By Kathryn Trotta, March 13, 2015 — It was probably the 3rd week in June 1968, when our family traveled south to a state park in Virginia. Our family was made up of Mom, Pop, oldest daughter 7 yrs., middle daughter 4 yrs., our youngest 2 years.
We spent a week at this park enjoying hiking and swimming in the lake. Our neighbors next to us were staying in a tepee and were a Virginia State forest ranger. He recommended that we go to the Great Smokies National Park in Tennessee/North Carolina. We had one more weeks’ vacation so decided to go.
When arriving we took a campsite in a “primitive” area with only an outdoor toilet, near a rushing creek. Some of our neighbors were old Tennessee natives who had been up rooted by the formation of the national park and not to happy we were there.
We met fellow campers who recommended a hike to a place called Ramsey’s Cascade at a nearby entrance road. I packed us a lunch and we started out, soon finding ourselves going through tightly packed rhodendrum bushes called “HELL.” At times we had to cross a gulch at which time my husband carried our two year old across a large log. We followed up the mountain side up to an area where the creek spread out to a wide expanse of small water falls cascading through this beautiful setting.
We went further up into a stand of virgin timber that was similar to those in the rain forest of Olympia Washington State. I was awed by the forest of trees that reached to the sky as though I was standing in a three hundred year old Cathedral.