Super Troopers

A map of just a few of the trail choices we had. The one we chose, Abrams Falls Trail, is bracketed in pink highlighter.
A mere 2.5 miles to the falls? No problem.

Our lovely trail up the side of a moutain.

Our trail guide.

Our picnicing spot.

The beautiful Abrams falls including the crazy divers.

We decided that our first hike would be a fairly lengthy one. The kids were such little troopers. Quite a few of my friends have been surprised that E and L would want to walk 2.5 miles there and 2.5 miles back on a trail. In general, we keep the kids fairly active with outdoors activities. It was my goal to visit our local state park and hike the trails at least once a month this summer (and I reached this goal--yay!) so they were more than prepared to hoof it a few miles to see a great waterfall. Over the entire week we were gone, we probably hiked between 8 to 10 miles.

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The first trail we tackled lead from the Cades Cove loop to Abrams falls. The trail marker at the beginning indicated it would take us 3-4 hours to hike there and back. We had a picnic lunch with us along with plenty of water so we were ready to go. Basically, the trail gradually goes up the side of a mountain. The ranger at the beginning of the trail told us to save more than half our water for the way back because the trek back would be more difficult than going there. After about an hour and a half or hour and forty-five minutes, we made it to the falls. There were quite a few people there enjoying picnic lunches and swimming. We climbed out into the base of the falls and had a picnic on a couple of the rocks in the water. Just as we finished our food, I turned to Aron and said "Huh. Looks like rain over there." As I finished saying this, it started to pour.

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AND I MEAN POUR

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on us. We all ran under a little overhang which helped to keep some of the rain off us but we continued to get soaked. We stayed for about 10 minutes of so and thought that eventually it would let up.

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We were so wrong.

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Eventually, I turned to the kids and said "Mommy doesn't want to do this. Daddy doesn't want to do this. I know you both don't want to do this. Remember how far it was to get here? We now have to go back that far in the rain. I need you two to be big kids about it. I would like no complaining, crying, or whining because this is just something we have to do. Ok?"

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And they did.

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There was no complaining about how wet they were, there was no whining about how they were cold now that it was raining, and there was no crying about our crappy situation. They both just put their heads down and trudged along. The only time anything was said about what was going on was when Ella turned to me and said "Mommy, even my underwear are wet." I told that mine were wet, too, mostly from Mommy's tears.

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About halfway back to the car, Aron turned to me and said "I left the rain flap off the tent." I told him to stop speaking in camp code and speak in English. He told me that he left the top of the tent off which meant that the pouring rain was currently soaking everything inside including our sleeping bags.

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We got back to the campsite and sure enough, everything was wet. Aron picked up a sleeping bag and water just poured off it. Needless to say, we packed it up and moved on out!