Friday 4-15 Rain & Hiking

 

Rainy Morning

Yesterday Larry setup our Wave3 heater. It was suppose to get to about 50 degrees overnight so about an hour before I went to bed I got the heater going.  There is a process that you need to follow for it to work correctly, it had been a long time since we last used it so Larry and I discussed it. After lighting it you have to turn the valve to high and after 10 minutes you can set it to low. When I turned it to low I forgot to make sure it clicked into place so when Larry woke up this morning the heater was off. It was 50 degrees inside the Minnie. He turned it back on and ran it on high and the temperature was up to 60 when I woke up. I used the oven to make breakfast and that helped warm up the Minnie. 

It started to rain at 7:00 am and stopped at 11:00 am. We were excited because if the trails weren't too wet we could hike. We had lunch and then we went on a hike. The trails were perfect, we hiked about 5 miles. We started by hiking to the visitor center. We then hiked the Riverview Trail about 1.5 miles to the Overlook of the river. Then we continued to the Sod Collier Homestead. As we hiked to the homestead we went up and down the mountainside gradually, when we got near the overlook the trail got very steep. The view was excellent. 

We were surprised to find the Sod Collier Homestead still had the original house and a couple of sheds. The house was very basic and rustic. Walking through the house it was hard to believe how different and difficult living there must have been. Looking at the interior walls you could still see remnants of the magazines and advertisements they had used for wallpaper. The rooms were quite small with very low ceilings, there was no insulation, keeping the rooms warm in the winter had to be terribly difficult.  The family lived there from 1928 to 1962. They never had electricity or indoor plumbing. They survived by farming, they had some livestock, grew crops for feed and their own consumption. Sod also hunted, fished and worked as a guide.

A couple of butterflies on the trail

 

Hiking trail

 

Buffalo River from the Overlook

 

The Sod Collier Homestead

A rock ledge

After resting we started our hike back to the campground. We didn't take the same trail back instead we took the Buffalo River Trail to Rockwall Trail. The Rockwall trail had a beautiful rockwall, that ran along side much of the trail. We crossed a creek using rocks. Rockwall took us back to the campground. 

The trails back to the campground were very challenging because there were a lot of rocks. The trails took us through trees and up and down the mountainside. We crossed the creek a few times by using rocks. The creek wasn't that deep so it was easy to cross. At places the creek made small waterfalls. Our hike was very pretty and peaceful.

We spent the morning and the rest of day after our hike reading. I did my steps, which were 27,000 steps. This put me in 2nd place in my group. We had a wonderful day.