bathrooms (yes, this is a recognized landmark). Ramp is kind of a misnomer in this case, as the water is down so low that from the end of the ramp it's still about100 yards to the water's edge. Once on the lake, it's kind of eerie because for the first 100 feet or so, you're only in about 6 inches of water and you can see the cracked lakebed just barely below the surface. Coupled with the mottled reflection of the sun on the water, this made for quite a surreal sight.
In the open water, we putzed around an old stone wall and slalomed through an old fence row whose base was only about 6 inches below the surface. We found many old steel cans embedded in the floor of the lake. Whether from the lack of sunshine or some other variable, the cans were in stellar shape with little rust or fading. Very neat. We're not sure of the exact critter, but the cans were covered in very small leech looking organisms that were about a third of an inch long.
From there, we cut over to where Abrams Creek empties into the lake. This is one of the highlights, as the old highway bridge is completely uncovered now, as are the trestles to the old railroad. After passing under the bridge, we paddled up Abrams Creek as far as we could go. With the water down, it looked how I would imagine run off from a strip mine would look. The water was way down, yes, but there was also a huge swath cut down through the silt and sediment layers. On Abrams Creek we stalked a beaver who would stay kind of close to us, follow us around, then smack it's tail at us to show us who's boss, then dive out of sight for a few minutes. He repeated this routine about 3 times. We also saw a recently hatched fence lizard. Very small, very young. To give an idea of scale, adults are much much bigger than blue tail skinks and a little bigger than green anoles, and the one we saw was MAYBE two, two and a half inches long, including the tail.
After coming back out onto the main channel, we paddled over to the old road bed, hopped out of the kayaks, and went to explore the bridge. It was a very apocalyptic scene, with car parts and beer bottles littering the area. Before the bridge was the back half of an old jeep, complete with roll bar. On the bridge was the bed of an old pickup and the dash and front floorboard of another vehicle (possibly the same truck). The most striking part was the freshwater mussel graveyard. With the recession of the water, the mussels had nowhere to go. The smell on the lake was horrid once the heat of the day hit--the rancid smell of rotting oyster. Hundreds of thousands of these littered the shore, the rocks, the bridge. Walking across the bridge all you could hear was a chorus of broken shells, bearing witness to the freshwater holocaust. Shells ranged in size from a quarter of an inch wide to three inces wide. It kind of brought to mind Star Wars, when the Death Star blows up Alderan and Obi Won Kenobe says there's been a great disturbance in the force, millions of voices crying out in pain and then being instantly silenced.... Man... I must be a dork if I'm making this a Star Wars reference...
Anyway, back in the boats and back to shore. Well, if not shore, mud field. I had to traipse through about a hundred feet of mid-calf depth mud to drag the kayak back to terra firma. Water was maybe 4 inches deep for the last hundred feet, so there was no way to float myself back in any closer.
All in all, very nice use of a Saturday morning.
P.S.--if you're one of my students, ignore the pictures with the beer cans. To prove how little of a life I have, I think it's funny to pretend I'm drinking out of 30+ year old beer cans in the middle of a lake :)

Spruce Flats Falls || 10-1-08

Time table for today: Leave school at 3:45. Get home at 4:30. To Tremont by 5:30, to Spruce Flats Falls by 6:30, car by 7, Mr. Gatti's by 7:45, home by 8:30. Less than 5 hours, and a regular ol' Wednesday night was transformed into family memories.
The evening started well enough; everything was packed and ready by the time I got home, so we pretty much laced up our boots and headed out. The trail is an "unmaintained trail" as far as the park service is concerned, so it's not in the Little Brown Hiking Bible or anything, but it does run right behind the dormitories at Tremont, so it gets high traffic as part of the Tremont programs. [to get there, park at the Tremont visitor's center, walk up the gravel path to the right hand side of the parking lot (facing away from the visitor's center), walk up the path to the dorms, and take the trail to the left of the dorms (Lumber Ridge Trail). On Lumber Ridge, go up about 100 feet and turn right on to the Buckeye Trail It will take you to the falls.]
The trail is a lot of little, steep ups and downs over rocks and roots, but we all made it without anyone falling (a feat, considering Bailey's gracelessness). Along the trail there are several landmarks to watch for... in order of appearance... a series of Buckeye trees, a larrrrrge water tank, the Idiot Tree (the tree where idiots all carve their names), Butt Scoot Rock, and finally the falls. At the falls, we had just enough time to sit around and snack at the falls for a minute, test out the Gore-texness of my new boots, and make a little river rock face paint. On the way back , shortly after the Idiot Tree, Jodie heard and then spied a bear, a juvenile, about 100 feet off the trail sitting stone still. We were a big enough group and making enough noise that neither us nor the bear were really startled. No one freaked out, either, until about 10 yards down the trail when Myers realized that, on my back, there was nothing between him and the bear, so Jodie and I had to swap places on the trail.
After getting back, in honor of no one complaining and everyone having fun, we decided to negate all of the calories we burned by going to Mr. Gattis. :)