For our first, full day of hiking from Ducktown, TN, we head south through McCaysville, GA on Highway 5. It’s a crooked road, the scenery beautifully bucolic and the traffic nonexistent. We are blessed with a partly cloudy, cool day with no rain forecast.
We warm up with a hike to Fall Branch Falls, a series of cascades with a 30-foot drop into a plunge pool at the bottom. The fairly easy, one-mile-roundtrip walk is very popular. A property owner near the trailhead posted this sign to warn inconsiderate visitors.
We were fortunate to have the trail and the falls to ourselves.
The trail was dry for us, but the norm here is wet. The viewing platform makes a great escape from standing in mud.
We seek out a lot of waterfalls and capturing the proper perspective with a camera is difficult. Placing a person in the shot helps, plus it’s fun to hike up and look back.
The view from the top of a falls’ plummet is less dramatic than peering up at it from the base. It also worries Karen when I go up there. She says, “Give me the car keys, in case you fall.”
We continue south past Newport, GA and take a winding, dirt road to Noontootla Falls. Part of the 80-foot cascade is easily visible from the road. The Falls’ name is Cherokee for “land of the shining water.”
The hike up is short, but very steep, muddy and dangerous.
Most of the hikers attempting to claw their way up this path turned back. A small boy with his parents and four siblings warned me, “Mister, be careful up there. It’s mighty slick.” He was right.
Dead falls and underbrush kept us from reaching the base. Definitely not worth the arduous and dangerous ascent. My advice, enjoy Noontootla Falls from the road.
A few miles further down the twisted backroad is the Long Creek Trailhead. The Appalachian Trail crosses here and Long Creek Falls is a two-mile hike, out and back, from this point.
This leg of the Appalachian Trail is a hiking superhighway compared to what we just scaled. We met lots of seriously equipped hikers along the way. They all seemed tired and immensely happy, as if life on the trail made them calm and carefree.
A 300-yard, detour off the Appalachian Trail leads to beautiful Long Creek Falls. We encouraged some of the long-distance hikers on the main trail to not miss these falls, but one weary walker said, “I’m saving my energy for the main event.”
The water gushing over the last 50-feet of Long Creek Falls crashes into a beautiful pool. Karen found it calming enough to rest on a rock by its side.
About halfway back to Ducktown, we had to stop at Grumpy Old Men Brewing in Blue Ridge. It was founded by two-retired guys that started brewing in an outdoor shower. Their business grew, got too complicated and they sold it to another Grumpy Old Man and his Crabby Old Lady. A cold beer after a long day on the trails is a fine reward and made us less grumpy.