Kevin Bae: All right, it is November, 27 2024 and we are at
the black branch trail. I'm here one day before my 58th birthday.
I was gonna hike on my 58th birthday, but it's gonna be a
stormy day in North Georgia, so instead, we are here at the
black branch trail near Dahlonega, and we're gonna go on
what's supposed to be a relatively easy hike. So it's a
loop. The trail goes off this way, and I guess there's a bit
of Forest Service road or something to walk on. We'll see.
So I was wrong. There's no Forest Service road to walk on.
I got to go up this trail a little ways, and then I make a
right, and we'll do my usual counter clockwise path. This
trail says it's open to mountain bikers and horse horses, so
hopefully, hopefully, not too many people ride horses, because
I hate when there's tons of horse poop on the trail. So this
does connect to the Forest Service road for a little bit,
and then the trail picks up over here on the side, I believe
we'll find out. Hey, Godfrey, Come on this way. There's a
sign. We'll continue on. So that was definitely a wrong turn. I
can see it on the map. So we got to continue on up this Forest
Service road for a little bit until we catch the rest of our
trail. Some guess we're following the blue trail, the
blue Blaze, and we'll continue on the road and oh, let's go,
God free.
This is supposed to be an easy hike, and it looks like it's
going to be. I keep looking for more easy hikes because of God
freeze age. Plus, we haven't been hiking since September when
we were in Utah, and he's not really conditioned for a good,
hefty hike, so looking for something that we could do where
he could get outdoors and enjoy himself, but not stress him out.
Stress himself out too much, because getting really stiff in
his old age.
So I missed the trail marker again, but I didn't wander off
too far. For some reason, my phone lost this GPS signal, and
then the all trails map couldn't figure out where I was, so I had
to reboot now all this back in order. Were on the correct
trail. Keep on trucking it. I don't think there are any water
features on this trail, but it is kind of nice, even though
it's hard to fall. It's not the canopy is not too wide open.
There's a lot of Hollies here that are evergreen, a lot of
pines, so you get this really nice dappled sunlight that comes
through. I'm
uh, hopefully we don't see any mountain bikers. I don't see how
you'd want a mountain bike on all these leaves. It's got to be
pretty slippery, but maybe that's part of the thrill. Who
knows? Just as I say, there's no water feature. What Is there a
water feature? I thought other people reported that there was
nothing here, just a little something.
Right on cue. Oh,
Godfrey loves nothing more than a bark Fest at a stream. Let's
go. I.
Uh, suddenly the trail got wide. So I did pass a little bit of an
incline, just enough to get your blood pumping, but nothing to be
concerned about, or or anything. Wasn't difficult. I didn't even
break stride. You just kind of get your heart going, break out
a little bit of a sweat, maybe. I think it's pretty easy for
most people.
I like it when I come up and the days are picture perfect. You.
It so far. Well, not particularly scenic, if, if you
like a walk in the woods, this is still fantastic. There's
nobody here. I'm here on a Wednesday, early in the morning,
I got started out about 9:30am and it's been just quiet and
peaceful. So it's a really nice walk in the woods. Got another
tiny, tiny stream we've run across and
oh, you're ruining the peace and calm of the forest. Godfrey, you
don't care. Oh, Lord, all right, let's go back to the trail. Big
glute, this way, this way. So here's another incline. This one
is the first one that's of any consequence, but it's the trail
is flat, nothing difficult to climb up. It's really just a
walk. I don't know what the grade is, maybe 20 degrees or
so. It's not that bad. So while I'm going downhill, and I think
we're probably 1015, minutes away from being done. Just going
to take this opportunity to say that this is a value for value
podcast. That means there is no advertising. Nobody's paying me
to do anything. I make no money off of anything, but your
participation is welcome. So if you want to participate, the
easiest way is get a modern podcast app. You go to podcast
apps.com and go check those out. Some modern podcast apps are
podcast guru cast O Matic, fountain, pod verse. And there's
a slew, a whole slew of more more podcast apps. And these
podcast apps have Bitcoin wallets built in. And what you
do is you go ahead and buy yourself some what are called
Satoshis, which are basically pennies to the dollar as
compared to, you know, they're called SATs, SATs to a Bitcoin.
I mean, it's, it's worth way less than a penny is one set.
But just as talking denominations, a penny to $1 a
sack to a Bitcoin. And so you load up the wallet, and then, as
you listen, you can set the rate at which you pay, so you can
stream payments while you listen, or you can do something
called a boost, or a boost to gram, a boost is simply hit the
boost button in the app, and then you you know, if you heard
something particular, in particular that you like, or for
whatever reason, you just feel like throwing a few extra sat
somebody's way, some podcasters way. Then you send the boost,
and you put in the number of stats you want to send a boost
to gram would be, if you put the message, you can would be to
put, you can include a message in with your boost. So say, you
know you want to say your podcast sucks, which you can
send to me. I don't care. Long as you send it along with a few
SATs, it's fantastic. It's all good. So and you know, there's
not much the the ethos of value for value is time, talent or
treasure. So I don't know what anybody in the listening
audience, how few of you there are, what else you can provide?
Provide what you think would be valuable to this podcast. Send
it on over. You know, being making graphics for for the
podcast episode, although I use pictures from from the hike in
general, or you got ideas where to go. Anything that you want to
add to the show is welcome. You can send me an email at mail, M,
a, i, L, at the casual hike.com will be links in the show notes
and on the website to the different podcast apps and links
that explain what value for value is. So check that out, and
then probably be back to ramp up this hike. All right, we're
pretty much back where we started. This is the very
beginning of the trail, where you've got this connector trail,
and then that's our trail that goes up that way. So the Jeep
shouldn't be too far away. Now let's see. We're finishing quite
early, so we might even try one more trail that's close by,
that's kind of short, also supposed to be fairly easy.
We'll see
back to the Forest Service road, and we're almost done. So I
goofed again. I wasn't supposed to go out to the Forest Service
road. I was supposed to turn right and stick on this little,
tiny feeder trail that takes me back to where my jeep is. I was
wondering why I didn't see it right right after I got out. Now
I know now we're in the right spot. We've made it back to the
Jeep,
and we'll catch you on the next one. Go take a hike and