We started writing Scavenger Hike Adventures Rocky Mountain National Park about two years ago.  We spent a couple of weeks at Rocky in 2005 and met with rangers and experts and looked around.  What a wonderful hiking park.  Kat and I fell in love with Rocky.  We read every book available and last year Kat rented a house in Estes Park overlooking Twin Sisters pinnacles and hiked everyday with rangers, historians and experts and locals.   I was really quite jealous.  I used every piece of my available time and joined her.

 It gave us stomach aches when we left Estes Park and returned to the Smokies.  Now two years later from our first research visit and over a thousand  hours of research and hiking and the book will be released in just a few weeks!!!  Whew.  Kat is out of town up north and I am thinking I'll take my dog down to some isolated campsite and sleep and read some books on Shenandoah National Park; our next book project.  We have been researching Shenandoah and will head out there in a couple of weeks to begin the wonderful job of exploring and creating Scavenger Hike Adventures.  We will give provide a journal update on that new adventure right here.

Kat and I took a mountain jeep trek today. We drove the 20 mile dirt and gravel road that leads through the Smokies and ends down in Cataloochee Valley. We travelled past cabins and homesteads that were very rural. I always wonder about the "story" inside those reclusive and isolated cabins scattered deep in the hollers on the way to Cataloochee. . I suppose I could go knock on the door and ask to interview the residents, but I think not. Last week a good friend of ours was hiking off-trail and found remnants of an old moonshine still and you could see the axe marks on the barrels where a "revenuer" agent had chopped it up. Cocke County has a sign that proclaims it as the Moonshine Capital and the sign is really not that old. You won't see door to door salesman where Kat and I travelled today.

Last week Kat and I were hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We found this very unusual cabin window (see photo). I can hear the echoes of an ancient discussion,

"That storm last night blowed off part of the roof and the winder shutter is plum gone. We better git' er fixed becuz this blow ain't over. Look at them birds gathered up. We need to button down that winder There's some scrap wood behind the smokehouse. Them hinges are done gone too and I ain't got no idea on that."