Hey, I couldn’t resist. I had to see where the name came from.
Unfortunately, once I chewed on the leaf, it was quite obvious.
Click the lovely picture above to watch the sneak-peek video from my upcoming post about sourwood trees & honey.
Something you always wonder when you’re talking to AT hikers is:
are you really going to make it? 2,100 miles is a loooong way…
But thanks to Trailjournals.com, I was able to check up on the progress of some of the guys I met in April, and I was pleasantly surprised at the results. Here’s a tribute to Mountain Sailor, Apostle, and 26.2!
Whether you realize it or not, Eastern Hemlock trees likely had a profound impact on you during your visit to the Smokies:
That shady green forest you drive through between Gatlinburg and Sugarlands Visitor Center? Hemlock trees!
Those gently drooping boughs that arched over you while you dipped your feet into the icy river in Greenbrier? Hemlock trees!
The trees with delicate, tiny needles that you walk among on almost every trail in the Smokies, that you see on almost every hillside… Hemlock trees!
But the quintessential Smokies’ tree is being killed by a non-native insect that’s no bigger than the dot at the end of this sentence. Saving the trees is a complex problem, involves a lot of sweat and effort, and some interesting biology too.
I’ve put together a 3-part film, posted below, to explain what the problem is, and what’s being done to save the trees. Click each photo to play its film.
Part I: The Problem
Part II: Soil Drenching
Part II: Beetles
It was an ambitious hike: 23 miles up one of the highest mountains in the Smokies, to a legendary spot: Rocky Top!
I used to dream about discovering Incan gold when I was a little kid… and then I took an archaeology class during high school and realized there was NO WAY I had the patience to slowly scrape dirt away and meticulously record where it came from. In six weeks of excavating, I also found nothing, and suffered from a lot of poison ivy.
But filming archaeologists is pretty fun, and they seem to enjoy what they’re doing… especially when they’re actually finding interesting Cherokee artifacts! Click the photo below to hear about the major dig site of the summer!
Visit the Mount Cammerer firetower, one of the few remaining lookout towers in the Smokies!
There are several trails to the Cammerer firetower, but all of them are long and steep (the shortest route is over ten miles round trip)… just take it easy and stop frequently, because it’s definitely worth the climb. And because you walk on the Appalachian Trail for a few miles, you’ll probably meet some interesting people: I chatted with two guys from England, a dozen people from Florida who were freezing (it was in the mid-60s) and a couple from the Netherlands who liked “Elvis and being close to nature.”
Firetowers like this one date from the days when millions of board feet of lumber were being hauled off the Smokies’ slopes and fires ignited regularly in the denuded landscape, burning valuable timber. Today, it’s a great spot to eat lunch and admire the beauty of the national park!
Click the photo below to watch the video:
Don’t ever mix electricity and water… unless you’re a professional with the national park’s fisheries division and have a very thick pair of rubber gloves.
Will Blozan has hiked thousands of miles through Great Smoky Mountains National Park and climbed hundreds of feet into the tops of the park’s tallest hemlocks. As part of a very special hike hosted during the Wildflower Pilgrimage earlier this March, a group of us were able to follow this intrepid tree climber into the woods, to visit the SECOND LARGEST hemlock tree ever documented.
Click the photo below to watch the film!
To enjoy this video blog on iTunes, click on the link below or cut and paste the URL into your browser window:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=286467509
Alternatively, you can click on the link below or cut and paste the direct podcast feed URL into your browser window:
http://www.smokiesinformation.org/video_blog/video_podcast.xml
Our FeedBurner URL is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GreatSmokyMountainsAssociationVideoBlog
Oh what?
Ophidiophobia (Oh-fid-eeo-fobia): fear of snakes…
Luckily, I’m not phobic, and neither are the people I was with when we startled this impressively large and healthy rattlesnake.
Click the photo below to see the video and hear some serious rattling!
Great Smoky Mountains Association Video Podcasts & Blog
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