Goats and Falls

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For the last year or so, I have been using the National Park Service app to find some of the many lands that are part of the NPS. The app lists more than just the “National Parks” and “National Monuments” around the country. It includes National Seashores, National Historic Sites and National Memorials to name a few. Many of these are places we might not realize are close to a place we are spending some time and might otherwise miss.

When I checked around this part of North Carolina, the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock showed up. We don’t always feel obligated to check all these NPS properties out and at first glance, this seemed like one we could pass. I’m not saying I didn’t learn about Sandburg in some high school English class, but I had no memory of who he was or what he did. He was an American poet that lived from 1878 to 1967. After a little more research, we found some of his more famous poems. But again, none of them rang a bell. We would have likely skipped visiting this place but for one thing - goats. Chris has a strange obsession with goats and it turned out that Sandburg’s wife raised prize winning goats on the property and when it was turned over to the NPS, the goats and their descendants stayed and are part of the property. That was enough to convince us to take some time to visit the place.

Entrance Sign at Sandburg House

The grounds of the site are free and open during daylight hours. There are 5 miles of trails on the 270 acre property. We arrived just before 10 AM and hustled up to the gift shop in the basement of the house to get house tour tickets. We were hoping to get on the 11 AM tour but it was already full so the next available was at 1 PM. Currently they only take 6 people on each tour but tickets are free.

House on the Hill

We plan to walk around the property and check things out - especially the goats - before heading back down the hill to the car for lunch then back up the hill for the house tour. There are quite a few out buildings scattered around the grounds. They have a fair number of interpretive signs so we know what each building was used for. Some of the buildings are used as storage nowadays.

Old Spring House

Farm Manager's House

Approaching Goats!

As we approached the large goat barn, we were impressed with its size and beauty. Up near the entrance to the fields were a couple of volunteers that have worked here for years. They were able to tell us just about everything regarding the nearly two dozen goats here. There was a mom and two kids that were only two weeks old. Even I thought they were awfully cute!

Mom and One Newborn

So Cute!

Behind the barn is a large fenced in pasture and this is where the majority of the goats were hanging out. Another volunteer was there to answer questions. She told us that the one female was extremely pregnant with twins and was expecting just about any day now. She was keeping a close eye on this one to be able to communicate with the rangers on staff if the expectant mother’s condition changed.

Part of Goat Herd

Expectant Mom

Chris Pets Goat

Snoozing By Gate

Next to the goat barn was a chicken coop with a few of them running around. On the opposite side of the gravel lane thru the property were the three male goats. They raise three different types of goats on the farm so they only hold on to one of each male. The Saanen goat is the white ones, Toggenburg goats are generally tan or brown and the Nubian goats have the distinctive face and floppy ears. I kind of felt sorry for the males. They don’t have nearly as elaborate of barn and much smaller field.

Cock A Doodle Doo

Male Nubian

Male Saanen

Distant View of Goat Area

Having spent a great deal of time with the goats, we needed to head back to the car for our lunch if we hoped to make it back in time for our tour. On our way back up, we took one of the trails thru the woods instead of just following along the main drive. It was a bit more scenic of a walk.

View of Pond Along Woods Trail

Violet in Bloom

Front of Sandburg Home

Our tour started on the outside porch of the house which gives a nice view of the front of the property and some of the surrounding mountains. Inside, the place was full of books lining each wall of nearly every room except the kitchen and bathroom. Our guide told us there are tens of thousands. As a former engineer, I felt like I had to ask of the house had been reinforced to account for the added weight of this many books. Apparently the Sandburgs had beefed up the structure when they moved into the place back in 1945. Even though they were a generation or two older than my parents, there were many familiar things throughout the house that reminded me of my childhood. I liked the old Kodak Brownie camera sitting on the desk - another relic from before my time at Eastman Kodak.

View from Front Porch

Walls of Books

Kodak Brownie

Dining Room and Books

Kitchen

After the tour, I gave Chris one last chance to go visit goats again but we were both ready to move on. There had been one geocache based on wandering the Sandburg property and getting information from interpretive signs. The actual physical container was not far away but off of the NPS grounds since geocaches aren’t typically permitted in federal parks. We also passed thru downtown Hendersonville - a cute little town with a beautiful old county courthouse.

Flowering Shrub

Old Hendersonville Courthouse

The following morning we had plans to go for another hike in DuPont. Before we left I went out to dump our holding tanks. After nearly six years of living in this rig, I have come to learn how frequently this needs to be done and accept that dumping the black and grey tanks is just a part of this lifestyle. It had been six days since I last dumped the black tank coming out of our stay at Givhans Ferry in SC. A few weeks prior to that, we had our tanks pressure washed in Florida and now even our tank gauges seemed to be operating properly so I knew the tank was pretty full. So it was quite unexpected that when I pulled the handle to dump the black tank, very little came out. I have a small clear plastic fitting inline with the hose to be able to see what is going on.

