The Best Mountaintop Meadow You've Never Heard of at the Great Smoky Mountains | 4K

[Music] many people journey outdoors to see vast mountain landscapes sweeping meadows and other breathtaking views but is this idea of natural beauty the only value that the wilderness has to offer today adventure archives journeys deep into the forests of the great smoky mountains to find the beauty that lies beneath the surface [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] it was a cloudy stormy evening when we left to head south towards the smoky mountains we drove through the rain and eventually arrived at a modest motel to stay in for the night we gathered up our gear and headed upstairs to the room after getting our gear sorted out we fell asleep for the night the next day we packed up the car and continued on our journey as we drove we passed by the sun sphere in knoxville tennessee a building from the 1982 world fair and as we neared the smokies we saw more and more blue hills in the distance before long we were on a winding road leading into the park we passed by the chili dam and drove along a large reservoir of deep blue water [Music] now we drove along a winding forested road [Music] we started seeing several motorcyclists and soon learned that this was actually a well-known road nicknamed the tail of the dragon so this is 129 and we didn't know this before but i think this is a very popular motorcycle route because this entire road is just filled with motorcycles and then us one subaru and a truck and just all along the way there's people taking pictures of the motorcycles this would be a really fun road on a motorcycle if you weren't scared of death but in a car going to a backpacking trip this is not a great road unfortunately as thrilling as it may be to drive here it's also a high crash area and we ran into a traffic jam caused by an accident somebody said there was a wreck up ahead but we're gonna try to keep going for now because we're not that far away we're only six miles away as we inched along in traffic we saw an ambulance approaching from behind [Music] after a half hour or so of waiting we saw the emergency vehicles leaving the scene escorted by several bikers hopefully nobody was hurt too badly [Music] now we continue along the road and everyone seemed to be driving more cautiously [Music] we passed by the tale of the dragon store and eventually arrived at our trailhead [Music] at the trailhead we got all of our gear sorted out it was a beautiful summery day and there were butterflies fluttering around as we walked to the trailhead we talked about the strange drive up here oh god i was getting so nauseous and getting a headache sitting in that car like twisting and turning and now i feel much much better it's like even if we open the windows there was kind of like all this exhaust coming into the car but now we have fresh air we would be hiking counterclockwise on the 20-mile loop staying tonight at 92 making our way to gregory bald and camping another night at campsite 13 before hiking back out a rushing stream was flowing along the trail sunlight filtered in through the leafy canopy above shining into our lush surroundings one thing especially with the smokies is that i think it's technically considered a rainforest so whenever i'm here like in the summer i associate it with like really lush vegetation but some of the stuff we're seeing growing along the edge of this hillside we've seen some maidenhair ferns which are just really beautiful ferns we saw some groundnut which is a plant in the pea family that has little nuts you can eat underground some hartley foam flower some solomon seal and false solomon steel but yeah there's like so much biodiversity here it's funny because i've always thought of the smokies as very rain forest ish yeah but i just figured that it couldn't be a rainforest because it wasn't somewhere more exotic you know yeah yeah it's easy to lose sight of just how much biodiversity and how many fascinating plants there are in an environment like this so this inconspicuous looking tree or leaf is actually one of my favorite trees this is called sorrel tree it just looks like a normal leaf at first glance but if you flip it over there's these tiny little like hairs or spines along the ridge of the leaf if you eat these leaves they have a nice sweet sour kind of taste just like a wood sorrel i've also heard it called like sour tree but yeah it's really delicious to just pick leaves off and eat them it just wouldn't be a smokey's trail without the classic hike in with the rocky river on the side i think literally every trail starts with this here yeah i think you're right it was this rich supply of water that allowed so many different plants to grow including flowers like wood bettany and wild geraniums eventually the trail led us to a bridge crossing over the beautiful stream from here we arrived at a junction which marked the start of the main loop okay so we're going up the long hungry ridge trail should be at the end i think is where our campsite is at on our final day we'll be coming back out here so this is like the terminus but today we're going up here we kept hiking and not far into the trail was an offshoot leading to a little overlook of the creek it's always soothing to stand in the presence of a russian cascade or a roaring waterfall to cool off in the midst of the water on a hot summery day [Music] after enjoying the site of the creek we returned to the main trail and continued on [Music] as we hiked we saw a snail sitting on a leaf and some world loose striped flowers [Music] it felt great to be stretching our legs out on this trail after so much driving but we would definitely have to get used to the summer heat and humidity i feel like it's been a while since we've hiked in weather this sweaty yeah i was just thinking that and you immediately just feel sluggish you don't want to hike for very long [Music] we gradually hiked higher in elevation and started seeing some characteristic appalachian scenery around us so there's a couple plants that contribute to the really jungle feeling of this environment one is mountain dog hobble which we've been seeing growing along this area it kind of has this like waxy look and we actually saw some that are fruiting the others of course are the rhododendrons which grow all throughout the smokies here's some right here and they have these distinctive waxy leaves and they're not flowering right now but people will grow varieties of plants in this family you know because other beautiful flowers and actually right here there's some blackberries and they aren't ripe yet but you can see the unripe ones right here just growing wild a month or two out from our hike these berries would ripen and turn black perfect for picking and eating straight from the source [Music] another plant we're seeing growing everywhere is wild hydrangea and hydrangeas are another plant where people will cultivate it and actually grow it in the yards again because they bloom really beautiful flowers but right now they've got little clumps of white flowers that are just about to bloom so on the ground i'm seeing these little flower petals and these belong to the tulip poplar one of my favorites uh which means there's some trees growing all around here dropping these petals so if we find some good tulip poplar bark we'll start a fire one of these nights that were out here the ground was scattered with more tulip popular petals from a distance much of this force looked like a whole bunch of green but up close the richness and variety of the forest became clear every nook and cranny of the forest was teeming with life rocks were covered in vines and moss and vegetation burst forth from every hillside [Applause] [Music] it's easy to overlook some of the wonders of the woods when you don't stop to take a closer look so in between the cracks of this bark there's this orange little cup fungus and if you look really closely on the margins of it there's these hairy little eyelash looking bits and this is actually called an eyelash fungus but yeah it's growing on this dead log a lot of fungi uh you know tend to grow on rotting wood but it's just really cool to see it just like in between the cracks of the bark [Music] and along the way we also saw flowering plants like poke milkweed spiderwort and an old trillium [Music] [Applause] we saw water trickling all around us as we hiked which seemed to make us even more aware of the heat and humidity around us the hardest thing right now is just adjusting to the temperature and the humidity it's been so long since we've done a hike in this kind of weather when you're standing still the humidity really gets to you but when you move it's actually kind of nice because you get that air rushing against you the smokies is known for some really tough uphills but this is actually not too bad despite the fact we've been going uphill the entire time it's not brutal in the way that the smokies can be yeah hopefully it stays like this [Music] but while we struggle in the humidity other forms of life thrive in it whoa we got ourselves some chicken on the woods some of it's a little buggy but i think if we trim the edges off it should be pretty good to eat we can add that to our dinner tonight it'll taste better than lion's mane i promise you can actually see some young budding chicken of the woods up there too small to eat obviously but