Two excellent hiking websites (Southeastern US)

We promised Elise that we would plan a backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail at some point in the next year. (Not a thru-hike, but just a week-long or so backpacking trip.) I have been reading a lot of websites and blogs about neat places to start. I am thinking at a minimum we need to pick a spot where there are reliable stops for water or that pass close to a town. We don’t want to put an eight-year-old through anything extreme.

Anyhow, I have found two especially wonderful sites if you enjoy hiking in general and live in the southeastern United States.

The first is Hiking the Appalachians and Beyond. This chap takes some serious trail notes and includes a lot of pictures. You have a very clear idea what you are getting into if you go on any of these hikes. And he includes detailed driving directions to get to the trail heads, which is sometimes a tricky problem with rural areas (even in the age of Google).

The second is Georgia Waterfalls. I have written before about our quests to find spectacular waterfalls in the Blue Ridge Mountains and neighboring areas. (See my earlier posts, Playing in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and An afternoon in gorgeous Greenville, South Carolina.) The author of this site has produced an unbelievable index of waterfalls throughout Georgia, along with tips and warnings about how to get close to them.