As I have mentioned before on this blog, I enjoy hiking.  I am also attracted to water – mostly water that is moving fast enough to make sound.  I have hiked along the coast, through the mountains, in the desert, in deep forests, along rocky peaks, and in suburban areas.  More often than not, I select a place to hike that is either in sight of water or has running water as a destination.  My family takes advantage of state park trails which are frequently near the shoreline of a lake or wind along a creek or river.

The ultimate culmination of a hike to me is a waterfall — the bigger and louder the better.  One of the tallest I have seen recently is just outside Cherokee, North Carolina.  Mingo Falls is on the Cherokee Indian Reservation (Qualla Boundary), just outside Great Smoky Mountains National Park.   At 120 feet tall, the waterfall is one of the tallest and most spectacular in the southern Appalachians.  The hike on Pigeon Creek Trail to the waterfall is only 0.4 miles in length, but is considered moderate in difficulty because it is largely composed of steps and a fairly steep climb up to the falls.

I took this photograph in December, just after Christmas.  It was a great time to get a shot because the foliage was gone from most of the trees, which revealed a good portion of the width of the falls as well as the vertical expanse.  I was standing on the small bridge at the base of the falls where the creek continues cascading down the hillside.  The sound is mighty but not deafening.  I love waterfalls, and this is one of my favorites.  In fact, it is currently the home-screen photo on my iPhone.