um actually when they come out they're like little balls so you can like pick them when they're that early they're very tender you can almost make chicken nuggets out of them well they taste sort of like chicken nuggets [Music] it's definitely really tender feeling sometimes chicken to the woods when it gets older it's kind of hard but this is definitely pretty soft we're not going to take too much we'll just have a little bit to each try a little bit with our dinner tonight after harvesting a modest amount of the mushroom we continued on we came to another bridge passing over the creek we also saw a section of the hills where rocks had collapsed onto the trail looks like it all just fell out of this cavity here yeah or if this tree fell over it kind of gave it the nudge and needed that's what i'm thinking yeah that's crazy [Music] we kept hiking crossing the creek yet again on the bridge were dozens of butterflies fluttering around i feel like i always see a lot of butterflies in the smokies and it it feels fake almost no there's smoke up there i'm assuming it's the next campsite we were pretty close so this campsite is called 20 mile creek we're staying at the next one which is another couple miles away still but we could take a break here [Music] although we weren't stopping yet the campsite was a nice welcome break in our hike oh this has been pretty nice so far yeah this tank top is a game changer because i feel great and i mean i feel like i'm usually the hottest of all of us you are completely soaked that's true that's the phone the the wetness is cooling me off those three musketeers this is a protein bar [Music] it's really funny though it's like i feel like every winter feels so long that when everything turns green again it's still hard to believe yeah yeah it feels like it's never going to happen again like well this is it for this is it for humanity yeah i'm glad the trail has been pretty decent hiking too yeah not too strenuous yet we'll be pretty much going uphill for the first half of the entire trip and then the second half will be entirely downhill but the nice thing is everything's pretty much gradual there's nothing really super sharp along the way yeah after we leave the campsite tomorrow once we reach like one of the main junctions that's where we'll overlap with where i had hikes back in the day because i've like part of this trail before but i came in from the north and so a lot of the loop we're doing i haven't done before but it'll be interesting to see what i missed out on while we rested sunlight sparkled through the fluttering leaves above on the ground below us a yellow flat-backed millipede crawled along the ground and almost into robbie's backpack oh no we now continued on to the main trail we passed over yet another bridge and continued hiking along for the smokies this had been a surprisingly easy going path i was thinking just now is this the straightest trail that we've ever been on i don't know if we've made any actual turns yet all of the turns got used up on the drive-in it's kind of nice to have the first day be a little easier and then the middle day you're like really into it [Music] so there's a little yellow birch log here and growing on it is a birch polypore it's got kind of this like styrofoamy almost meringue texture but that mushroom is in particular good for starting fires like tinder but you can also peel off the outer layer and use it as like a bandage or even a strap for your knife kind of like how you use leather to sharpen your knife the trail continued on a more or less straight path through the woods although the trail itself was fairly uncomplicated the scenery of the lush vegetation and rushing water around us were still beautiful to see rhododendrons grew from mossy rocks and we saw gallium and galax flowers blooming on the hillsides we haven't turned since we were at that campsite it's been a literal straight shot all the way to this bridge here i can barely hear myself think yeah that cold air feels good though i wanted to stick my head in there and guzzle down all the water it seemed we weren't the only ones enjoying the feeling of the cool water just above the creek was a spider perched on its way we hiked past more rhododendrons and saw some yellow flowers in the rose family we also saw another snail and a log covered in orange colored pine wood ginger tail mushrooms i think it's just that the sun is behind the clouds but suddenly got really dark and much quieter because we're not near the water anymore this is actually very nice it's cooling down i guess because the sun's behind the clouds and quietness almost feels like completely different atmosphere now we continued down the trail as the late afternoon set in along the way andrew spotted signs of a familiar plant on the ground i feel like we're in kind of like a spooky time of day all the sun is gone but anyway i saw a plant that fits that mood which is the ghost pipe it's a parasitic plant it looks like this drooping flower that's kind of white almost translucent looking but the reason it looks like that is because it's parasitic so it has no color so it doesn't need a photosynthesize because it steals nutrients from other plants nearby oh interesting weirdly enough that plant is somewhat related to blueberries which we'll see some blueberry bushes later on this trail although we're probably too early for the actual berries themselves yo have we ever been on a trail like this before it's almost like a road i feel like there have been trails like this in the smokies before but it usually doesn't go on this long yeah it's been over three miles now yeah i mean if it stays like this i'm happy with that yeah no complaints i guess [Music] [Music] [Music] so along with all the rhododendrons another common shrub or tree even that grows here is a the mountain laurel there's one right above here it looks like they're just finished flowering but some of the flowers are coming off and if you look closely you can just see how beautiful and intricate the pattern of the flower is even on the underside it kind of reminds me of finding these like incredible seashells on the beach there were also clumps of huge flowering wood sorrels nearby along with more galax flowers also known as wanda flower [Music] up ahead the trail opened up a bit got a big old trail junction up here yeah might be nice to take one more break before you get to the campsite what do you guys think definitely yeah this is a nice clear area yeah good sitting along too yeah that's the long hungry ridge trail i don't like the sound of that that's us tomorrow too actually well hopefully we at least have enough snacks to not be hungry nice ergonomic log oh it's a little wet though i'll sit on this dry part and you guys can use your sitting mats while we rested we chatted with some other hikers you guys camp out here oh that's a long day yeah how many miles is that wow definitely something we don't do we just crossed about like five things oh jeez [Music] reminds me of these like crappy almond nature valley bars my mom should get all the time i didn't like the whole almonds almond slivers are good what do you got against whole almonds man this is like oh my god it's like biting wood whole almonds all the time [Music] i love almonds and nothing [Music] we enjoyed our brief rest but soon continued hiking once again andrew saw more fallen flowers on the path check this out this is the little cross section of one of the tulip popular flowers something i like is that it actually looks like fire so it's a good reminder that this is good for making fire if the 99 other times i've said that haven't stuck ahead on the trail was a particularly overgrown section so as a percussion we tucked our pants into our socks to prevent any ticks from getting us [Music] and as with anything in the forest this thicker patch of the woods was not a random occurrence it's really interesting to see the signs of the forest because like there's all these dead trees in this open spot of sunlight and we just hike through a thick part of the woods and actually you can see there's a bunch of these blackberries growing which don't normally grow in the forest because these trees fell down and died and the sunlight started coming in that this part of the woods just started overgrowing with all these like brambles and shrubs ahead on the trail we heard the sound of water rushing and soon found our way to one of the stream crossings the other hikers had mentioned i think we might just have to suck it up and get wet let's go take a look over there you can kind of cross but up here i don't see really a good spot so we might want to just suck it up yeah two strategies here yeah this is like whatever kind of refreshing sometimes when you're hiking you just have to give in to and even embrace the discomforts that might come with the outdoors once you let go of the need to feel immaculately clean all the time it can be a freeing feeling the trail now continued uphill again before leveling back out up here the sun seemed to be shining more and we soon caught glimpses of distant hills through the trees but in other areas the thick shrubs block the view so do you know why rhododendrons are so ubiquitous here in my head all i have to imagine is just thickets of rhododendron and that's the smokies like when you guys think of the smokies it's rotated oh yeah yeah it's such a iconic part of the landscape