My brother wanted to organize a backpacking adventure a few weeks ago so I decided that we should hike the Smoky Mountains National Park. 40 miles, lacerated shin, bummed knee, lack of sleep are all the major events within our trip. The first day we started out at the Big Creek trailhead and took a dip into the Midnight Hole.

Here is Marvin half submerged.

The gorilla shoes, which I use for base camp.

And Marvin’s goofy jump in.

Me posing, right before I jump into the chilly water.

And getting ready to leave, for our long 20 mile hike that day.

It’s great to hike a forest with tons of water sources, just a lot easier to carry less water while embarking on a long hike.

The 2 mile ascent up to Mt Cammerer created an exhausted state as well as leading Marvin to count his steps for the rest of the day. He didn’t know what he was in for.

Another break for some high energy snacks.

Me enjoying myself.

An example of the cool trails we hiked.

Cooling off with another dip in the water. And trying to clean my sweat drenched shirt.

My actual hiking shoes.

Same situation as before, different area.

Fording the river, but actually just crossing without getting our shoes wet.

The damage on my leg, doesn’t look bad here but I should have gotten some serious stitches.

This is the next day at Laurel Gap Shelter. We arrived at the shelter just in the knick of time, right before it was completely dark so I couldn’t get photos earlier.

The shelter is closed off with a fence to prevent bear attacks.

Potty break, mountain style.

GORP.

Forest, and poison ivy infested areas that we didn’t know about.

Break again.

Log bridges required to stay on path through some of the Smoky Mountain trails.

Lunch was only one can of tuna each, and one tortilla.

Checking our directions.

I like this view of the log bridge.

Exhausted during our second day of hiking, this was totally around 12 miles and full of thunder storms.

Making dinner.

Jerk chicken and rice.

Bear rope to prevent those forest thieves.

Our camp, which was setup right when we got there since a thunderstorm was hurling down rain. We took a little nap at 4 in the afternoon, since we ended the day early.

Camp 40.

Loving the light bark on these trees.

Nature’s fireworks, or that’s what I saw out of them.

Funghi.

Cool red salamander, the only cool animal we saw during our long trek.

Marvin happy that we finally finished our last hike. Exhausted and hungry, we decided to walk up to the top of Hemphill Bald, which added another 2 miles round trip to our itinerary.

Next two are from the top of the mountain. Gorgeous views.