Joyce Kilmer Wilderness (TN/NC)

[wspscott]

I have been trying to get my wife to give backpacking a try for a couple years. She has been car camping, but the lack of "facilities" was an issue for backpacking. As our kids have got older and gone backpacking with me, the fear of being left behind began to dominate the lack of facilities. Then, it was just a matter of lining up childcare so we could go off into the woods for a couple of days without any kid distractions.

I wanted to go somewhere with a nice payoff and something that would be difficult to do on a dayhike. I decided that a trip to Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock would work, specifically a couple nights on Bob Stratton Bald. Hopefully, we would get killer sunsets, lots of stars, and a little bit of dayhiking to finish it off.

We got the sunset (sort of)

We got the stars

We also got tons of wildflowers

But we also got thunderstorms that shortened our trip. This picture doesn't look bad, but she is looking at a bunch of clouds that had just dumped 1/2 inch of rain on us and that had a ton of lightning/thunder. We packed up about 10 minutes after this pic was taken.

I think she will give it another try with hopefully better weather.

lots more here http://backpackandbeer.blogspot.com/2016/08/she-did-it.html