here but i think it's smokies it's literally been this entire trail yeah i think of walking hiking next to a river rhododendrons on one side if i'm noticing what plants are nearby then you know that it appears a lot most of the rhododendrons here are either white flowered rose bays or the pink flowered catawba's at higher elevations they're well suited to the environment here and especially love streams and ravines so a lot of times you'll see these tiny little mushrooms really delicately growing out of just fallen branches and things like that these i think aren't the genus merasmus but these are pretty common to see mushrooms like this they have this like nice little umbrella shape one of the ways to identify mushrooms in this genus is they have like fairly prominent ridges on the tops of the caps but it's just really cool to see them growing out of this little twig we kept hiking as beautiful as the flora around us had been the thickets of rhododendrons started feeling a bit claustrophobic we've been going through kind of like a thicker part of the woods and i'm really hoping our campsite is nice and clear and open it's nice and flat at least right now but the campsite is called upper flats so that name just gives me the impression of a big flat open area the golden sunlight contrasted with the blue hues of the shady hills as we hiked on through the verdant vegetation all around us so sometimes in these woods you'll see these unassuming leaves that kind of look like this and sometimes they won't even have a stalk or anything coming out of it but they typically belong to some sort of an orchid now in this case the flowers all shriveled up already but i believe this is a lady slipper flower unfortunately during this time of year in this part of the world you know the flowers are already shriveled up and they've already been fertilized but if you go further north around this time of year you'll probably see some of the flowers still but yeah it's got these really big broad leaves with parallel veins and if you're lucky you'll see the flower which is a nice bulbous colorful usually pink looking flower so this is a tree that grows around this area with dinosaur print looking leaves this is called sassafras people used to make like root beer and tea out of this i've heard that if you drink too much it can cause liver problems but it does have a really nice like sweet floral scent to it actually if you want to try smelling the one that's already broken looks like a bug was already chewing on it maybe a very mild it's probably more placebo than anything i don't think i'm actually smelling it we came to another stream crossing along the trail while brian and andrew gave in to the water i did my best to keep my feet dry now we checked the map to see how close we were to the campsite i think that clearing up ahead might actually be it all right one more stream crossing and that's campsite i can see a tent over there already are we about to get wet oh man it's right there too all right at this crossing there wasn't really any way to keep our feet dry but at least we had reached our campsite being so close to the campsite i was still determined to keep my feet dry one last time don't want to get wet it's got a nice privacy launcher oh i like this this is good for the big tent yeah yeah all right and a great sitting log so okay oh that's the first thing i noticed this will [Music] do now we unpacked our gear and started setting up our tent [Music] with the tent set up we collected water from the nearby stream to cook dinner it's always a good idea to face your container downstream to prevent any particles or sediment from getting in we fired up the stove and started boiling the water [Music] eventually the water was done boiling and while we prepped our meals andrew started cooking the chicken of the woods so now i'm gonna cook this chicken of the woods that we foraged and this time i'm just gonna sear it throw some little bits in here something perfect alright wow i can actually smell it already it's kind of kind of fragrant vaguely umami-ish smell [Music] after searing the chicken of the woods it was time to give it a taste considering we put zero seasoning it does taste like a nice tender piece of chicken yeah wow that is amazing yeah unbelievable why are they not using this for substitute chicken they haven't figured out how to like farm it yet um so there was a point in time where my dad was foraging a lot of chicken of the woods and i just ate chicken of the woods like week after week and eventually i got sick of it but man it is actually amazing how much this tastes like chicken it really does have like that essence of that protein flavor yeah it is the epitome of tastes like chicken the phrase that's good stuff what if i did that and just exploded so today i'm having green curry you're having fettuccine alfredo with chicken brian is having lasagna we're going to give our ratings after we eat them that green curry we've had before this is at least 8 out of 10 right now i think this alfredo is a 8.5 right now i'm going to say this is a also an 8 out of 10. which actually the green curry is wow the lasagna is great maybe even an 8.5 this is good i love the just how different that flavor is i might have to give this one a nine just but i feel like i'm in a mood for tomato sauce yeah usually not actually but normally this fettuccine alfredo chicken would rank much higher but compared to those two with so much more flavor yeah i'm gonna have to bring this down to a 7.5 i feel like this one doesn't have as much flavor as it usually does yeah yeah coming back to this one i'll take it up to an 8.5 just because the flavor is so it's so on point i'm going to bump that up to 8.5 or a 9. yeah i think the lizard was a clear winner yeah all pretty solid choices today though yeah you guys you guys remember during christmas and winter and stuff we would all get together and our parents would just get these like frozen lasagnas and bake them in the oven and we just have a bunch of slices i always wondered where that lasagna was coming from those family size lasagnas those are some good memories yeah we'd also cook those frozen pizzas especially my dad after dinner we had a special dessert planned all right while they're putting the rain fly on robbie and i robbie and i prepared a little surprise cause it's brian's birthday all right happy birthday brian i think this was a clever ploy i turned around and i saw the fire and i was like oh is andrew gonna start a fire i just saw him like standing there like holding this thing um we've eaten so many keto and date brownies uh having an actual real brownie is really nice have we celebrated everybody's birthday i don't think we've never done mine might be easy because during memorial weekend it'd be easy to do me and thomas as if we were on a trip together yeah it's really weird his birthday's one day before after dessert we prepared our sleeping bags and hung up our food [Music] you're looking more and more the part of the asian dad every day and finally we once again all piled into our big tent was the big tent the right decision oh yes it was big ten is always the right decision oh man the key with this is just to use your summer bag as a blanket so you're not fully involved yeah even then i'm still hot right now yeah pretty nice temperature all things considered tank top was the way to go i feel nice and less warm oh man i just realized it's 8 46 and the sun hasn't even set yet yeah although i might be asleep before the sun even sets to be honest i'm so tired yeah all right time to lie here in silence [Music] [Music] the next day the early morning sun cast a soft light across the forest filtering through the beautiful green leaves all around us as the sun rose higher i went to grab the food bags from the bear hang so that we could start the day we got in the tent at eight o'clock and it's now ten o'clock there was one point where we all got up to pee that was four and i actually i couldn't fall back asleep for a while after that yeah same yeah well that's because that was a full night of sleep at that point yeah yeah oh man actually it's not that bad putting on the wet socks i'm gonna let mine pretend to dry in the sun a little longer after packing up some of our gear we brewed up a couple cups of coffee for the morning [Music] it was a slow calm morning and we took our time waking up much like the other critters living in the forest [Music] as the day carried on we filled up on water then took down our tent [Music] before long it was time to head out before we leave i want to look at some of the plants around camp uh this obviously is the tulip poplar my favorite one over here is a holly plant which is an evergreen tree obviously associated with like the winter holidays and this one is called black locust it's a tree that's in the pea family it grows these clumps of like white flowers that really smell fragrant further north they're already in bloom right now but you can actually eat the flowers and they taste kind of like sweet peas now we headed out of the camp to continue along the long hungry ridge trail but before we even got on the trail andrew saw another interesting plant so this is another shrub growing around our campsite and i've actually never seen it flowering like this in the smokies till now but this is something called carolina sweet shrub it's really cool because when