2nd day in Daniel Boone National Forest

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

I’d had to get in my tent earlier than I would have liked to avoid the swarming mosquitoes and no-see-ums. The bastards were biting and I was having none of it. The down side to this move was the heat. It hadn’t cooled much and the sweat continued to pour. I had an unusually loud bird calling a partner from a tree nearby and thought that was pretty neat for about 10 minutes. Unfortunately, the calling continued throughout the night and was still going when I gave up on sleep and climbed from my tent at 6 a.m.

I tend not to eat well when camping and had for breakfast what I‘d had for dinner…a bowl of Kashi cereal with powdered milk. I just wasn’t hungry and had to make myself eat it. My brother-in-law, Chris, was coming to meet me at 11 a.m. to take me into a particular part of the gorge, but that left me with 4 hours and I was determined to fill it with hiking. I drove down a dirt road towards the trailhead for Chimney Arch, supposedly the best vista in the gorge, but found a tree across the road a couple of miles before my destination. I parked the van and hike the remainder of the distance and was rewarded with some excellent views…and no company. I suppose no one else was interested in hiking the distance beyond the fallen tree. By the time I returned, the tree had already been removed and I made it back to meet Chris.

We hiked down into the gorge where I saw the first sign of water since arriving. I was sweating profusely and quickly jumped in the creek in a pool that had formed at the bottom of a small waterfall. When I came out and went to my backpack to get a towel, I realized I didn’t have my camera with me and realized I’d left it next to the van on a fence post at the trailhead. I returned the 1.5 miles to the van and found the camera and returned to find Chris resting in the shade. I, of course, was soaked through again. We hiked back to the car and then made our way to, what Chris told me, was a very famous climbers’ restaurant called ‘Migel’s’. They made excellent pizza…not on the Paleo diet but I smothered it with spinach, mushrooms, and broccoli.

I camped in a different part of the forest but had all the same, wonderful conditions from the night before right down to the annoyingly loud bird. I was camped on one of the ridges, about 200 feet wide and a thousand feet in the air. These cliffs are famous for climbing, viewing, and for people falling to their deaths from them. My sister is the Medical Examiner for Eastern Kentucky and knows the stories all too well. She cautioned me against moving around much in the dark, though I like to think I’m smart enough to stay away from the edges. Around ten at night though, I had a couple of yahoo’s with flashlights walking past my tent and heading for a part of the ridge about twenty feet wide. There was nothing to see and I can’t imagine what drew them there in the dark, but they did manage to return safely fifteen minutes later.

It was a good day with a lot of hiking and sweating and finally a decent meal. Tomorrow…more of the same scheduled for the biggest arch in Kentucky, located in Natural Bridge State Park.

Hike duration: 4 hours.
Training Heart Rate: 75 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 1400.