This hike we decided the best way to get in mileage without hiking out for some distance then hiking back through where we already been hike was to get dropped off at a trailhead near the road. This worked out perfectly since the drop off point was about 6 miles out via the trail. It was 19 miles via road. I noticed on the map I have that the road turns to gravel which is not a big deal since I am a country boy so I have navigated many a gravel road in my day! 🙂 Well, they should define gravel a bit better like not in a car gravel because you might knock a hole in the oil pan because this gravel road is a pig trail. I started down the gravel to check it out because as long as you are careful and place one side of the tires of the car in the middle of the road on the high spot it should be fine. I thought as I drove that I should not make this hard on my wife’s parents driving out since they were nice enough to drop us out here. I decided to just drive back out of the gravel and we could hike up the road I mean we are about to hike 8 miles whats another half a mile! That is exactly what we did I found a spot to turn around and we got out grabbed our trekking poles and daypack then off we went. It was a beautiful hike the temperature was perfect started out in the 50’s and warmed into the low 60’s up on the ridgeline. We got to the end of the road where the AT meets a side trail and nears the road. I noticed several hunters standing around. Who knows what they were up to I did not pay any attention to them my wife and I just walked directly to the AT and started our beautiful journey back to Hot Springs. Another good thing about driving and being dropped off is that you get up a pretty good ways on the ridge in the car so it is not like hiking out of Hot Springs where it is at least 3 miles of the climb out of town before it levels off some on the ridge. I would have liked to hike back west a bit more up Bluff Mountain but that was about another 3 or 4 miles west only to backtrack. I did not think we had time so we just entered at the trailhead and set off east towards Hot Springs. It started out as a gradual ascent up to the ridge. The colors have not changed much down in the valley but they seemed to be more change up on the ridge. They were still not as bright as I had expected them to be this time of the year! Never the less it was still a wonderful hike and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to get in a short hike along the AT. Here is the video of our hike shortened of course. I just grabbed random spots along the way just to try my best to illustrate the changes in the trail and foliage. I hope you enjoy I know we sure enjoyed doing it! 🙂
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