Up early, packed the horses into the trailer and headed out by 9:30. We headed up to Shake Camp, where there are public corrals and a trailhead just past the concessionaire pack station. We first stopped at the entrance to the grove, where there were several huge trees, including one that had been carved out by a man as a hunting cabin back in the 1800’s. Took a few pix then headed on to the pack station and spoke to Tim (from Johnson City, TN, but who moved out here 31 years ago), getting some direction about the trails, which turned out not to be too terribly helpful. Trail maps were almost non-existent, despite a stop at the Ranger Station yesterday. The only thing we could get our hands was an old Mountain Home State Park map, which turned out to be extremely inaccurate. To make matters worse, the trails signs were few and far between, the trailheads weren’t very well marked, there were many trails with no signs whatsoever. In the end, we spent the day almost entirely lost. We wanted to take the 2-mile loop to the Adam tree, which is the 17th largest living tree in the world, but we headed out the wrong trail and ended up going miles out of our way on some very tough trails, looping all the way around to Hidden Falls. We followed the road for a bit, then found a trail (unmarked) that looked like it headed back to Shake Camp, and fortunately it did. We had planned on taking a short ride at this spot, then perhaps loading up the horses to go to other hot spots, but by the time we got back to Shake Camp it had been over four hours of rough riding, and we were tired. I was still determined, though, to find this Adam tree, so we headed up to the pack station and happen to run into Tim again because there were several trailheads from that area, and asked again about the trail to the Adam tree. He gave us some general directions, up the trail, stay right, then up the hill. Well, we followed those instructions as best we could, and ended up nearly back to the trailer, so we turned again and climbed up a steep hill, and somehow missed it again. Ended up on a road that led us back to another road the led to the pack station. By this time we were so frustrated we were beside ourselves, and gave up. We packed up the horses and headed out, missed the road we came in on (no sign) and ended up on a long tedious windy narrow route in the wrong direction, that eventually worked it’s way around back to the road we wanted, adding another 5-6 miles to an already long trip. The road down seemed to go on forever (about 22 miles of 15 mph windy roads), and arrived back at the ranch at just after sunset. A tough day, the trails not worth the effort to get there, unfortunately. A big disappointment that, if the forest service wanted, could be a gem of a recreational area with just a little effort.
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