It was a rather sinking feeling to know the black tank should be full but nothing comes out. I put on my troubleshooting cap and went to work. My first thought was maybe the black valve wasn’t closing properly so it had been constantly draining over time and wasn’t really full. I have had this happen a couple years ago and had to replace the black and grey valves but it seemed unlikely the valve would have failed so soon. I have a black tank rinse feature on the rig so I hooked the hose up to it and turned it on briefly. If the valve was open and tank empty, this rinse water would come out immediately- it didn’t. The next thought was the handle I pulled wasn’t attached to the actual valve and so it just wasn’t opening. That was reasonably easy to check and from what I could tell, there likely was a blockage at the bottom of the tank and the exit pipe fittings. There isn’t a way to physically use a snake to unplug the blockage without having a real mess.

We were just about ready to pull the slides in and take the rig for a drive with the hopes of dislodging the blockage when I remembered I have a rather specialized sewer hose setup I had bought nearly 6 years ago and only used it once simply to try it out. It attaches to the 3 inch outlet port but only has a 1 inch diameter hose that runs to the sewer inlet. A garden hose can be attached to the system and a water jet forces waste out the small hose. It is sort of like a water macerator and has the advantage of being able to pump waste uphill slightly but has the big drawback of taking a long time to dump the holding tank. But the other feature of this system is that the same water jet can be rotated 90 degrees to spray water back up into the holding tank.

I installed this hose system and gave it a try. Since it also has a clear fitting and hose, I was able to see what if any progress I was making. I pretty quickly saw some flakes coming out of the tank that looked just like the struvite that had been cleaned out a couple weeks earlier. Even though it looked like I might be making progress, the small diameter hose to the sewer system was easily blocked by these flakes of struvite and now I was forcing water into the black tank faster than it was exiting. Fortunately Chris was up in the bathroom and realized the issue. I stopped the rinsing and closed the black valve while getting the struvite through the small hose. At this point I thought I might have unblocked the opening enough so I switched back to the normal 3 inch diameter sewer hose and tried to dump. There was a large rush of waste and initially I could hear the struvite flakes being ejected and then the tank emptied fine.

I did the normal black tank rinse and everything thing was looking back to normal. I managed to get in touch with the guy that pressure washed our tanks and described what happened. We came to the conclusion that his washing had eliminated much of the struvite but not all of it. For the past couple weeks, we had used a tank treatment concoction he provided and this likely helped to loosen the remaining sections of the stuff. Vibrations from driving the rig on bumpy roads forced large sections to come off the side walls of the tank and the big bump and turn at the Elks Lodge in Greenville had forced all of it to the outlet side of the tank and caused the blockage.

With that near catastrophe overcome, we had lunch and decided we still had time to do the hike we wanted to do in DuPont. Our goal was Bridal Veil Falls. There are a couple different trail options but we picked the one marked “easy” in AllTrails at 4.6 miles and almost 600 feet of elevation gain. Not sure a nearly 5 mile hike could be easy but we pick it nonetheless. This one starts from a different trailhead parking lot called Fawn Lake. It was rather busy on this Friday afternoon. From the looks of things, 95% of the people here are mountain biking instead of hiking. The trails are mostly wide gravel fire roads so even with all the cyclists we don’t feel like we are going to get run over.

Much of Trail is Wide Fire Road

Pretty Flowers

At about the 1 mile mark, we cross an airstrip. From the condition of the asphalt, I suspect this hasn’t been used by planes in many years. The old hangar building appears to be used for storing some equipment used within the park. I was curious about the airstrip that I subsequently checked. The DuPont Company owned the land that is now DuPont State Rec Area and the airstrip was used up until about 1996. Just across from the airstrip is a nice looking cabin in the woods.

Cabin Near Airstrip

We eventually made it to Bridal Veil Falls and came upon quite a large number of people. The good thing is that this falls are spread out over a very large area. It drops about 120 feet but over around 700 feet of distance. It was clear that the area can be extremely wet and slick when the water levels are higher but even though the water was flowing quite well, we were able to walk up the side of the falls and see it from different points.

Walking Along Edge of Bridal Veil Falls

0.4 Second Exposure

0.05 Second Exposure

About 2/3 of the way up is a more substantial drop of six feet or so and based on the people exploring this section, there is actually a ledge that you can walk under behind this small falls. We saw one couple going thru to get some pictures. It looked a bit more dangerous than we were willing to try. There likely was some more section of the falls above this one but we saw some people up there and it looked quite challenging so we skipped that part.

