This morning is a calm morning, I guess it’s the truth behind “the calm before the storm.” As I write this Hurricane Idalia has smashed into the Gulf side of Northern Florida and will make her way across the state to the Atlantic side. The current forecast has the storm running just inland today along the coast of Georgia and South Carolina before sliding off into the sea. The schools and many businesses in our area are closed in preparation for the coming storm. We’re expecting winds, rain, and coastal flooding. There are two pieces of good news. First is, according to the internet, Jim Cantore is in Cedar Key Florida, and NOT in South Carolina. The second is the Colberg Cow is still up and in place, at least as of 6 a.m. this morning.
So today with the college closed, it’s a standby day for me, waiting really for the winds which may bring trees or branches down on the farm. Our ground is fairly high so flooding isn’t our big concern this far inland. By this afternoon the hurricane is expected to be a tropical storm again and by later this evening it will be well past us. The downtime is giving me a chance to catch up on some things (like writing).
The group I volunteer with just did our annual activity plan and we added several campout events with backpacking. I started updating my blog site with a new page for The Palmetto Trail and in doing so I realized, I have a lot of gaps in my Palmetto Trail journey. And I want to get back on the AT. And the more I think about it the more I just want to get out more. I’ve started planning to grab time as I can to fill in some of the gaps in my Palmetto Trail passages. I’ve hiked passages like the High Hills of Santee a dozen or more times, but I really need to start filling some of the gaps now. I know some will be day trips, and some will be overnighters. My big hurdle really is hiking with one vehicle. Every hike becomes twice as long or I can only go half as far. Maybe I can just go, and keep going? Almost, but not yet. Sigh. Anyway tomorrow after the storm, assuming no major homestead issues, I’m planning to take Radar for the day. I’ve a backpacking trip with some new hikers in January. I need to find a suitable overnight trail campsite around the Swampfox and Awendaw Passages. The rains have come now. The trail is calling and I must go.
The trail is calling
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I just “happened” to be in the area and on a whim decided to detour over to Sassafras Mountain and bag this peak. Radar and I are returning from an overnight family camping trip at Devil’s Fork State Park in the North West part of the state. It’s Friday morning and we’re all heading home a day early. Our camping trip was cut a little short due to some rainy weather and the forecast for more of the same.
I realized South Carolina’s highest peak, Sassafras Mountain at 3,553 feet, is on the way home. Sort of. I check my map app and it looks like Sassafras Mtn is sort of almost on the way home. I don’t know when I’ll be able to get back up in this area. So a slight detour to the North and we are on our way.
Getting there requires a short drive into North Carolina. It’s strange but you can’t drive to South Carolinas highest peak from South Carolina. You must drive out of the state and into North Carolina in order to get to the peak. Sassafras mounting actually straddles the border of North and South Carolines.
Sassafras Mountain Tower approach
I was here a few years ago (maybe in 2018) when the tower was still under construction. We were dropping some grateful hikers off at their car in the parking lot, It was late a night. I ran up to the peak but could see anything (being nighttime and all). So I’ve always wanted to come back.
Sassafras Mountain Plaque
We’re taking SC highway-11 home anyway so I detoured and take the winding roads to the mountain peak. It’s about 1:40 pm as we get to the Sassafrass Mountain parking lot. The weather has been off and on rain all day but it’s just a short walk up the trail to the observation tower. The rain lets up as we start up the trail. As we get to the top of the tower the sky is overcast but the rain has stopped, at least for now.
Sassafras Mountain East View
The view is good for the day I think. they say you can see for 50 miles on a good clear day. I imagine the view will be amazing. Maybe on my next visit.
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A quick aside. It’s Saturday morning. The sun is out. The morning looks bright. Despite the insane pollen, I’ve decided to enjoy this morning. A hot cup of Cafe Mocha, a pancake breakfast, and some quality catch-up time. Later today, I’m planning to make some poles for my scout troop’s dining flys (replacements from our stolen trailer episode) and then take Radar for a long walk.
I’ve done a couple of campouts this year I still need to unpack including an awesome trip in to Florida last month for the Battle of Olustee Reenactment. I’ll try to get out more on those soon. but for now, I’m just going to enjoy the morning.
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It’s a peaceful Sunday on the farm, early morning still. Sitting, drinking a warm mocha, sifting through various news feeds, I came across this article I wanted to share.
The article has some amazing images, one of my favorites is the “Bear in the backyard.” I imagine it would have been incredibly hard to pick one winner. Which is your favorite (comment below)?
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This past weekend I camped with a group of fellow campers on Johns Island. While not summer hot, the weather started out a bit warm.
Fall in South Carolina can still have some pretty warm weather. It can also have some of the best camping weather around. So far this fall the weather has been generally good with the heat of summer is gone, but the evenings still have been hovering between a little too warm and almost cool. Camping weather in the fall is some of the best here because its mostly dry, the bugs are fading, and the evening temperatures are cooler. The days are in the comfortable tee-shirt temperature zone and the nights can dip down in to the sleeping bag snuggling temperatures.
