Burgess Falls Pictures Part Two

The falls in these pictures are of the Middle Falls. The only way to see these is from a scenic overlook.

This used to be a rope bridge that people could cross the river on. It is obviously out of service now.
















Seen along the trail.



















We climbed these stairs to the scenic overlook.

















The Middle Falls

















Apparently, the thing to do is to carve into the trees along the trail. The thing to do, that is, if you are young and a vandal.

Burgess Falls Pictures

The next few posts will be still picturs of our visit to Burgess Falls State Park. I'll add commentary here and there, but not much. If you click on the pictures, you'll be able to see a larger view of them.

These pictures are of the first set of falls, known as the "Small Falls."























If you look closely, you can see a white bird in the water just to the right of the big bush that is growing in the middle of the river.

Growth on a rock along the trail.

Burgess Falls

Since our visit to Muddy Falls was a bust, we decided to head over to Burgess Falls State Park.

The land where Burgess Falls State park is located has been associated with the Burgess Family for over two hundred years. In 1793, Thomas Burgess (1756-1840) was given a land grant as payment for his service in the Revolutionary War. The Burgess family recognized the water's power potential and opened up a grist mill and a saw mill. In the 1920's, the energy from the waterfalls was harnessed to provide electricity for the area, which continued until the arrival of the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1944. In 1973, the state named Burgess Falls a State Natural Area.

Background information out of the way, if you ever have the opportunity to see Burgess Falls in person, do it. The 1.5 mile trail is moderate in difficulty, but it is well worth the reward. This place is gorgeous. The Falling Water River drops 250 feet in less than a mile, washing over rocks in three falls: Little Falls (a thirty foot drop), Middle Falls (eighty foot drop) and the Big Falls that is a 136 foot drop for the river.





You get the idea. Pictures coming in next post.

Hummingbird Jackpot

On Sunday, we went exploring in the area, which has a Mennonite settlement known as Muddy Pond, and several state and local parks. We first headed out to Muddy Pond, also known as the first GPS fail. We looked up the address for the Muddy Pond General Store on our phones, and put that address into our GPS. The GPS led us to that address, right in the middle of a dense forest. We laughed and drove a little farther, mainly because the narrow, twisty roads did not afford a "youey." When we finally reached a cross road, there was a sign there that said Muddy Pond General Store was three miles farther down the road. We drove at least five miles and stopped at the Muddy Pond Country Store, which was locked up tight. It was only then that we realized that as it was Sunday, these people were probably all at church.

We were a little dissapointed, until we saw the hummingbirds. The Country Store had four or five hummingbird feeders hanging up on their porch, and the hummingbirds came to visit. At one point, there were about ten of them buzzing around, flitting from feeder to feeder, the rhythm of their wings sounding like a hive of bees. So we ended up being grateful that the store was closed, because we doubted that the hummingbirds would be there in such a high number if there were a lot of people around.



Click on the photos to see a larger view.

Cosgroovey!

We arrived at our first official destination stop at about 11 a.m. on Saturday, which happened to be check-out time for our hotel. We decided to roll the dice and see if they happened to have a room ready. We weren't so lucky.

The M.O.D. (that's Manager On Duty for you folks not in the hospitality industry) told us they had a full house the night before, so there would be no rooms available until afternoon. In case we didn't believe him, he called over the head of housekeeping, to corroborate his story. She explained to us how her day from here on out would unfold, from the half-hour that her entire crew would have for lunch starting at noon and ending precisely at twelve-thirty. She was very proud of the fact that they could all consume their midday meal in thirty minutes, as she repeated this fact at least two times. We smile and thanked them for their dilligence and told them we would check back later. The M.O.D. apologized profusely and gave us his card and asked us to call later, and they would try to get our room done as one of the first ones. We assured him this was not necessary, as we were meeting a friend and would just hang out with her until check-in time. But he insisted, so we took his card and went to meet our friend for lunch.

We first met "Bizzie" on Twitter. We became friends, and somewhere along the way, learned enough about each other to become a sort of extended family. She lives in a town we refer to as Cosgroveville, named so for her favorite actor, Danny Cosgrove, an actor on the long-running daytime soap opera, Guiding Light. Located just about in the middle of Tennessee, it has something like 10 hotels and 500 restaurants, but the "mall" has one store: JC Penneys. It's a big town with a little town feel, and we were ready to do some exploring. We met Bizzie at Christy's restaurant, which was kind of like a diner with a big restaurant feel. The burgers were good and the company was great.

After lunch we went to see a famous local landmark, a giant pink elephant on waterskis that wears a yellow-polka-dotted bikini and shades. We goofed around for a little bit there, then headed over to an activity park that has a putt-putt golf course and played eighteen holes of varying degrees of embarassment, and we all showed why putt-putt golf isn't a professional sport.

They also had a thing called "Water Wars" that involved putting water balloons in a giant sling shot and flinging said water balloons at your opponent. We passed on this activity. We also passed on paintball, as it is kind of messy and can be painful. But we did get on the go-carts, which I am horrible at and came in last, but managed to not crash despite Bizzie cutting me off in an "S" curve. After all this excitement, we sat on their deck with refreshments and talked until it was time to head back to the hotel. We agreed to meet for dinner in a couple of hours.

Our room was really nice. It had a flat-screen TV, a refrigerator, and a microwave, as well as a really big bathroom. After unloading the car and exploring the hotel, and changing into non-sweaty clothes (it was sunny and in the mid-90's while we were putt-putting), we headed off to meet Bizzie at Logan's.

Something we found truly amazing about this "little" town was the number of restaurants that were there. In fact, it seems like the main employer in this town are restaurants. And their parking lots were packed no matter the time of day you drove by. During dinner we planned our next day's activities and shared some more stories. After this nice, leisurely dinner, we were pooped, and headed back to the hotel to rest up for the next day's adventures.