Well, this trip was enjoyable. We arrived once it opened at 9am CT and hit up the Visitor Center to take a gander at the trail maps that they had on hand (side note: get there at 9am or a little before so you can get a parking spot - since we went on a Saturday morning, we were lucky as it was PACKED when we left at 2pm). Little did my wife know, the two trails I wanted to do were both the hardest - the Elk Mountain Trail and the Charon's Garden Trail. We started on the Charon's Garden one first as it has a majority of the points I wanted to check out. We (myself, my wife and our three little ones) went up the steps to start the trail and about 5-10 minutes into it and to the left, I saw this gleam from the sun. Now, I knew that there were streams from the top of the mountain, so I didn't think much of it until I moved a few more feet and looked up to see if I saw any more gleams in the mountain and I did not, so I took a picture of it (Picture 1).
Although I said in my posts above that I would not take any equipment, the only things beside water and snacks that I had in my day pack were my dowsing rods and hatchet. I used my dowsing rods every 25-50 feet and it kept pointing us forward until we got to one spot...
A little further, after the gleam, we came upon a small mountain that had a single tree at the top that was on the left. As adventurous as I am, I climbed to the top with my daughter (12) and had her use the dowsing rods once we got toward the top to ensure that I was not going crazy. Sure enough, they pointed in the same direction and that was toward the single tree. Thankfully, my wife took a picture of us on the small mountain (picture 2).
So if you go along this trail, this is where the rods pointed us to. Because I had the three little ones along with my wife and yet another trail to go on...I could not finish it off and check on the small mountain or the area between the small mountain and Elk Mountain - there is a small cavern with some trees that go through the Garden and you can also see a very unique rock sticking out of the ground to the right of me in Picture 2. This will help narrow it down some. This area is easily navigable - but not with three kids.
So I had to pass it up for this trip. I plan on going back to the same point again in the future when I am there by myself or with one of my nephews who are adventurous as I am. We did go as far as we could on the trail until we got to the boulder field that led to Treasure Lake, but had to turn around as our two littler ones would not be able to climb through the area safely and we still had another trail to go on.
The Elk Mountain trail was awesome for the kids, but had a LOT of stairs. Picture 3 is of when we got to the top and I took a panoramic of the scenery.
I added it to my Google Earth Pro list.