you don't see the flowers it's just totally inconspicuous but these are such a unique looking maroon colored flower well it's a good thing we didn't put too much effort into drying our feet because we immediately have a river crossing a stream crossing i guess i should say wow there's like no good way across that i was just about to say i was like that doesn't look well maybe this log over here uh that would be too slippery i at least yeah i feel like that's too dangerous it's probably not worth it i knew there were going to be stream crossings but i held out hope that it might not be that bad i'm trying to walk on where there's like gravel because the rocks are going to be more slippery yesterday some of the hikers had warned us that the stream after the campsite was pretty deep and sure enough it was a tricky crossing [Music] after crossing the stream we kept hiking along the trail which started heading up a moderate incline we're already really into the uphill and the name of this trail is not giving me much hope that it's gonna abate anytime soon in fact i can see it's just completely straight just like yesterday and uphill the entire way fortunately we got over 12 hours of sleep so we definitely have the energy to do this today while hiking uphill we were happy to take an occasional break to rest and look at some of the plants growing around us there's a couple interesting plants here this is a magnolia specifically a fraser magnolia there's all sorts of different magnolia trees that grow throughout the u.s but this one's unique because it has these leaves that are one they're not super waxy or shiny but also if you look at the ends of them they have these kind of lobes and then over here all of these bushes are actually blueberry bushes if you look closely you can see some of the unripe blueberries popping out unfortunately we're still like two or three months before they actually ripen but it's really cool to see these growing everywhere uh we'll also see some of the blueberry bushes once we reach the balls too and i've got a story with that one too but before then we still had more deep rushing streams to cross through [Music] after crossing the stream we kept hiking and i saw an interesting mushroom growing out of the leaf litter so there's a really cool mushroom here i think it's bolidas bicolor it's definitely a bow leaf mushroom and i'm gonna show something really cool about this one now i should mention mushrooms are just the fruiting body of a fungus so when you pick a mushroom the whole organism is still underground so it's just like picking a berry from a plant and also mushrooms like this often will disintegrate after like a day or two anyway so in order to show some of the unique characteristics now if you look at this it's turning from yellow to blue really rapidly just within a matter of seconds it turns this navy blue now if i cut it in half looks even cooler so look at that just immediately like look at the contrast between those colors i do know with psychedelic mushrooms the psilocybin which is psychedelic compound will also stain blue when exposed to air the rate at which it stains is actually a way to identify whether or not it's edible but this one is most likely not an edible mushroom because of how quickly it turned color but it's just so cool like seeing the contrast of color from red to yellow into that like brilliant blue even when you don't have constant mountain vistas to look at nature is extremely beautiful as long as you remember to look closer and observe it and appreciate it in detail [Music] the trail now continued uphill at a definitively steeper incline than yesterday's hike uphill is definitely getting more brutal today it's just hot and muggy too how's it going brian very humid gotta pace ourselves yeah we'll probably take a break fill up here yeah there's only two stream crossings from that campsite to our next campsite we're gonna fill up on water now in case there's no water up ahead because we're just going to keep going higher and the map doesn't look like there's much water so while we filled up our water we looked at all the life teaming around us these sections of hardwood forests are the park's most biodiverse and while it's good to see the forest for the trees sometimes honing in on the smaller details can really help you appreciate a landscape that might otherwise seem mundane [Music] we now came to another stream crossing this one crossable it's not this seems solid enough of course my feet are wet so i don't care i just spent a good amount of effort drying my shoes and socks so i'm highly motivated to get across without getting wet again that's one thing about the wet feet is that it's just it's freeing when you cross the street this is like whatever yeah well that's the last one for today hopefully yeah well as we've gotten further away from the creek it's so much quieter it's very peaceful yeah i'm hoping as we get higher and closer to the bald we might get a little less humid and a little bit of more of a breeze yeah it might be wishful thinking though it's really cool i've seen so many more of these sorrel trees growing and yesterday we just saw some young saplings but this is a entire tree and the bark has this kind of like chunky look where there's like squarish chunks of the bark but if you look up there's just all these non-descript looking leaves but those are all edible makes me want to turn into a brontosaurus and eat them along with the sorrel tree there's also this striped maple tree and it's got these really distinct kind of like they're very serrated and the lobes are less distinct if you see a more grown striped maple tree uh the bark will often have this like striped green pattern on it we continued hiking and andrew spotted a brilliantly colored flower and this is something called flame azalea and azaleas are in the same family of plants as rhododendrons which were seen everywhere and the mountain laurels these are just such a beautiful flashy looking flower you can really see why people grow as alias ornamentally in their yard and robbie saw another strange plant yo i think this is the first time i've actually seen the corn on bear corn oh yeah i did hear that these are edible but i think it's more medicinal than edible really also growing nearby were more mushrooms and these bowmen's root flowers what's up with this we got a pine tree or something yeah it's a eastern white pine we saw a couple on the way in but yeah there's a bunch more i think that's because as we're increasing in altitude um we're starting to see these like subtle shifts in the environment i mean even the air i feel like feels less humid now oh man it's a very nice breeze super nice yeah and i know there's sections of smokies where you get pretty high up and it looks like a completely different world so we decided to take a break from all the uphill hiking and have a snack what are you eating some nature valley protein granola what are you eating i got my beef stick as we rested a cool breeze rolled through the hills rejuvenating us after a moment we continued the uphill climb along the trail i saw more plants that caught my attention so this plant has like a nice world pattern which means that the leaves grow all around it kind of radiating out it's called cucumber root because if you dig up the root there's a little bulb and when you eat it it's kind of got this like crunchy cucumbery flavor and next to them are some more of the solomon seal plants which also have an edible root that you can dig up and eat so that bird call well that one just now was a pileated woodpecker but the uh whistling that we hear that goes that's a pewy and it's actually called a pew because it's bird called kind of sounds like it's saying pee wee pee wee sounds chinese yeah pig [Music] the trail gradually continued higher uphill along the way we saw a jack in the pulpit flower some fruiting striped wintergreens and a white satin moth [Music] the incline today was starting to wear us down a bit and there seemed to be no end in sight starting to feel the fatigue typically when you do an uphill there's at least spots where you have momentary respite even though the uphill's not a lot it's just there's never a flat spot i think what i'm most surprised about is how nice the weather is i thought it was going to be much more humid than it is but it's actually gotten a little bit cooler as the day's gone on yeah along with the cooler weather the good news was that we were also close to the next junction on the trail as we approached the junction we saw a downy woodpecker hopping around on a tree [Music] okay this is the last turn and then up this hill is something called rye patch don't know what that is but the satellite makes it just look like more forest so don't get your hopes up too much i already shot my hopes down [Music] the trail still continued upward but the scenery was changing ever so slightly here and there we caught a glimpse of distant hills as we entered a sunnier but thicker patch of the woods we're surrounded by all these fire azaleas and blackberry flowers and it's another example where there's been an opening in the sky and all these plants are getting the sunlight so you're seeing plants that normally wouldn't grow in a shady forest unfortunately they're thorny plants yeah prepare for disappointment on this rye patch [Music] we continued through the woods and eventually arrived