Man Takes Picture Under Falls

Woman Exits Opposite Side

We headed back down and picked a spot near the bottom of the falls. The bulk of the lower falls is over a wide expanse of rock with maybe a thirty degree slope. It was peaceful to just sit and enjoy the water rushing past and the wonderful sounds of fast flowing water.

On the hike back, we stopped at a large barn with adjacent fenced in pastures. There were several horse trailers/campers in the parking area and quite a few horses out grazing. It wasn’t perfectly clear what gate these vehicles used to get back here but it looked like a great spot for a weekend of horseback riding.

Large Barn

Horses in Pasture

Shortly after passing the airstrip again, there is a side trail that heads past Fawn Lake. It doesn’t add much more distance to the hike going back this way instead of the way we came and it was actually a bit prettier. There was a group of people out on the dock at the lake. It wasn’t clear whether they had been swimming or just enjoying the sunshine. It would seem that the lake waters would be rather chilly this early in the year.

More Spring Wildflowers

Fawn Lake

On our drive to this hike, we had noticed many of the homes had very fancy metal gates. It wasn’t clear whether it was a single artist that had made them all or if each neighbor found somebody to make more and more elaborate designs.  On the drive back to camp we stopped at one of the prettiest ones. A rooster on one side and a chicken with a few chicks on the other side.

Rooster Gate

Chicken Gate

We had one more full day in this area and headed back to DuPont for one last hike. This time the goal was Wintergreen Falls. This starts from yet another trailhead parking area. The Guion parking area is rather large and was quite a busy place. This one also looked to be used mostly by mountain bikers. The hike to the falls is just over 3 miles round trip. The trail itself is a much less used forest road so it was a bit more pleasant of a hike that the way to Bridal Veil Falls.

Starting Along Trail to Wintergreen Falls

Along the way were a couple of geocaches hidden amongst some of the large boulders that seem to be remnants from former glacial activity. It was kind of neat to explore the small caves created in between the boulders. It took us awhile be we managed to find the two caches.

Boulders Near Geocache

More Boulders Along Trail

The actual falls were pretty although not very large - maybe 20 feet or so. We enjoyed the peacefulness of the area since there were not a lot of people back at this one. I guess even though there were lots of cars in the parking lot, none of the cyclists bother to stop to check out the falls on their ride.

Wintergreen Falls

It was a pleasant hike back, stopping along the way to check out some of the pretty spring wildflowers. Up near the parking area was a biking area that had seen better days. There were all sorts of narrow wooden paths that used to be used to hone your bike handling skills. Nowadays it looks more like a lawsuit waiting to happen!

Bike Course

It was a fun week in the Brevard area. We could easily have stayed a few more weeks and not gotten bored, but we needed to make our way north and west if we want to stay on track for our Colorado plans. Our next extended stay was going to be in southeastern Missouri but we had nearly 550 miles before we got there. We had mapped out two intermediate stops along the way to break up that long of drive. The first was at the Cumberland County Elks Lodge in Crossville Tennessee. We were coming in on Easter Sunday and really didn’t expect the lodge to be open. They don’t have a very large parking lot and have no camping services. It was to just be a simple overnight boondocking stop. There were about 10 cars in the lot when we arrived but we managed to pull in out of the way. We went in to tell them we were traveling Elk and just looking for a spot to park for the night.

When we came back out to unhitch the Jeep, we noticed something wrong with the connection. Turns out we had snagged a chunk of a tractor trailer tire blowout. It wasn’t a large piece - maybe 14 inches long a few inches wide. But the metal inside the tire plies had apparently snagged onto our coiled cable between the motorhome and Jeep. It had dragged for quite some time but hadn’t completely worn thru the cable so it was still functioning and sealed. After the parking lot clear out, we moved to tad more level section of the lot and took it easy. As we go to pull out the next morning, I discovered that one additional cable between the two vehicles must have gotten snagged by the tire chunk as well. But this one had actually worn thru a conductor. I needed to pull out my supplies and make a quick replacement cable before we could head out. I later pulled up our dashcam videos from the drive and found the location where the truck blowout had occurred. I knew I had missed a very large piece of tire but could only straddle the smaller one. Running over a “road gator”, as they’re known, can cause damage to your own tires. Even though I had avoided hitting one with my tires, I hadn’t considered that there were other possible hazards. Here are a couple of screen shots from the dashcam with the road gators circled.

Approaching Tire Blowout 

The Gator I Snagged

Our next stop was at a private campground in Clarksville Tennessee practically on the Kentucky state line. We pulled in early enough to Clarksville RV Park that I was able to make the proper repairs to my cable that was damaged and go get some geocaches in neighboring counties in both Tennessee and Kentucky. We were fairly close to Interstate 24 so it was a little noisy but the place worked. Next stop Cape Girardeau Missouri.