I Would Hike 900 Miles: Thomas Divide/Kanati Fork

After eating lunch, we took off to drop off a car at the Kephart Prong parking area and all piled in the truck to and reached the trail head to Thomas Divide Trail. That makes it sound easy, we actually had to do a bit of doubling back as we couldn't find the trail along Newfound Gap Road. We finally did, and that's when we piled out ... (just to be clear).

Thomas Divide Trail is a 13.6 mile trail, but we were only hiking to the Kanati Fork Trail intersection, so we only covered a 1.8 mile section of the trail. That section has an elevation change of approximately 400 feet and carried us along the top of a ridge for a while, but the view was hidden for the most part by the trees

My new pack, an Osprey Manta 28; it fit well, after some adjustment and was big enough to hold everything I wanted, which was an improvement over my old pack. (I might have loaded it to excess for the "just in case" deluge). I like the osprey hydration system better than the camelback system ... for what it's worth ...

The section of the Thomas Divide Trail we hiked on was an open forest at around 4700 feet. There was grass scattered all along the forest floor, just beautiful. The weather was PERFECT at approximately 75 degrees, which was so unexpected after the heat of the previous week. Elevation makes a big difference.

More rhododendron in bloom, what a treat to see!

There are a number of fallen chestnut trees in the forest along the Thomas Divide Trail. According to the GuideBook, "They have not rotted even though the trees died more than 60 years ago. The tannic acid in their bark makes American chestnut hardier and more weather-resistant than many other trees, a quality that led pioneers to prefer chestnut wood for barns and houses."

The grass-edged trail slowly started growing up more and more as we headed down the Kanati Fork trail. According to legend, Kanati and his wife Selu, were the first people; the trail gets it's name from the stream flowing nearby.

Turk's Cap Lily

The downward decent on Kanati Fork (just over 2,000 foot elevation change) wasn't so steep that it wore out the knees, but the further we went, the more overgrown the trail became, until we could hardly see the trail in areas. This is the reason to not wear running shorts. Very soon, those with shorts on started to borrow the trekking poles to keep the overgrowth at bay as much as possible.

Rod and Chase kept the rear guard ...

Quite certain this is Ashy Hydrangea ...

Trail? There's a trail?

Rhododendron blossoms

Rod and Chase were both wearing shorts and both got stung at different intervals by members of the hymenoptera family, with varying degrees of pain. They were both wearing shorts ... We had a vaseline/activated charcoal combo along that we quickly slathered on the stings, which seemed to help, and saved a mess having to mix the charcoal on the trail.