at the rye patch well there's nothing to write home about but it's not as disappointing as i thought it would be yeah yeah nice flat open area good place to rest [Music] while resting we shared a snack of some delicious fried and dried yellow fish [Music] now we continued through the tall grass after so much hiking the forest landscape started feeling a little monotonous this has been like a nice easy trail more or less but i'm really looking forward to getting to the ball and just having to change the scenery in the meantime we focused on the oft overlooked beauty around us like this bee pollinating a wood buttony flower [Applause] [Music] every so often wild geraniums or other flowers would add a pop of color to the sea of green vegetation [Music] we continued hiking and suddenly saw something scurrying off in the distance four so we just saw two wild boars running across the trail right over there they just we heard a crashing in the woods and we just saw them run right across i don't know where they are but we're going to bear spray out because they are still pretty dangerous animals somewhere in this vicinity they're gone now sure i feel like there's parts of the ground that look disturbed but it's really hard to tell like wild boar are in fact invasive to this landscape and can cause extensive damage to the natural ecosystem here after seeing that boar it kind of just reminds you that there are still other things out here i can hurt you and the mindset i feel like it's changed a little bit and we're a bit more wary and bit more cautious now especially when the forest is this thick you can't really see what's ahead of you and then like you look ahead and like is that no that's nothing i see like patches of dirt that have been turned up and i wonder if that's from a boar oh yeah i mean i feel like that's super likely right it's gotta be something digging in there and aren't borers known for digging around yep wow we're almost there so if you go this way for two miles you'll hit the appalachian trail according to our gps before we hit gregory bald there was something else called gregory's little bald and i feel like we are just about to hit the first little gregory bulb even though the main one's still 0.7 miles away this trail right here is basically going to be the border between north carolina and tennessee so basically look that way that's it tennessee yeah tennessee north carolina take a break or i feel like we're pretty close to the gregory yeah if the gregory bald's point seven then that means we're just a mile away from our campsite we continued on and saw more signs of wildlife in the area i mean none of us are experts but this looks like it could very possibly be where some boards have been rooting around another sign up ahead so we were told there wasn't really a gregory's little bald at least on the way along the trail i mean if anything we should be able to see it like just to the left of the trail when we're going past it according to this it should be right there it's pretty much almost done for the day on the mat little gregory's ball is in this direction at the highest point but it doesn't really look like there's any way to get there it does look like it might have a clearing because there's a lot of sunlight there but yeah it doesn't seem like super distinct though so far it looks like gregory put rogaine on his little bald the trail climbed further upward and we pass by a log with orange mycena mushrooms growing out of it as we hiked i asked andrew about his past trip in this area unless i'm mistaken you've been on this section of the trail before right i don't remember much of it but i do remember the campsite in the bald very distinctly but both the bald and the campsite are gonna be well worth this hike we were all eager to get to the ball along our uphill hike we saw more signs of the wild boar that had been roaming these hills since we just saw that wild boar i guess it's no surprise that there's a boar trap out there this one looks like it's closed but i don't think there's anything in there we probably hear it yeah we probably hear it but i was saying like all along this trail we're seeing like the ground is all dug up in very disturbed ground yeah yeah you can tell the soil's been kind of like tilled and stuff by a boar probably so actually in rural areas there's a huge problem with wild boars and part of the reason is that they also reproduce like crazy and they get to maturity really fast so i want to investigate this thing really quick it might not be anything whoa it's some like old chicken of the woods i think that's just been gelatinized by bugs eating it but you can just make out the orange color of it wow before long we could see clear skies in the distance as we approached gregory's bald that is a beautiful sight oh baby oh man [Music] this has to be what it feels like walking to heaven the warm sunshine oh man this is amazing oh my god this is what i've been waiting for the other thing about this bald is that if you visit in the summertime you are greeted with like a whole bounty of fruits because one there's blueberries but two all of this is just wild blackberry and it's all flowering right now so not only do you get to this open space but you get to forage all these delicious berries the top of the bald we were treated to sweeping views of the distant blue mountains and hills [Music] the open meadows and sunshine were a much welcomed change of scenery but even up here there were still smaller details worth observing so growing on this bush it kind of looks and feels like a weird fruit but this is actually a gall these fungal galls are colloquially called pinkster apples and there are reports of settlers in colonial times eating them the rhododendron plants themselves can be toxic great yeah it does look kind of appetizing in a weird way though does it smell like just vaguely planty like it doesn't have any sweet smell really so then over here this is something i always remember seeing as a kid in the summer these are the nests of something called a spittle bug you can really see why it's called that it just looks like kind of gross especially in this covert area but if you were to like dig through that little clump of spit you would find a bug sleeping or resting in there we soon approached the top of the vault enjoying the breathtaking scenery along the way [Music] [Music] so holy crap oh my goodness this is what i had pictured yeah this keeps getting better and better actual bulb what should we uh set up maybe these rocks these rocks look pretty good looks like it's 4 949 feet we did it we took our sweet time milling about at the top of the bald enjoying the cool dry air and the beautiful mountain vistas i'm going to give myself a nice long drying out here this is like a paradise up here man this is pretty much exactly what i hoped it would be i've got these sachima's it's kind of like a asian rice krispie treat but it's a manchurian dessert originally like northern china basically these were our rice krispies treats growing up i like them because they're i like them a lot they're oilier so they have like a moister taste than like a rice krispie treat i remember seeing these all the time i don't remember eating them that often really i like the texture of just like collapses in your mouth not bad not bad this is the most mild sweetness i've ever experienced it looks like if someone made a rice krispie treat out of corn pops they also have ones with raisins that i like but i figured brian might not like the reason so your anti-razonite why would you take a perfectly good grape and then dry it out we were undoubtedly entranced by gregory's bald rolling grassy hills fluffy clouds and distant mountain ridges are the sort of picturesque scenery everyone hopes to see on their first time out backpacking but an experience in the wilderness isn't just about the sights you see though we enjoyed being up here it didn't invalidate the fun we had had hiking through the thick forest the past day and a half what we really take away from backpacking is the feeling we get from it the feeling of unrestrained freedom to wander to explore to experience life free of the shackles of societal expectations and norms to truly appreciate the wilderness is to enjoy both the scenic views as well as the finer details like fields of colored sheep sorrel seeds and thickets of blueberry bushes all around [Music] now we made our way back to the campsite we passed by some blueberry bushes blackberry flowers and found our way back into the woods [Music] as we hiked andrew reminisced about his last time hiking here so one really distinct memory i have from the time i was here was i got to the campsite and after setting up i wanted to go back to the ball to you know have some nice open skies i remember walking up this path and seeing all the gnarly trees and it was like super misty and foggy felt like something out of a fantasy novel and then getting to the top it was just so nice to like have everything opened up wait is that the same trooper you saw bear yeah that was um on the trail up to that junction that we passed by earlier oh yeah it was just a short bout of hiking downhill before we arrived at the campsite well lucky lucky i do remember this campsite being pretty nice see something nice over there yeah i think oh that looks like a nice one right there it's got a lot of firewood here oh wow yeah oh