Waterfallin near Cherokee

Lisa and I

8/22/19 11 miles

After we left Holly at Panthertown we drove to Cherokee NC. We decided to do Enloe Falls. It’s an 8 mile hike. We drove towards the trail head and it was just a few miles from Indian River campground where we stayed a couple months ago. It’s. Great campground. We set up and tried to plan our next day. 🤣🤣🤣

It’s already late so we went to sleep. We woke up bright and early and started our day. After breakfast we waited for the store to open grabbed a cup of coffee and headed to the trailhead. It was actually in the Great Smokey National Park. Down a long dirt road behind the fish hatchery.

This trail was 1.9 miles up. Up up up it’s 8 am and up up up yuck! Seamed like forever! Some days I’m just against going up! At the top is an intersection.

We are to go down the other side. The directions say down about a mile to a metal bridge. There were some workers doing trail maintenance on the way up and have weed wacked the trail going up. The trail on the way down was full of nettles! They haven’t gotten here yet.

Which is a bummer because nettles sting!

The metal bridge was pretty awesome. How you suppose it got down here? Helicopter?

The area near the bridge was so awesome. Giant boulders, water and a swimming hole.

From the bridge it was another half mile along the river. The directions say leave the trail at a giant poplar. We could barely see the falls but found the giant poplar!

A short steep bushwhack later and we are at the base of a beautiful falls. Enloe Falls.

I hate to sound like a broken record but the trail passes right by here why not make access to this waterfall? The other thing is why is there always that one fallen tree in the middle of it?!

Of course Lisa has to climb up to the top of this one. I just happened to be videoing the falls when Lisa just happened to be rock hopping and I caught her going down hard on a slippery rock!

After I realized she was fine I laughter myself silly! She was soaked!

We had some snacks and went back up the trail to the bridge. Then it was 1 mile uphill to the trail intersection but than 1.9 miles downhill this time!

We jumped in the truck and headed back toward Cherokee. We stopped at the fish hatchery and grabbed some WiFi and decided to head to Chasteen Falls. This one was in Smokemont campground.

On the way we pass the welcome center where the moose hang out. This giant one had vines all over his antlers and was trying hard to get them off! There was a group across the street also.

Smokemont was just a couple miles. The trail begins on a road at the far end of the campground.

This road follows the creek. We follow this road up about a mile and a half and take a fork to the right and go another 1/2 mile.

The trail comes to an area where they have horse hitching posts near the falls.

We made a left and go down to the falls. The gnats are so bad here. I don’t know if it’s because I’m sweating, there is horse poop everywhere or the water. I immediately get in the water and try to cool off thinking It would make the gnats leave me alone! Nope!

It’s a nice falls.

We turn and leave and head back to the truck. Lisa said it’s the fastest she ever seen me hike! 🤣🤣🤣 I just want to get away from this halo of gnats around my head!

It’s getting late so we decide to go to Maggie Valley to view SoCo Falls. Lisa hasn’t been. This is on the way home so we head over. There are plenty of people at this road side falls. They have a bunch of ropes to help you to the bottom of the falls. It almost looks like they are to keep you out but they aren’t. So no one else was going down until we did. Lisa and I went down which started a chain reaction of people climbing down after us.

Time to head home. The threat of rain loomed over us all day but we never got wet and got in 3 waterfalls and 11 hiking miles!