Sunday, December 22, 2013

Pickens Nose Camp

We left Deals Gap to head towards Georgia to spend the night at Lake Chatuge.  George found another free lakefront campsite there that is supposed to be open year round.  When we arrived at the entrance though it was gated shut.  We searched and found Thrifts Ferry primitive campground about 60 miles from us and on the way to Anderson, SC where we were ultimately headed, so we headed in that direction.

The weather had taken a turn for the worse and the rain was pouring down.  We still did not have windshield wipers but we were making our way without too much trouble thanks to RainX.  I spotted a campground called Standing Indian in the Nantahala National Forest.  We had to navigate through some fog and the rain and when we finally arrived at the campground it was closed.

Our GPS had rerouted us through the National Forest to continue towards Thrifts Ferry so we followed it.  We began climbing the mountains and as we did the fog became thicker and the rain fell harder.  Our headlights were not penetrating through any of it and the RainX was no match for the dense fog.  We were not "outsmarting the elements" very well as the RainX motto suggests.  At times it felt as though we might drive right off the edge of the mountain.  The road was so narrow and winding without a single place to pull over.  We had to keep going.

Here is a short video of us driving through the Nantahala Forest at night.

Eventually we made it to Pickens Nose trail head.  Camping is generally not allowed at trail heads.  However, there was a wide open clearing and in that weather no one was hiking and we had not seen a single other car on the forest road.  George and I agreed that if a Ranger were to say something we had two choices; keep driving with no windshield wipers or fog lights and put ourselves and others in danger, or pull over and be safe.


We spent the night at the entrance to Pickens Nose trail listening to the rain and wind.  It was a fun night.  During some of the worst wind gusts it felt as though we were sleeping in a hammock!


The next morning we awoke, packed up our van and continued out of the forest.  Winding through the twists and turns in the daylight was a little scary.  We were glad we stopped when we did the night before.


We only had to stop once so I could clear debris from the road.


We eventually made it out of the forest and onto paved road.  A few hours later we were in Anderson.

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