Falls Creek Falls and Cumberland Mountain State Parks - Tennessee

A few weeks ago when I was in Tennessee - I enjoyed several state parks in the area between Nashville and Knoxville. The first one was Falls Creek Falls which is located near Pikeville, TN. It has shady trails and water falling over rocks and over cliffs. The rhododendrons were blooming when we were there. The trails are well maintained and labeled - but prepare for some up and down hills if you want to see the waterfalls really well. Many trails don’t require a long hike and hikers can take advantage of the water to cool off (wading…some swim) once they make the trek.

Right outside the park was a trading post where I found some great earrings and bracelets at very reasonable prices. It was a spur of the moment stop but it was probably the best shopping of the entire week.

The next day we went to Cumberland Mountain State Park near Crossville, TN. The 7 arch sandstone bridge that was built by the CCC is relatively dry with the lake lowered to rebuild another bridge. We hiked to get several vantage points of the bridge; the quality of the work overall and the drainage structures from the road bed were impressive. The slide show below is from our hike. After enjoying the park we toured one of the houses built as part of the Cumberland Homestead project in the 1930s.

There is a brochure that has a blurb on all the Tennessee state parks that is available at Tennessee rest stops and parks; another good source is the Tennessee State Parks web site.

10 Years Ago – In February 2002

Many years ago I started collecting headlines/news blurbs as a way of honing my reading of news. Over the years, the headline collection has been warped by the sources of news I was reading…increasingly online. Reviewing the February 2002 headline gleanings - I forced myself to pick 10.

1. Intellectual Resources May Help Soldiers Stave Off Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
2. Second space tourist to take stem cells, HIV experiment
3. The recent discovery of two giant Roman water-lifting machines near St. Paul's Cathedral in London
4. Study shows the average sleep for Americans of seven hours per night is safest
5. Texas A&M Clones First Cat
6. Enormous Iceberg May Be In Its Death Throes; Collisions With Another Large Berg
7. Plague fears spark panic in India
8. A cold front that killed about 250 million Monarch butterflies in central Mexico last month may reduce next year's migrations.
9. Glacier melting could contribute 0.65 feet or more to sea level this century
10. One of the odd possibilities that could emerge from global warming is that much of Europe, robbed of the ocean current patterns that help keep it warm, could rather abruptly enter a deep freeze and have a climate that more closely resembles Alaska than the modest temperatures it now enjoys.

Notice that weather and climate figure prominently in this list (6, 8, 9, 10) since it must have been and area of interest to me in 2002. The last blurb must have been from a story about global weather models; I wonder if the low temperatures in Eastern Europe this year are going to happen with increasing frequency.

Item 8 about Monarch butterflies was a turning point in our summer activities. For several years before 2002 we had collected Monarch eggs and caterpillars from the milkweed behind our house, feed them well while they were caterpillars, and released them when they hatched from their chrysalis. There were not enough Monarchs in our area of Maryland from 2002 onward.