wow i think that's a good sign yeah i'm okay with this one the tent spot is great right here yeah this one looks nice too honestly the other one had more firewood though the other one had more space i feel like for the tent and the firewood yeah what do we think other one tent space is better at the other one yeah yeah and i'm pretty sure if you go that way for a little bit there's a stream crossing that you can there's a bearing in here too so let's make a note of that oh that's good to know cool let's get that chunker tent set up after getting our tent set up we had another birthday meal planned for tonight birthday noodles and these weren't your typical instant noodles these were some wide noodles with a sichuan style spicy sauce double stir oh man so this is part two of the birthday meal the traditional birthday noodles noodles are for long life you get long noodles long knife and these are also nice wide noodles so maybe we can make up something about how it means you'll have a interesting life too and i also added the uh black woodier fungus into it but whitier fungus is always like such a great thing to add to soups and stuff because they feel really substantive but they're really easy to boil up and cook pink and there's some eel here if you guys want oh i definitely want oh yeah i do love a good eel man that is the classic spicy ramen smell yeah it's like sichuan style wide noodles it's actually not meant to be eaten as a soup noodle but works perfectly fine you know i also usually avoid spicy foods when i'm camping but this is hitting the spot it's always okay to have spicy foods on your last day well okay is kind of a weird word but you can get away with it oh that's good like a broad noodle was is that from sidephone that's a chow phong it's a broad noodle i don't want a broad noodle [Music] it turns out we weren't the only ones having dinner in the distance we saw a buck with a new set of antlers chowing down on some grass as the deer browsed around the sun sank lower and the evening glow cast everything in a golden aura [Music] we went to hang up our food bags for the night and andrew collected some kindling for a small fire [Music] to start the fire we had some special supplies sent to us by a friend so ron mueller gave us this beautiful tin of tinder we've got some cotton which seems to be soaked in some sort of flammable oil we've got some pieces of fat wood and then this looks like shavings of fat wood or something hopefully we won't have too much problem starting to fire the kindling itself is a little bit damp because everything here is damp right now but all this stuff should go up in an instant yeah these are like cotton balls soaked in vaseline i believe i'm gonna use a couple of these just because the fat wood holds a flame for a long time so that way we'll have a flame for a while to actually catch the kindling oh that was instantaneous i'm gonna put one piece of fat wood on here i think that's all i'll need this should hopefully catch pretty easily yeah there we go all of this is pretty damp so i might add one more fat wood just to get things going i'm being a little more ginger with my kindling just because if i put all of this on there and a lot of it is damp then that could just smother the fire immediately whereas when you have a nice dry bundle it's not as critical that you put one piece on at a time and in fact sometimes it's better to put a whole bundle on in that case after some gentle coaxing the fire was stable and we sat around and enjoyed its light feels like a complete trip now that we've got this going when you've got everything that you need and you're not super cold a fire never seems super worth it until you've actually got one going that's true yeah but as soon as it's going then you feel like you just feel like you're home so this was the campsite i stayed at the second of the three nights that i did on my solo trip when i went there i met these two people nathan and sandra it's crazy because i was just boiling my water i just had no good way to like collect water so it was a very desperate situation but these two were totally welcoming and let me stay at their campsite with them and like gave me some other rehydrated soup and then when we hiked out together they uh gave me this like little piece of quartz that they had gotten from one of the towns nearby and then we all took a shot of whiskey together it was great i feel like if we ran into someone who was just struggling i feel like we'd do the same too because like you see someone and out here and you know like they're inexperienced then it's like your duty to make sure they don't die out here because it's on you at that point that solo hike was so tough back then i feel like it would still be kind of tough to do this whole loop on your own like until you get to the bald and you have that like nice morale boost if we didn't have each other that would be so much more difficult to do yeah i'd have to put on some tunes and just zone i love a good bald the warm glow of the evening sun shimmered through the forest canopy as we headed to the tent to get ready for bed and after waiting a while for it to get completely dark andrew and i headed out to the ball to see some stars it was a lot of effort to get out of that tent so i really hope this bra bomb is worth it it took so much mental discipline to actually get us out we hiked through the cool night air here and there we saw critters like the salamander and we wondered what other wildlife was out and about in the dark it's funny we ran into those bores on the trail and then we heard about two rattlesnakes in this area i'm pretty sure those animals are sleeping but it still feels like we could just get mauled alive by some sort of wildlife rain cover or something towel i guess so there's something weirdly meditative about just hiking at night like this i think it's because like you can't see anything else and it's so quiet and all you hear is just like the rocks clinking together as you hike i don't know just kind of fun in a weird way if you didn't get really tired you know and you could just hike at night you had a powerful enough light it'd actually be really fun to hike at night super quiet you can see one star already wow love the sound of that wind that is great stuff like this really makes it feel like an adventure [Music] yo i was expecting the stars to be the main attraction but those city lights are amazing it's crazy because earlier we just saw green hills like i would never have thought there was all that yeah holy cow man [Applause] [Music] from the top of the breezy bald we took in the feeling of the crisp night air and the wondrous sights of the distant lights and shining stars above it was truly something incredible to behold [Music] is that crazy that we are actually living in the future yeah like seeing a plane fly overhead like that and even those city lights like that is something that is unfathomable to people just like 100 200 years ago yeah the future will always happen to the people who lived way back when what's happening now is unfathomable but it's also inevitable you know i've talked many times before about how at the beginning of the trip i had this thought that this is just gonna be a memory in like two days i've had that thought often too actually our lives are gonna be a memory at some point like we don't know how we're gonna go but we are gonna go with something and i think that's what i love about moments like this is it's like you're forced to be in the present because it's like between being exposed to the elements and the cold chill of the air and like the incredible sights of the stars and stuff like there's no way you can be on autopilot when you're in an environment like this yeah i can't believe no matter how many times we see stuff like this it feels like the first time every time yeah it is so easy when you're not experiencing stuff like this to go on autopilot and to not want to push yourself to experience something like this again even if you're not always perfect about doing it like i've had my days where i just lie around but it's like at least having done something like this in the back of your mind there's something pushing you to keep finding the adventure in life doing the hard thing almost always is worth it yeah like you don't always have to do the hard thing but when you do the hard thing you'll rarely be sorry that you did it yeah yeah we were in that tent really comfortable earlier we're like i don't know we looked up and we saw the stars and like yeah we should probably go did you get out here like oh man yeah so glad i did it even if you don't do stuff like this all every single night it's like once in a while remind yourself that you should seek that out so worth it [Music] the next day we awoke to a calm and quiet but rather humid morning i am sweat it's so bad when i sleep i don't know if they sweat but it's definitely sticky either way it feels terrible it feels so musty right now it's ruined after freshening up a bit we prepared vietnamese coffee with an old packet of sweet condensed milk you gotta need it there's actually a hard spot in here that's weird so how did you guys sleep i'm not sure i know i slept but i couldn't really tell if it was really filling fulfilling sleep i could not get my sleeping bags zipped up for so long and i realized the sleeping bag was upside down so i was trying to zip the wrong side