Big South Fork National Recreation Area--October 17 - 26, 2015

Our fall trip with Freddie was to a the Big South Fork Recreation Area on the Kentucky Tennessee border. It is a river gorge on the Cumberland Plateau with lots of hiking and mountain biking trails, plus a really nice campground with hot showers.  

This is the National Park Service site, if you are interested:  Info on Big South Fork

We forgot the camera, so these pictures were taken with my phone:
Note:  you can click on the pictures to see them full screen.  

The Big South Fork River on the Cumberland Plateau

There was lots of great hiking, but one of our favorite hikes was to two huge natural arches that were side by side.

Notice people at left base of arch to see scale.

If you were energetic, you could take these steps to the top of Arch #1.
It was a good workout.

 The Grand Gap Loop is really lovely.  I hiked it while Alan rode his mountain bike.  Unfortunately, the trail was more of a problem for the bike than he expected.  At one point, he crashed, ending up upside down, still on his bike, in the middle of a rhododendron bush.  He had a hard time extricating himself, but had only minor injuries.

We spent a fun afternoon on the Big South Fork Scenic Railway.  It goes from Stearns, KY to the Blue Heron Mining Camp and back.  The Park Service has an outstanding historic area at Blue Heron, telling about what life was like in these isolated mining camps.  Really well done:
Info on Big South Fork Scenic Railway

This walking bridge is on top of the tipple, a huge chute that goes from the mine to the coal cars.

Because it was almost the end of October, we expected to see lots of fall colors.
But they really didn't pop until we were on the way home the last weekend.

I don't have a picture, but I have a saga related to troubles we had on the way to Big South Fork:
We were on Interstate 81, about 50 miles from Kingsport when we had a blowout on one of the tires on the trailer.  By the time we got stopped, the flapping tread had knocked a hole in the metal bottom of the trailer; there were jagged pieces of metal protruding; plus, a metal bar support for a trim piece next to the tire was hanging, only 1/2 attached.  Amazingly, even though it took several hours, Alan was able to change the tire, hammer back the gaping metal, attach it to a support using long cable ties, and rig up other emergency fixes with the tools and materials he had at hand, so we could continue on down the road. His ingenuity and patience were incredible.
 While he was doing that, my job was to hand him tools and deal with the traffic flying by at 80 miles an hour.  We had orange emergency cones and triangles, but the trucks would blow them into the ditch when they went by.  I had to weigh them down with my hiking boots.  When Alan finally got everything ready to go, the truck wouldn't start.  We had forgotten to turn off the lights on the truck, and the battery was dead.  AAA came to our rescue with a jump start. After a stop at Wal-Mart for a new tire, we got to the campground about 10:30 p.m.