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Day eight: Attempting to camp at Hawk Creek

 
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I.B.Me
merciless pace
merciless pace


Joined: 23 Jun 2007
Posts: 167
Location: Perryville KY

PostPosted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 7:51 am    Post subject: Day eight: Attempting to camp at Hawk Creek Reply with quote

Day 8 Saturday 7/7/07
I broke camp at 7:17am and hiked out to the riveted bridge over the Rockcastle River (trail mile 156.0) on hwy 490. Just before the bridge while road hiking hwy 89 a large 8-point buck, still in velvet, jumped out in front of me and then in one leap was across the road and he quickly disappeared. If I had the camera in my hand, I could not have snapped the picture in the short time he was in sight. I had also spooked a flock of turkeys off their roost at daybreak near my campsite. This whole trail is filled with wildlife of every sort. I especially enjoyed having so many whip-or-wills serenade me as I drifted off to sleep each night and the songbirds to wake me the next morning.
When I arrived at the Wildcat civil war memorial monument, I met a volunteer named Maxine Cass and she gave me an overview of the monument and how private money and grants were used to preserve this historical area. We discovered that we had a couple of mutual friends who helped her establish, fund and dedicate the memorial. After leaving camp Wildcat, I traveled a short distance down the Wilderness Road and stopped to talk to Jonas Fortney 61 years young whose grandfather, with the same name, built the house in 1894. Mr. Fortney said that this little dirt road was at one time the major North South corridor. The old slave house stood just behind his house and housed the workers who kept the road passable. He said one section was called corduroy because it had so many logs laid across it to keep wagons from sinking that it looked like the corduroy fabric. He noted that back in the day the stagecoach came right through here too. Jonas keeps an immaculate garden and I remember admiring it when I last passed by in 1999.
I arrived at I-75 and my truck (trail mile 168.7) at 2:13pm. I drove to Heidelberg hooked up the car and towed it to Pickett State Park in Tennessee then drove the car back to I-75. I did not get back on the trail until 11:59pm. Of course hiking in the dark is not new to me but every time I do it, I know I am messing up. I left I-75 in the dark and was grandly bewildered within 5 miles. I was using my headlamp but due to the ATV damage and the fact that all of my previous hikes through this section were traveling in the opposite direction, I was still having trouble finding the trail markers. I did stumble onto three guys in highly customized jeeps enjoying a malt beverage or ten. They were parked directly on the trail with vehicles facing every which way. As I approached them at nearly 2am, I heard one of them refer to my approaching headlamp by saying, “What to Hxxx is that”. I spoke with them briefly and continued in vain trying to find trail markers. At 3:21am I finally gave up on reaching Hawk Creek and made dry camp on the side of a hill. Lesson learned for at least the tenth time: STOP HIKING IN THE DARK! Data for day eight: 22.6 trail miles hiked, 3.8 extra miles hiked, moving time 7:26, stopped time 1:30, average moving speed 3.0 mph, total average speed 2.5 mph.

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