but as soon as i did that i had to pee and i kept putting that off for so long you always always have to pee it doesn't matter what you do like you could go peace right before you go to bed like nope you gotta take a massive pee in the morning is this appropriate for oh yeah yeah with the milk sugar that tastes fantastic how'd you sleep imagine sweating your butt off in a sleeping bag but actually staying asleep that's how i slept yeah everything feels musty right now i don't think musty is the right word this is way too moist for musty or is musty part of moist that musty is kind of moist i associate musty with like smells right i smell yeah yeah but it's a smell from having been moist and moldy yeah you're right damp and musty right yeah i feel like i just got confused and i thought it was supposed to be in my food bag [Music] after coffee we enjoyed the peaceful morning a bit before heading out to a nearby stream to refill our water [Music] after filling up our water we headed out while we hiked andrew saw a plant that reminded him of his last trip here so these plants here are called false nettles and they really bring back a core memory of mine where i was camping solo in the smokies and i'm still on that natural toilet paper thing and i used these leaves to wipe and they were perfectly fine and then the next day i found the same plant and i used it again except it wasn't the same plant because as the name implies this is a false wood nettle and there's also a real wood nettle and it hurts so badly after i used it the second time immediately uh it was pretty quick using something called false nettle as a toilet paper just playing russian roulette at that point so yesterday we came down from there now we're gonna go this way to parson bald which is less than a mile away so that should be kind of nice to see and then it's all downhill from here baby in a good way [Music] so one plant that i don't know if it would help with the ailment that i had but it's really good for bug bites and poison ivy is this which is called spotted touch me knot also called jewel weed but you can take the stems and they have a lot of juice in them and if you rub that on any sort of like itchy part on your skin it should help with it [Music] it was a perfectly tranquil last day though we had a good amount to hike it was relatively easy so i took my time and looked for even more plants to talk about so we're in another area with lots of ferns and this new york fern has some weird brown looking fronds in the middle here and this isn't some sort of disease or anything what this is actually the fertile fronds of the fern and what that means is these are the things that will distribute the spores so that the plant can actually reproduce if you look closely you'll see all these tiny little kind of brown circles of spores all up and down that stalk [Music] while we hiked through the sunny patches of waving grass andrew saw an interesting fungus growing on a boulder this is a common sight on big rocks like this these sorts of flat flaky fungi but this is called rock tripe and it's kind of a similar fungus to like woodier mushrooms uh it is edible though and actually they do sell this in the store too at like asian grocery stores and stuff does it look better at some point or is that the editable that's pretty much what it looks like and i i want to try the store-bought version first because i am too afraid to like like that does not look that appetizing because with whittier fungus it's at least like wet and gelatinous so it feels like something you need but this is just like very dry and papery so soon we neared the area marked parsons bald on the map i hope this bald is actually cool i see a big open sky though i would imagine that if they actually mark it on a trail sign yeah it's going to be an actual bald oh yeah it's a bald all right it's definitely a little bald the small ball is a very very small ball is there more no i think this is it oh yeah this is nice it is nice though yeah nice little yeah break parson's had a little more rogaine [Music] we took this moment to take in the fresh air around us and rest for a little while as we rested andrew scrounged around to look at some wildflowers all in the grass there's these yellow flowers and this actually belongs to the genus potentilla but it's actually like a false strawberry so this yellow flower eventually will turn into sort of a red fruit that resembles a strawberry but it kind of tastes like dust and then you've obviously got all these blueberry bushes but here you've got blackberry canes and these white flowers that are growing they'll eventually turn into blackberries but as with many things in the rose family you can actually eat the flowers even before they turn into fruit now you might be wondering what it tastes like dry nothing kind of like bitter paper on its own it's not much but i do like taking flowers like that and sprinkling them onto like wild salads it adds some stuff to the presentation but yeah it's my secret shame also in this area were some curled up fern fronds we now headed onward from the main bald we entered an open grassy section of woods typically i wouldn't mind long grass that much but considering the ticks and yesterday some somebody we saw mentioned they saw two rattlesnakes just makes you a little more careful about where you're stepping and i'd i'd rather see where i'm about to step rather than have to kind of feel around though the grass brings up anxieties about ticks and snakes it's hard to deny that it looks beautiful especially beneath the fluttering sunlight of a forest canopy [Music] [Music] we kept hiking making our way through more dense woods before coming to a relatively clear area on the trail where we decided to take a break [Music] i'm good saving that hunger spice i think so yeah man this is such a pleasant day like the weather has been perfect this whole time it really cooperated this weather feels like summer break to me you know i mean wow the freedom of summer break that's the same feeling as finishing like a work project yeah you finish a work project and you're just like i'm free yeah for a few days at least [Music] yeah that's what this feels like right now hiking out on the last stretch of our trip we were filled with a sort of satisfied tiredness happy with our time spent in the woods but ready to make our way back home [Music] eventually we came to another spacious part of the trail and talked about looking forward to the post-hike meal i actually the thing i want the most is a nice cold drink the thing i want the most is that air conditioner blasting on me yeah okay let's just continue as we made our way downhill we passed by beautiful flame azaleas and mountain laurel flowers that swayed in the calm summer breeze the trail's descended downhill somewhat rapidly now just off the trail was an old rusty object this random metal barrel thing here it almost looks like it uh it's like an old fire pit that they didn't use like i wonder if part of it gets buried for the fire pit huh we passed by one of the many rivulets often cascading down the hillsides in the smokies and caught a glimpse of the distant hills through the trees then we arrived at another landmark okay we've made it to the campsite which means we've got maybe two or three miles left back to the car this deserves a nice nice little break campsite must be back that way our trail continues this way but our current journey is right here i had made it to the next landmark before the others and while they caught up andrew identified another plant so there's a couple of vining plants in this area first you've got these green briars which kind of have these thorny vines and leaves with very parallel veins and certain species of these i've heard you can actually eat the tender tendrils but there's also some grapevine i think it's muscadine grapes and grapevine is something that grows all throughout the forest a lot of times you'll see it in this sort of younger greener stage when it's in a meadow but in the woods sometimes you'll see big woody barky vines just dangling from the trees and those are also grapevine but yeah at some point um these sorts of vines will eventually produce you know little grapes and i've had some wild grapes that are pretty sour and tart but there's others that taste a lot sweeter and almost as if they've been like interbred with store-bought grapes or something eventually the others showed up at the campsite welcome that was it oh yeah my thoughts exactly i went to that campsite it is so far i was just walking and walking the bench i was like i gotta run and i ran and it still took forever oh man after andrew arrived we went to the nearby stream to cool off for a bit [Music] oh yeah oh that's nice it's amazing how much that boost your morale [Music] and then robbie had an extra treat to keep us going i got one last ace from the hole [Music] brownie in our darkest hour [Music] after enjoying the snack we took in the summery ambiance around us and talked about our past trips in the smokies so technically this is the fourth time we've been to the smokies each trip we've taken has been vastly different i think it's just a lot to reflect on i feel like every time we've come to the smokies there's been some sort of lesson learned it's funny the smokies has a distinct look and feel to it but all the places we've been have also felt really different partly