2019 Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest - North Carolina
Ever since Glen and I met, he's mentioned wanting to go to Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, located in the Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina. Note: Joyce Kilmer is the dude (yes, he's a dude) who wrote the poem Trees.
We finally made the trip in autumn of 2019 - our first forray into taking a long road trip in our all-electric vehicle. What follows are photos of our trip, as well as excerpts from my note book. Hopefully most of my writing is legible! It seems I stopped writing up notes toward the end of the trip, so who really knows what happened?!
The forest contains some of the country's most magnificent old-growth trees, with towering trees as old as 450 years. Some enormous tulip-poplars are more than 20 feet in circumference and approach 150 feet tall.
Sadly, this forest is one of very few remaining tracts of virgin hardwood in the Appalachians. It is saddening that we have to make a memorial to old growth forests - that we've logged them nearly to extinction.
We left Stony Fork Campground - and Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest - stopping off in Hagerstown, MD to charge the car and take in a few sights. Oh, the mural we saw! I am so inspired by this artist and aspire to make such creative art! Located at University System Of Maryland at Hagerstown.
After a little contact with "civilization", we headed back to the woods at Rocky Gap State Park, where we camped for one night. We visited Ricketts Glen State Park that afternoon and again the next day before hightailing it back to Western Massachsuetts.
The remaining photos on this page were taken at Ricketts Glen State Park, as we navigated the death-defying, slippery, steep stone steps and pathways along plunging waterfalls and rock-strewn cliffs. Oh my!
