March 2010 – mrfs.net – the little trips pages

Deep Creek Waterfalls

Deep Creek is a campground and trailhead in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s located just outside Bryson City on the North Carolina side of the park. From the Deep Gap trailheads it is an easy 3 mile loop (or less if you backtrack a bit) to reach three different waterfalls.

Tom’s Branch Falls is just about 2/10ths of a mile up the Deep Creek Trail and enters Deep Creek from a side stream.

Farther up the Deep Gap trail, Indian Creek Falls is just off of the main trail.

Juney Whank Falls is actually about a half mile in the opposite direction from the trailhead. It can be reached by backtracking (which is cheating of course) or by crossing Deep Creek and doubling back on the Deep Creek Horse Trail.
The bridge over the falls is rather surprisingly close to the water. I would suspect in higher water the bridge would definately be in the splash zone.

Div III Men’s Basketball Final Four

We went up to Salem, Virginia for the Div III Final Four since Williams College was once again involved.

Williams won their Friday semifinal against Guilford College in a relatively tense affair, but at least that meant Friday night was more festive.

Unfortunately, Wisconsin Stevens Point was victorious in the final on Saturday in another exciting back and forth game. The Div III Final Four is pretty low-key. It’s nothing like a sell out (at least not this year) and there isn’t a whole lot of pomp and circumstance surrounding it.

We also made a side trip to nearby Blue Collar Joe’s Donuts which is just north of Roanoke.

This is definately a worthwhile detour if you’re passing by on I-81 (which we do a couple times a year). They have some very creative concoctions including: Blueberry pancake with maple and bacon, PB&J, Turtle, Blueberry Cheesecake, Coconut Creme Pie and Lemon Drop.

ABA BBQ @ Lake Lanier

Our first BBQ contest judging of the year (and Melanie’s 15th overall) was at the American Bass Anglers event at Lake Lanier, Georgia. The setting on the lake was pretty nice and realistically you’d never know this was also a bass fishing tournament since the boats were all out on the lake most of the day.

Just in case any competition teams happen to read this, we’d like to share our newest BBQ pet peeve: chicken thighs smoked in muffin pans. Myron Mixon did this on national TV and now everyone thinks it’s a great idea. For one, they come out looking like chicken balls which is not the most appetizing form of chicken. Second, it doesn’t seem to pick up any smoke flavor whatsoever. We’re not saying this couldn’t be done well but 50% of our respective entries at this contest were in muffin form (compared to about 2% in the past).