because we've been there in different seasons but also there's just so much to see in this park it's funny how far we've come from our very first smoky strip where we literally gave up on our planned hike and me and thomas just hotel archived it up this trip has been really interesting because even though the scenery except for the bald wasn't like anything to write home about there's still something so nostalgic and nice about just hiking in the woods like this especially in perfect weather like this yeah we really got lucky with the weather anything else to add robbie i'm really happy we're going downhill did all the hard work before i usually can't save my dessert to the end in this case we saved our dessert hiking to the end this is one of those trips where uh you feel rejuvenated but you're really ready to get back yeah yeah and that's the perfect way to end it the boundless freedom of summer break that's the sort of feeling that exploring the wilderness can bring a feeling of weightlessness of relief of unrestricted liberation [Music] sometimes it's standing at the top of a mountain looking at a majestic view that gives us this feeling sometimes it's gazing at the stars on a brisk night and sometimes it's just wandering through the woods with no agenda no schedule and no limits to where you can go or what you can do [Music] a lot of times we seek out picturesque places in nature it's easy to see the value of the wilderness when there are rolling hills and snow-capped mountains [Music] but the valley of the wilderness is more than what it looks like it's about the way it makes us feel [Music] not everyone is as awe inspired by an expanse of forests or barren desert or vast tundra but in all wilderness landscapes we can find a sense of freedom [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] and when you've experienced what a life free of restrictive social norms oppression and exploitation can be like even if just for a few days you come away with an invaluable perspective that makes you cherish life and look forward to the possibilities of a better world [Applause] [Music] [Music] thank you so much for watching if you enjoy our videos please consider joining our patreon community at patreon.com adventure patrons get early access to the videos special live streams commentaries and bloopers and patrons at the hiker tier can even get their names in the credits if you enjoyed the music rewrote for the episode you can find all of it at adventurearchives.bandcamp.com finally we have t-shirts for sale which you can find at bit.ly adventure shirts thank you very much for watching and we'll see in the next one [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] how ready are you for this ready doesn't even begin to describe it oh man i'm so ready dude i'm gonna well i don't know what i'm gonna eat i'm gonna eat something [Music] can you feel your life returning to you oh yeah so good unbelievable we're just eating the chips right now [Music] oh yeah that's so good it's noticeably different than from what you'd expect like an orange soda taste i think it does taste like mandarin oranges yeah i love all orange sodas i'm like uh was it keenan from kenan kel which one was that this is my body going like oh okay we're finally getting food okay time to be hungry [Applause] [Music] i think that's good stuff man plays hot too really excellent holy cow [Music] man you know when a place serves a whole fried tilapia that you're in for a treat that is crazy man [Music] i gotta get a box for this fish i think if i had 15 more minutes i'd be able to finish this all [Music] everyone's satisfied oh very soon that wasn't that was really good like i always feel like mexican restaurants that can't really miss but i also am never really that impressed with them but this place was excellent yeah ponchos good job pancho james rakisky thank you so much for looking after salvador gonzalez dorsia how impressive how on earth did you manage to get a reservation there lucky i guess your suit that is a wonderful suit don't tell me don't tell me let me guess william garnett it's so soft your compliment was sufficient john scott hello elena anthony nice tie how the heck are you gavin ryan has mistaken me for elaine r anthony it seems logical because anthony also works at a a and in fact does the exact same thing i do she also has a penchant for william garnett's suits and mukunkati glasses elaine and i even go to the same barber although i have a slightly better haircut so how's the account going james it's uh it's all right really that's interesting it's not uh it's not great oh well you know hey ryan congratulations on the acquia g asari thank you maryson cabbage listen ryan squash friday call me new card what do you think oh very nice look at that picked them up from the printers yesterday good coloring that's bone and the lettering is something called silly and braille very cool real kids key but that's nothing look at this eggshell wood romalian type what do you think nice jesus that is really super how to nitwit like you get so tasteful i can't believe that mary prefers jay raymundo's card to mine but wait you ain't seen nothing yet raised lettering pale nimbus white impressive very nice let's see gavin ryan's card look at that subtle off-white coloring the tasteful thickness of it oh my god it even has a watermark couple birthday shout outs happy birthday to sam from taylor pearson happy birthday happy birthday to katya strom from brian strom 7-11 on 7-eleven and they haven't requested a birthday shout out but happy birthday to brian and aussie yamagata hey hey kids come here babylon holly come here look they're trying to fight they're trying to fight are you depressed since the ducks left i guess [Music] [Music] time what is it about those ducks that meant so much to you there's just something that was it was a trip having those ducks living in my pool seeing them grow up and raise their babies i was sad to see them go when the ducks gave birth to those babies they became a family you're right the ducks there they're like a moro family the morrow family that's the link i'm afraid of just losing my family that feeling follows me everywhere i go we've got another shout out from ts nikki you made the ireland trip amazing it was an adventure that will last a lifetime and an adventure i want to take again thank you nikki for being an amazing adventure partner wife and mom to our boy liam t.s also wants to shout out the guys at adventure archives andrew brian that's me thomas and robbie without your encouragement i would not have gone on the adventure with nikki keep on adventuring and showing us what is possible did not hit her it's not true it is bull crap i did not hit her i did not oh hi jasper kapparota oh hey expedition research llc what's up i have a problem with christina alvarez she says that i hid her what well did you no it's not true don't even ask morgan and oswan would like to give a shout out to neil happy five year wedding anniversary and happy father's day you're a wonderful dad and a great partner and we're so very proud of you looking forward to many adventures and creative projects along our path together hello yeah i can do a few shout outs have you seen the new top gun movie you haven't yeah well i got a few ideas [Music] charlie joe wants to give a shout out to his kids cooper and willow joe keep on watching thank you [Music] max at great lakes watercraft says check out great lakes watercraft [Music] and lastly i want to give a shout out to sanwar one jason bourgeois and john truitt [Music] keep on flying [Music] hi david this is a special message to you from your partner ginger ginger wants to say that she loves you and she loves spending time with you and uh hopefully you guys can go for a hike sometime soon but thank you so much david and ginger have a great one thanks for watching the next shout out has spoilers for episode five of obi-wan kenobi shout out to douglas jackson dan vulcans linen rocco and sun jan huang if you don't want to watch the shout out skip to the time code on screen thanks for your support we're going to have to slow them down tell inquisitor dan vulcans i want to speak with him he started this when he kidnapped within in rocco i'll buy us as much time as we can if this is you stalling for time it won't work lord douglas jackson will have you at any cost you mean san jan huang [Music] you knew who douglas jackson was he would have kept that hidden and you're too young to know who he really is unless you were there it doesn't matter where i was the night of order 66 you were youngling that's enough that's how you knew enough we thought he was there to help us sue anton leon and lou lynn they were the only family i knew you're not serving him are you you're hunting him let me help you why because we want the same thing do we richard frangiomore do we jedi knight richard frangiamore would also like to give a shout out to all the staff at four corners pub in silver spring maryland thank you for taking great care of them for 10 years never change guys [Music] [Music] oh

Channel: AdventureArchives

Views: 428,971

Keywords: bushcraft, backpacking, hiking, camping, wilderness, survival, outdoors, travel, outdoor recreation, prepping, nature, 4k, wild, survival skills, ray mears, les stroud

Id: VLZ1hAiVY90

Length: 101min 53sec (6113 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 11 2022