Activities while camping are great don’t get me wrong, but there is something special about camping sleeping. It’s a little complicated to explain, probably because there are so many things which affecting how well someone sleeps outdoors. Partly I think one of the benefits is your body gets to re-tuned and return to natures natural circadian rhythm. For me, one of the big contributors of a good nights sleep is temperature. Too warm and you’re laying in a puddle of sweat, too cold and you’re shivering, either way sleep doesn’t come easily when you are outside of the “great sleeping weather” zone.
When is something broken a good thing? When the heat of the summer breaks for the fall camping weather. There is something special about being a witness to the changing of weather. This past weekend I was able to see and feel this shift, the breaking in to the cooler fall camping weather. It rolled in as a small weather front Saturday afternoon. You could see the clouds moving in, covering the clear blue South Carolina sky. There was a light sprinkling of rain, and then just like that, the cooler weather was here. Sleeping that night, blanketed in a warm sleeping bag, in the shelter of my tent, was great.
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… I find I need something, anything, maybe some background noise, maybe just some solid music running in the background. Anything just to keep my head from exploding and the world around me becoming unraveled.
There was and is a lot of hope for the new year. As we exited the old and creep in to the new, my fear however is some of the 2020 dumpster fire of year may have spilled over into 2021.
I am so looking forward to things getting back to “normal” (whatever that is now). 2020 was a year of un-realized goals for a lot of people after the China Flu hit. The world basically descended in to a long spiral of weird stuff. With all the government mandated community shutdowns, the year just seemed to plod along in a perpetual holding pattern. “Just a couple weeks to flatten the curve” turned in to more of a rollercoaster year of close-open-close. Anyway, I feel like 2020 is a dark rabbit hole we’re just beginning to claw out of. Looking back over the year I realized I hadn’t done a lot of … well anything really. As a designated “essential worker” I was fortunate enough to have steady paying employment all year. But with trails and parks and restaurants and travel pretty much shut down most of the year, working is about all I accomplished. So as I move in to the new year I want to get out more, explore more, and enjoy more. With all of this said, here’s to 2020 being over & the start of a Happy New Year!
My 2021 Wish List Inspired by another blogger’s site, I’ve decided to post some of targets to shoot for in 2021, so here are some of my outdoor goals for this year.
Visit 3 new state parks.
Hike 1 new segment of the Palmetto Trail.
Bag 5 of the “Southern 6ers”.
Camp overnight with Radar
Exploring canyons in Montana
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Southeastern Montana is a weird mix of wide open plains, constrained by fences, huge rolling hills, with sparse stands of pines. I am impressed with the scale of the wilderness here. This little corner of Montana feels like it’s a big cattle state. There are fences for cattle everywhere, there are even cattle crossing gates or guards getting on and off the interstate. Even the buffalo are fenced in. The deer and antelope may play but it’s not a free range world anymore. Welcome to Montana.
Landing in the great state of Montana was with a bit of apprehension as the temperatures had dropped and were running below zero our first couple days. Neither of us were ready or prepared for the early morning negative degree temperatures. Who in their right mind would think -7 degrees would be somewhere people would like to live?
Day 1 in Montana – Super Cold!
A little back story is probably due here. My brother is an avid hunter and this year was able to pull a long awaited Elk tag in Montana and had asked me along for the journey. This is actually the third (see An Elk-tastic Adventure) such adventure my brother and I have done. I drove up and met my brother in Virginia where we flew out to Montana. On our first day out in the woods was an every-layer-you-could-wear kind of day. Fortunately, for me at least, the temps over the next week rose to a way more tolerable level with lows running in the low 20’s and 30’s.
Over the course of the next 10 days, our daily routine typical consisted of awake at 5 am, packing gear, making lunches, and get ready for the day, on the road by 6 am. With a quick breakfast sandwich and coffee, we would travel to an area to explore. In the morning, we would hike in (and often up too), hike out, return to vehicle, find an area to explore for the evening, return to home base and repeat.
Mountains of Montana
After several days of coming up empty handed, we picked up a “hot tip” from another hunter so we thought we would give it a go. This particular day started as most, with an early morning wake-up, pack up, on the road, and into the woods all in the dark. We’re about halfway through our trip at this point and the hot-tip indicated elk may be hiding in the basin on the other side a tough hike up and over more tough terrain. The route in was described as just over a mile and a half in, but it came with 1500 feet of evaluation gain. Logic indicating if it’s hard to get to, that’s where they elk will be. So off we headed.
