I'm looking forward to the trip, as we have never visited this specific area of the southern Appalachians. I hope to bring back some good photographs. But, in a way, I feel I'm really mining the dregs of what this part of the country has to offer. I've hiked and scrambled and bushwhacked all over my native mountains, and it's time to start venturing farther afield more often. I repeat again that there's nothing more beautiful than a southern Appalachian cove forest, but I'm past ready to experience other habitats and other vistas.
Our initial goal for this summer was to head up to the Adirondacks. But my surgery put that on hold, as did the soaring price of gasoline. Since I wasn't likely to be able to hike up the larger of the high peaks in the Daks, we fell back on more local options, thus our plans to hit eastern Tennessee instead of New York state.
For next year, though, we're going to aim much farther afield. We're thinking of one or more of the western parks, again. We're looking at a range of them. Everything from Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, to Lassen Volcanic Peak, or Yosemite, or Sequoyah-King's Canyon. We'll know more, but as with our trip to Yellowstone/Grand Tetons, we want to set everything in stone before we head out.
2 comments:
I know it's far away, but I've always wanted to see Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada.
I wouldn't mind seeing that one, too. I think that's where they want to get the bison to restock the Smokies and other southern locales if they can ever get the jackass humans to agree to it. If I'm not mistaken, they're the closest thing to the extinct eastern woodland bison that still exists.
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