April 24, 2013
Roaring River (click image for slideshow)
Last Saturday I returned to good old Roaring River for a couple of brief hikes along the Deer Leap and Devil’s Kitchen trails. I lost a filling in a front incisor while eating a PayDay peanut bar in Fairland; it would be four days until I could get into the dentist and make that incident his PayDay. But thankfully the tooth gave me no trouble, only spurring me to bite more carefully and eat more slowly.
I enjoyed a tasty lunch at the Emory Melton Inn at the park and then walked the hatchery area, finding that spring rains had swollen the spring’s outflow and had all of the basin falls going strong. The stream beside the lower ascending portion of the Devil’s Kitchen Trail was flowing, with water coming out of the cave at the far end of the ascent. I clambered atop the tumbled slabs at Devil’s Kitchen and got a self-portrait of myself in the kitchen along with distant and near shots of me beside a nearby spring.
The evening meal was at the Steak Inn at Shell Knob and was particularly tasty. I’ve only been making short hikes thus far this year, but at least I was back out on the trails!
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