Sat 3/17:
Drove to a campground in Pisgah and grabbed the last spot. Quickly set up tent to save the spot and get on trail to hike up to John Rock and then a quick drive over to Looking Glass Falls. It was a damp, foggy, still morning. Didn't think to stake out the tent since we were in a hurry to get hiking. MISTAKE. Big mistake. Had a great hike, weather cleared up, Salem behaved really well. Got back to camp to unpack our gear and head into Brevard to walk around and get something to eat. The wind had picked up during the day and our tent had blown off the tent pad and was dragged across the gravel. It now has several holes in the rain fly.
7 miles, 3.5 hours hike time.
Good thing there's only a 10-20% chance of rain tonight. Got into the tent around 10:15pm. It started to drizzle around 11pm. Not problem. Just a passing rain cloud. Or not... It POURED for a while. Luckily, any rain that made it through the tent fly must've dripped down the inside of the fly rather than straight down onto us and our quilts. Sarah's quilt got damp, but for the most part we were ok.
I will always bring extra heavy duty tent stakes when car camping from now on. About a year ago, with our larger car camping tent, the same thing happened, at the same campground. You'd think we would've learned our lesson from that trip. The bad part is we didn't take our larger, heavier, CHEAPER car camping tent. We took the ultralight Big Agnes Fly Creek tent that was fairly expensive. I'll need to repair the fly or send it in to Big Agnes to see if they can fix it.
Sun 3/18:
Trail head for the Southern terminus of the Art Loeb trail is just outside the campground we stayed at. It starts by meandering along the river. We thought it was going to be a fairly leisurely hike. NOPE. It turns away from the river and goes up, and up, and up. Climbed from about 2,000' to 4,000' over 5-6 miles. We did an out and back and did about 11 miles. Felt good to get a good strenuous hike in. Much needed. Hadn't had a good one in a while and we need to get in shape for our trip to Utah in May.
11 miles, 4:45 hours hike time.
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