The weather was still cold as we hiked partly up an old logging road in to the pine woods. As we slowly made our way up the snow covered trail of the old road, we were even successful in jumping a few deer. This told me we were stealthy enough to get close, we weren’t making too much noise, and if there were deer, maybe there would be elk. We saw lots of track crossing our path, but not much more after the deer. The old logging road passed through the forest to open hillside, the snow and road faded on the high side of the forest, giving way to a game trail at a fence line. We followed the well traveled game trail, continuing up and over another hill as the day warmed. The game trail eventually lead to a rock peak.
We ate a lunch here under the large tree near the ridge.
We had started hiking from around 7100 feet and went up to about 8600 feet. As a short hike goes this sounds easy but it took us a few hours to reach our peak. The peak looked over a basin as promised, with more and more peaks continuing after it. The view in to and across the basin from the peak was awesome, there was just one thing missing. Elk. This particular basin, like the vast majority of the areas we explored in Montana, while promising, was void of game. We sat on the ground under the large pine near the ridge, ate our lunch, and contemplated the ways of nature before we headed back out and down the way we had come.
On one of our treks out to the wilds, we were able to do one of the neatest things, at least from my perspective. We were working an area west of Lima and we were able to hike out far enough to set foot on some hiking trails leading to the Continental Divide Trail (CDT). The CDT is one of Americas long trails running 3100 miles from Mexico to Canada along the Rocky mountains. While I’m still section hiking the Appalachian Trail, being able to step out on to part of the CDT was huge motivation to keep on hiking. It’s one thing to be tromping around in the Montana wilderness, it’s another to walk along a trail you know runs across the country from bottom to top. It’s a little hard to explain the difference here, but just walking along the hiking trail for even a few hundred yards, made the trip worthwhile for me.
For almost two weeks, we hiked up and down seemingly countless trails, bushwhacking across hill and mountain sides, stalking, standing, siting, waiting, up early, home late, looking very hard for the elusive elk we had traveled so far to tag, all to no avail. For the last hunt day of our trip, we had followed another “hot tip,” (law enforcement had to close one of the interstate roads to allow a heard of elk cross) wo we had been working this valley area. We had selected a promising river basin area we suspected the elk were traveling to and from. Up and in the field early again, we crept our way in, hunkered down and waited. After the sun was up, we stalked around a bit, but to no avail. By lunch we were back at the car and ready to head back to the hotel and pack up for our flight home the next morning.
As fortune would have it, we had just pulled on to the interstate, traveling east, when we spotted the elk. not just one or two elk. not a dozen elk. But a whole herd of elk, maybe herds of elk. Possibly all the elk in Montana (probably not but it looked like it). There were between 200 to 300 elk, sitting safe in the middle of a private field, eating clover, sunning themselves, watching the world go by, not a half mile from the interstate.
All the Elk in one place, in the open.
We pulled off the road and were both laughing. The elk knew what was going on, they knew where it was safe to hangout and enjoy the day, waiting for dark. We watched the hundreds of elk lounging safely in the field for while, then we headed back to the motel to pack for our flight the next day back to Norfolk. With no elk.
After working though the shutdowns in the year of the China flu, I’m way ready for a break from the norm.
My brother and I are going to be spending some time exploring the mountains of southwestern Montana. For him it’s elk, for me it’s the opportunity for some exploration, getting out and getting some back country time With the whole lockdown thing it’s time to get out and stretch my legs a little.
Flying today is a little bit of a new experience with all the precautions, not undoable but not overly pleasant either. I thought the blue paper mask might be a little more comfortable, but halfway through the trip I switched back to my normal buff type face covering. I think our total flight time was around 5+ hours. Best part of the trip? Airport pizza for breakfast.
There isn’t much about August I think I’ll miss. But I’m not sure if fall will be much more fun.
I’ve been busy, and then started working my second job again, teaching (face-to-face) in this fall, which adds to the busy. I’ve been working straight through China virus and am so ready for a break. I have a couple weeks time off coming up, I hope everything goes well.
It’s clear summer is leaving us now the cooler temperatures of fall are starting to drift in. The days are getting shorter. Every morning I notice sunrise is a couple minutes later. With the longer darkness brings thoughts of upcoming holidays and an underlying sadness with them. I’ve heard the fall and winter is problematic for a lot of people. I fear this year maybe worse for some due to the long periods of “self isolation,” quarantine, social distancing, or whatever everyone has been going through.
In other news, it seems the city of Los Angeles has cancelled Halloween this because of the kung flu. The one night of the year people would want to wear a mask and they canceled it? Sigh, the world just doesn’t make much sense anymore.
Skyline of New York City, September 10, 2001.
I saw a post with a skyline picture of NY City from September 10, 2001 which brought back memories. Sadly there is an entire generation now who really have no idea, the trauma people felt on that day, and went through in the following days and weeks after, and still. I think I’ll always remember, that day, where I was. Those thoughts and feelings.
Here’s to tipping one back to the fall, may she woo us with something good and exciting. Stay safe y’all.
