Well, we dragged ourselves away from Tuscon at long last. We originally thought we’d go straight to Kentucky to climb at the Red River Gorge, but Mother Nature had other plans for us. The weather forecast included snow on several days just when we would arrive, and we wanted nothing to do with that! To delay a bit we decided to take a little tour of three climbing areas farther south that were all within a few hours of each other. But first…..we had to get there. Sigh. Back in the car!
We left Tuscon late in the morning and stopped at Saguaro National Park on the way out, so we didn’t really get on the road until 1:00. Eight hours of driving later found us 100 miles into Texas, and ready for a break so we stayed at a cheap little motel. The next day we kept on driving through Texas. And driving. And driving. Texas is really big. And really dull. The route we took was a total of 800 loooong miles! Finished up day 2 of the trek just a few miles past Shreveport, Louisiana, camping in a National Forest. It was a little tricky to find an out of the way spot this time, but it was well worth the effort when we were woken by the bird jubilee the next morning! Hundreds of birds, singing their hearts out to greet the dawn….truly a beautiful moment. We continued on our way, passing through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama (3 new states for me!) before arriving at Horse Pens 40, a bouldering area in the northeast corner of Alabama.
We stayed one day, tired ourselves out on a lot of boulder problems then drove a couple of hours to northwestern Georgia to the top of another little mountain and another bouldering area. We had a fun day exploring the boulders but didn’t do too much climbing since we were so tired from the day before. Left in the late afternoon for the 2 hour jaunt to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Following directions in the climbing guidebook we found the ad-hoc campground in a beautiful little spot right next to the Tennesse River. It was stunning! The river is so wide and calm. The next day we needed a rest so we went into Chattanooga to do a little exploring. It’s a great city! We really enjoyed walking around the downtown area, they have lots of museums and fun shops and restaurants, and some beautiful riverfront parks. There’s a long pedestrian footbridge across the river, which seemed a popular spot for locals to jog on and tourists to meander along. We found a neat little coffee shop overlooking the river and got some internet time, then went out to dinner. Unfortunately we forgot to bring a camera, so we have no pictures of all our entertaining times. Oh well! The next day we went climbing at Tennesse Wall, about a 15 minute hike from where we were camped. It’s pretty convenient to be able to roll out of your tent, eat some breakfast, then walk up the hill to go climbing! We enjoyed the routes we did, and were lucky enough to have warm weather without it being too hot. Overall it was a great little side-trip!
The next morning we packed ourselves up and tried to figure out where the weather was sending us next. We finally decided to head on to Kentucky and the Red River Gorge as planned, since it looked like we’d have the best chance of avoiding rain that way! We arrived at Miguel’s (combination pizza/climbing shop and climber campground…..more on that next time!) late in the afternoon on Friday and got ourselves set up, happy to be settled semi-permanently at least.
1 comment:
Maybe you should blog some more, Maura Fay!
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