Hike to Buggytop

Getting ready for our upcoming hiking trip to the Smokies, and eventually our hiking trip to Utah we decided to take a little trip back to Cumberland Plateau. We were originally planning to go back to Stone Door and hike the more challenging Big Creek Gulf trail, but we got a late start so Joe let Amber pick the trail today. We have a nice map book of

Tennessee that has a list of popular hiking trails inside the front cover.

Amber, reading through the list saw a cute little trail called Buggytop, so naturally she picked that one. The map said that this trail was a four mile trip, there and back again. We weren’t quite sure what that meant, if it was two miles there and back or four miles there and back. So we mentally prepared ourselves for an eight mile day.We arrived at Buggytop right on the tail of a soaker of a storm, so the trail was nice,

wet and steamy for us. We hit the trail and noticed that there were a lot of pretty butterflies flying around. We tried to take a picture of one of them, but they wouldn’t stay put. The first mile was along the ridge top and was very sloppy and buggy. We got to a sign/register that showed us the trail map and luckily it was only a 2 mile trail.

Amber found out early on not to touch anything green because it was probably poison ivy. Her leg isn’t itching, which means that either she isn’t allergic to poison ivy or she didn’t brush against it hard enough. We usually go hiking in the winter, and we were reminded today of that reason… Poison ivy and bugs were everywhere.

Mile two was down into a box canyon and at times steep and r

ocky, and it took extra caution not to slip and fall because of the recent rain. We arrived at a bluff overlooking the box

canyon where Buggytop Cave is and we could hear the roaring of water exiting from the cave entrance below. It was time to go down into the box canyon, this was the fun part. The trail

immediately went down a broken up section of the rocky bluff and Amber accidentally found out that she could almost do a complete split, but luckily caught herself before going all the way down to the ground. The trail was definitely getting interesting. With poison ivy everywhere, climbing down the rocky bluff took creative foot and hand work to not touch any of the evil plants.

After the rocky bluff and a narrow ledge, the trail went steeply down a muddy hill with only tree roots and small embedded stones to aide us down without sliding. Amber had her second attempt at defying gravity as her foot slipped and she almost fell completely, but was able to catch

herself just inches from the ground. We arrived at Buggytop Cave and immediately felt the cool, dry air coming out. It was a

nice contrast from the hot steamy forest we had been hiking in.

Buggytop Cave has an enormous entrance with a river flowing out, and then promptly falling down some cascades onto a rocky stream bed. Since it was so humid outside, there was a great fog protruding from the entrance, making for an eerie sight. We snapped a couple pictures and headed back up. The trail going back up the bluff line was actually easier than i

t was coming down, and the poison ivy was much easier to avoid. We almost made it to the car completely unscathed, if it weren’t

for a misstep on a slippery rock by Amber which sent her hurling into a patch of Virginia creeper. Luckily it wasn’t poison ivy.All in all it was a good trail with some moderately difficult portions which Joe thinks made it even more of an interesting hike. As we arrived to the car, our shoes, ankles and legs were nice and muddy. Until the next hike.

Vacation Trip to Utah 2009! (a year later and we’re finally getting this posted)

