Monday 4-24-23 Hiking to Cumberland Falls

 

Cold Morning

We woke up to a cold morning, it was about 35 degrees outside. Sometime in the early morning we lost power so our heater quit. Larry woke up at 6:00 am and went out to check if we were the only ones without power, he used a volt meter and found there was no power at the power box. He put our Wave 3 heater together and turned it on. When I woke up the power was still off. Our neighbors woke up and Larry asked if they were without power she said yes. He told her we didn't have power. Around 8:00 am the power came on. We were excited.

I made pancakes for breakfast, I should have made something in the oven to get the chill out of the Minnie. 

I use my Garmin activity tracker all the time and now that it quit I have noway to track my steps. Larry found a step tracking program for our phone. He wanted one that did not use the GPS part of the phone so that it wouldn't drain the battery.

Then we got ready to go on a hike to Cumberland Falls to test it out. It worked excellent. We hiked for 4 miles and did 9,591 steps. We picked up trail #5 at site 39. It takes you to Cumberland Falls, which is 1.25 miles one way. As we hiked the trail we saw beautiful rock formations and caves. We hiked through the forest, climbed over roots and rocks, climbed around a few boulders and heard and saw the Cumberland River. At places it was wet so we had to be careful. Especially,  where the rocks were wet and some of the rocks were steps and other were slabs. We climbed down a huge staircase, it had 90 steps. The staircase was steep and had a couple of places with a platform to rest. It went down the mountainside and on the way back it went up the mountainside. They had rain a couple of days ago so we saw a few small waterfalls on the rock walls. When we a half mile away from the falls we got on the number 2 trail. This trail took us through the picnic area that went along the river. We saw a beautiful pavilion, it was built by the CCC. It had a great fireplace with an opening on all sides but one chimney. When we got to the Cumberland Falls area it had a huge area with a store and a walkway to give different views of the falls. If you wanted to hike longer you could pick up other trails there. We walked around the area and stopped at a few different observation points for the Cumberland Falls. We also saw a small fall on the other side of the river. Both falls had a rainbow, this was cool. After taking pictures we took the number 2 trail for about a half mile to a staircase where we turned around. At the staircase we looked on the other side of the river and saw the Eagle Falls. It was smaller but it was still beautiful. We rested for a little bit then headed back. There were more people showing up because it was almost 11:00. We passed a young couple who had a three year old and an infant. We said hi to them and they let us go by. The little girl said they were looking for black bears. In the parking lot for the falls there was a Jeep that was black with purple grill, door handles and hinges and rubber duckies on the dash, I really liked it. We took the same route back that we took to the falls. It's amazing how the same trails could look so different going the opposite direction. We had a super hike.

Cumberland River

Mining for gems at Cumberland Falls

 

Cumberland Falls

 

Small falls on the other side of the river

 

Eagle Falls

 

Part of the hiking trail

 

38 of the 90 step staircase

Small stone staircase built by the CCC

 

Cool Jeep

A huge bridge that takes cars across the Cumberland River

 

Larry on one of the bridges

 

The Pavilion built by the CCC

We rested for the rest of the day. Larry started another book. He loves to read while I play games. I played my Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. Then I moved onto the event, which was Event: Pyramid Mini of 5 games. It took me 11 minutes and 54 seconds, which put me in 23rd place in my group.

After dinner I walked around the campground for an hour and a half, which gave me another 5 miles and 10,000 steps. While I was walking around I saw two turkeys grazing by the horse stables. That's the only wildlife I've seen since we have been in Kentucky. When I ended up doing 20,693 steps. Larry worries about me and thinks I should cut back on my steps because my right knee and my feet are starting to bug me. He's probably is right so I'm going to try to do about 20,000 steps a day instead of 27,000 steps.