#26 Happy Birthday to Cheryl!

Cheryl, who is ageless and so doesn’t need birthdays, nevertheless wanted to celebrate this one with a hiking trip up to Huckleberry Knob just off the Cherohala Skyway. If you’ve never been there it’s worth a trip, especially to see the sunset. You can see mountain ranges off into the distance in every direction and the view is spectacular at any time of day, but sunset is really something. At 5560 feet it’s the highest point in the Unicoi Mountains and the highest point along the Cherohala Skyway.

We had one of our first dates up there so it was nice to go back and revisit. Not a bad hike, about 2.5 miles round trip, through some woods following a wash-out, across a lower pasture and then more woods. The first time we went up there I told Cheryl, “Be sure and bring a blanket because it gets cold up there.” After a nice walk up we get there, the sun is going down, ghostly white scattered fog is blowing across the top of the mountain, and she gets the blanket out. It’s maybe 4 by 4. A lap blanket, I think. We sit down and wrap our feet in it and I freeze, as I had worn my shorts, because hey, it was 80 degrees when we left home! I had forgotten that at 5500 feet it’s a different story. But we survived and had a great sunset that first time, and again this time. We came better prepared this time, taking jackets and a couple of real blankets. The first trip up we saw a lot of boar digging; the big boars up there dig up the ground with their tusks so that it looks like someone took a tractor and plow to it. I think Cheryl was a little nervous about that but she had hiking poles, so I told her if a boar came too close I’d poke it in the eye with a hiking pole. Not sure that reassured her as much as I’d hoped.

There is also a grave up there from long ago, a lonely place to be but with great views and he does get a lot of visitors. Google “Andy Sherman Huckleberry Knob” if you want all the details, it’s an interesting story. (I posted a photo of his plaque below.) There was a F-51 crash there years ago, and a B-17 also went down at Haw Knob, only about a mile and a half away. I’ve talked to people who found bits of the F-51, but I never did myself. (Yep, F-51 is correct.) I have heard or read somewhere that the balds in the Smokies are bald (no trees, just grass) because the Cherokee used to burn off the trees to keep them open for grazing, but it may also be natural, initially caused by glaciers and then grazing megafauna like mastodons, mammoths, elk and bison, all of which used to stomp around here. So not only is it a spectacular place for a sunset, there’s a lot of history there as well. The road to Huckleberry Knob, the Cherohala Skyway, has a nice side trip over to Bald River Falls, another scenic place. It’s an area where you can spend a day pretty easily.

Take a hiking pole just in case!

An extremely rare and lucky find; campfire ashes from the days of the Cherokee. Oh wait, the embers are still hot, so maybe not.

It was 80 degrees twenty minutes ago down in Tellico Plains!

“One day you’ll be old too. It happens faster than you think. When it does, you’ll look back and wonder if you lived your life right. Don’t wait until you’re geriatric to set your course straight. We regret most the things we didn’t do, the words we didn’t say.”