After another grueling beginning of a school year and sweeps ratings periods at the station, its time to head out away on vacation, far away in Utah...four states away from work, from being able to get called in if something crazy happens. Away from the screaming kids and demanding bosses.
We found a great deal through Continental Airlines that made it possible for us to take this trip. But of course the catch is to leave really early in the morning from a city four hours away in Atlanta. Luckily Joe was able to get off early the day before, so we could take our time to get there and stop for a nice bite of BBQ in Chattanooga on the way over. We stayed at Joe's Aunt Hazel, who was also nice enough to get up at 5:00 am to give us a ride to the transit station. Luckily there was a train station close to her house that took us straight to the airport. We had timed it perfectly so we would make our flight without having to rush, but we found out at the last minute that we had to check our bag and pay a hefty twenty dollars to do so. We ended up having to run to our terminal to catch our flight. That was awful!
Our trip there was uneventful. Amber's mom and sister met us in the airport, and it was cold there compared to Atlanta. We spent the day in Salt Lake, mainly at This is the Place park pioneer village. We learned many things including how a spindle works, how the pioneers made yummy apple cider, and how a family of ten people can live in a one room cabin. It's amazing how spoiled we have become. Joe was able to go the General Conference Priesthood session that night, which was a good experience for him since he had never been to General Conference at the Conference Center before. We ended up getting home late that night, where Brianna (Amber's sweet little cousin) had fallen asleep waiting for us to get there.
For the majority of the week Joe had big plans to explore the wondrous state of Utah. Of course we should all know by now that Joe likes to think big...it drives his boss crazy sometimes. We only had a week but Joe has a nice map of Utah that he just can't put down. The more he studied the map, the more places we wanted to go. In between our explorations of the state, we spent time with family, and even included family with us as we explored. It's so hard on trips like these to see everybody and spend enough time with everybody so that they feel like they've had their fair share of time with Amber and Joe, since we only get out to Utah once a year.
We wanted to go and see Amber's friend Melissa down in Cedar City, so that gave Joe a chance to plan a nice little scenic drive to Cedar City and catch a plethora of natural Utah gems. We were able to talk Amber's sister into coming with us and letting us use her car. It was a fun drive. It is amazing how vast the state of Utah is. The terrain just changes so much as you travel through the state. There are the brown and tan rugged mountains of central east Utah and the coal mining towns. Then south of I-70 the landscape dramatically changes to more of a rolling hills prairie. A couple hours later it turns into a Colorado style pine and spruce forest as you go over Boulder Mountain with views of different style mountains in the distance. A couple hours later, another dramatic change as the pine and spruce forests give way to a desert of stone as we come into the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument area. The drive through this was by far the most interesting of the day as the road wound around through stone canyons, straddled the tops of narrow ledges, and hugged the sides of stone walls with a sheer cliff as the shoulder of the road. You don't want to make any driving mistakes there. One wrong turn and its good-bye. Luckily there was a nice concrete barrier to serve as a guardrail on those parts of the road. We hit Bryce Canyon National Park before heading over to Cedar City.
After Bryce, we thought we were taking a shorter way but ended up winding around through a volcanic forest and past Cedar Breaks national monument. Wow, there sure are a lot of national monuments in Utah. Needless to say, we got to Cedar City a couple hours late. But with the scenery so spectacular, it didn't feel like we had been driving ten hours. It didn't feel near as long as the four hour drive back home on I-15 in the middle of the night. The rest of the week was spent with different family members driving around closer to Helper.
While Joe was looking through that map, he discovered a really interesting looking area called the San Rafael Swell. We had planned a day for Amber’s dad and grandma to take us through the swell in her dad’s 4x4 truck. We drove to the northern most overlook over the swell called the wedge overlook, nicknamed “little grand canyon”. It was pretty impressive. Most people don’t even know this place exists. We attempted to drive into the swell but got stopped by flat tire. While Amber’s dad, with a little help from Joe, troubleshooted the tire situation, we took some of the time to take some interesting pictures of each other…Joe even talked Amber into laying down on a rock for a cute picture. With the spare tire as a primary tire, we had gone as far as we could go today into the swell. We found out at the service station in Price what the culprit of the flat tire was, a wedge-shaped rock, a perfect triangle that just happened to be in the perfect position for us to run over it.
We managed to get back over to the swell the next day, but this time with Amber’s brother in his VW Jetta with super thin tires. The 25 mile trek through the northern portion of the swell on the gravel desert road was scenic, but at the speed we had to restrict our driving to in that vehicle made the trip seem extra long and bumpy. We’ll definitely have to come back here again in the future with a four wheel drive vehicle.
Lately Joe has had quite the fascination with ghost towns and Utah has plenty of them especially east Utah with the mountains being as rich in coal as they are. Joe has started collecting pictures of these ghost towns and took this trip as an extra opportunity to expand his ghost town portfolio. Amber’s mom was able to drive us around for a day to explore several of the ghost towns near Helper, Price and Scofield. We explored up the consumers area starting with the former town of Coal City. Since this is on private land, there are actually a few ruins to prove that there was once a town there. Many of the old mining camps on public property usually fall victim to environmental “reclaiming” acts which demolish coal camp ruins and basically erase all signs of history.
After exploring Coal City and taking lots of pictures we went to National just up the street and saw a couple of ruins which were unfortunately hard to get to because of the thick growth of sage brush. Joe and Amber’s mom braved the brush to explore the ruins and came back with a couple of scratches and sticky seeds all over them. Amber was glad that she didn’t follow them to the ruins. We couldn’t find any ruins of Sweet or Consumers, although there is a modern operating coal mine where the ancient coal mine used to be.
From here on out we were adventuring, following the dirt roads over the mountains to wherever they took us. It was a little nerve racking at times since the road was so narrow with a steep cliff at the shoulder at times. The most interesting part of the road took us down a steep set of switchbacks down to the other side of the mountain. We explored Clear Creek which is actually still somewhat habited. It was interesting to see how some of the newer houses where built onto the foundations of houses from the early 1900’s. We hit Scofield, took a few pictures and headed home to Helper.
Amber's birthday was Saturday so we all got together on Friday and had a family cook-out at Amber's grandparent’s house. As usual, the week flew by way to fast and vacation was over before we knew it. We stopped by a couple ghosts town on the way out of Helper and also managed to go and see Bridal Veil Falls before stopping at Amber’s cousin’s house in Salt Lake where we were staying the night since we had to be at the airport so early the next morning.
We flew back to Atlanta Sunday, and had the four hour drive home to look forward to. It was nice to be home again.
To see more pictures from our trip, visit our facebook pages at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=579500130#!/album.php?aid=335920&id=579500130&ref=pb
and
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=579500130#!/album.php?aid=112696&id=761653509&ref=pb