Hiking Journal: Percy Warner

Details
Date. March 3rd, 2012
City. Nashville, TN
Route. Mossy Ridge Trail
Rating. 4 Stars out of 5

Our Experience
This is one of our favorite parks in Nashville, a short but harrowing drive down one of Nashville's many two lane main arteries and up and down hills. This trail is a loop up and around the hills in Percy Warner Park that is about 4 1/2 miles long and took us about 1 3/4 minutes to complete with us taking lots of breaks to take in the views. With our dog in tow, we enjoyed the late winter heat wave and the lack of foliage which gave some great views of downtown Nashville and the hills of southern Nashville. There's some interesting sites in the park as well, including the Betsy Ross Cabin Ruins that was built by the Boy Scouts and a small waterfall that had partially subsumed the trail. We loved the hike and the fact that our dog was able to join us made it that much better!

Hiking Journal: Linville Gorge

Details

Date: June 4, 2012
City: Pisgah National Forest, Grandfather District
Route: Walking Trail
Rating: 3 out of 5

My Experience

On my return journey from Chapel Hill to Nashville, I knew I wanted to see more of the Pisgah National Forest. The first place I wanted to see was Linville Falls and with it Linville Gorge, as I had heard it was the second largest gorge on the east coast. Ultimately, I enjoyed the brief 2 mile excursion, but it wasn't anything unbelieveable. If I had had more time, I would have hiked down into the gorge, which I think would have been much more impressive, but I was pressed for time and just the easy hike along the western ridge. It gave some good views of the falls, but was pretty crowded.

 

The bridge across Linville River above the falls.

The Upper Falls.

All the dead hemlocks in the forest from a blight.

The rapids that have helped form the Gorge.

Welcome to Get the Gear!

Welcome to Get the Gear, a blog maintained by dynamic duo of Bill and Jessy.  We love the outdoors.  We'll keep a hiking journal on the site, as well as posting some other things dealing with the outdoors that we find interesting.

Why.
We knew we wanted a way that we could tell people about our travels by train around the Western US this summer for our honeymoon.  We also wanted to keep a journal of our hikes. As we talked about it, we figured that a blog would be the best way to do so.  We can share pictures and little details of our hikes, and we can quickly update it from our phones when we have internet access while we are traveling.

The Name. 
In February, my wife and I were able to go to the Portlandia tour here in Nashville.  One sketch they did really resonated with us:


This is only a slight exaggeration. Bill is the type of guy who brings a compass with him on a 2 mile hike, stuffed in his Camelbak between the rain poncho and the Leatherman.  We spent the next day after the show up in Blue Ridge, Georgia repeatedly saying the phrase "Get the Gear" as we hiked around and cracking each other up. We do that a lot.