Hiking in the Smokies

Today, three of us decided to hike up Old Sugarlands Trail in the Smoky Mountains, and follow an off-trail path to an old stone house that we had tried, unsuccessfully, to see a few weeks before. Earlier, we had a lot of rain, and we had to cross a stream to get to the house, and it was way out of its banks, and impossible to cross. Today, however, the water was low enough for an easy rock hope. We were very surprised at how large the stone house is, and although it is falling down after many years of neglect, it is a wonderful structure (see photo album for "stone house").

We were told that there was an Arrowmont School for children near the house, and that the stone structure was the teacher's cottage. The remains of the apparent schoolhouse foundation can just barely be discerned at the site.

We started at 1500 feet where the trail leaves from Newfound Gap Road, and hiked up the trail to 2500 feet at Bullhead Trail. At the lower elevations, there were a lot of early spring wildflowers in bloom: rue anemone, Halberd-leaf violet, long-spurred violet, sweet white violet, many yellow trilliums (T. luteum), pennywort, and bloodroot. I saw a very few fringed phacelia in bloom. As we got to the higher elevation, we found a bank full of trailing arbutus, just beginning to bloom. Later, at the creek we crossed to get to the stone house, we saw a few Trillim grandiflorum. Check out the photo album for Stone House for pictures of the flowers we saw.