Post #1

                This is pretty much going to be a blog of the backpacking trips I take. It'll probably have a bunch of random posts thrown in as well, but I'll try to keep it mostly about backpacking/hiking. I don't really have a ton of experience backpacking, but I'll probably be spending a lot of time doing it in the future. Anyways, the rest of this post is going to be about my last backpacking adventure.

                 I went on this trip over Labor Day weekend with a few of my friends. Our target location was along the ridge line of Bird Mountain, which was about an hour east of Cookeville.  The hike to our campsite was 7 miles, so it shouldn't have been to bad. Unfortunately, the first four miles of the hike was straight up the mountain, which had a murderous incline and endless cutbacks. We eventually made it to the top and continued on the rest of the three miles across the ridge line to our campsite. As we started the last leg of our journey, the sky opened up and just drenched us with a downpour. The storms from Hurricane Isaac had finally made their way over the mountains just as we decided that we would backpack through them. So we pressed on, battling the elements, until we arrived at our campsite. What we found was not what we expected. The space was barren, except for a few trees, and contained a tall wooden table and a crumbling brick fire pit. It's pretty much how I expect a apocalyptic wasteland to look like. The torrential downpour decided to relent so we could set up our tents and explore the area. We traveled to the highest point around, about a half mile away, which was supposed to have a lookout tower on top of it. It would have been awesome and the view would have been stunning, had we been able to see five feet in front of us. The entire area had been blanketed with fog. You could hardly even make out the tower through it. I mean it was pretty cool, and kind of Lost-esque, but we felt like we were cheated out of the view. After we returned to camp and decided to settle in for the night, Mother Nature decided she was curse us again with a thunderstorm. So there we were, on top of mountain, in the rain, wind, and lightning, completely soaked in our tents. I don't think I'd ever felt so miserably wet, nor so manly. The hike down and the subsequent lunch at Sonic were made so much sweeter due to the misery we endured on top of that mountain. It was both the greatest, and worst, backpacking trip I've ever been on.