My wife and I were hiking in Cherokee NP this weekend. I found a Zara Spook fishing lure...with both sets of treble hooks missing...on the trail.

 

Old cars in the middle of stands of 100 year old hardwoods with no way they could have gotten back there.

Animals doing very odd things.

People having sex.

Graves.

Old homesteads.

Weird people who scurry away when they see you.

 

Nothing really unusual here. Once while hiking in the Joyce Kilmer forest my brother and I rounded a corner and found a knife stuck in a tree. It was just a cheap pocket folder, but there wasn't a soul around for miles.

here's a story from the CMP forums about a guy that found the remains of an abandoned rifle range out in Yellowstone NP.
http://forums.thecmp.org/showthread.php?t=138081

 

Once found an 100+ yr old property marker with a name stamped on it - same name as the friend I was hiking with.

I've been stalked by a bear if that counts...

Most relics I've seen in the woods are common: old cars, foundations, fireplaces, one time an old mill.

 

Down near Troy in the Uwharrie Nat'l Forrest.
A friend and I used to go down and 4 wheel during the week. Occasionally we would walk some of the old closed trails just to see what they looked like.
On the end of a ridge off of the Dickey Bell trail we found a 12ft. by 8ft. cross on the ground made out of stacked rocks. Probably 2 feet deep!
Creepy. My head was on swivel and I was in "looking for children of the corn" mode until we made it back to the vehicles.
Considering the size of the cross and the size of the rocks ( cantalope size) there was a lot of work involved!

Matt

btw- yeah ... I lost a lot of time on that thread also .... going back now!

 

Lm

Nothing weird there, someone started that cross several years ago. Now everyone that goes by it adds a rock to it. It has grown over the years.

 

 

Since I opened my big mouth I guess I'll have to contribute.

Found this old graveyard after I got turned around looking for coyote signs on some family land. I've been meaning to check the county GIS to see who owns it so I can ask about putting them on findagrave.com and Ancestry.com.
There are 4 total, the first on is the only one still standing. They are all children, the oldest being 9 years old, dating from the 1840's.
Did some talking with a couple older folks who live in the area and there were apparently several structures on the spot around that time, including a hotel of sorts, and a government liquor still down the hill along the creek. Funny to imagine that since it's nothing but woods today.

Like the ifish thread I've also heard my share of strange noises. Found my share of deflated party balloons. I have a couple more stories but I'll save 'em for later.

We had an old little cemetery down from our old house and family land. When my identical twin uncles were teenagers they snuck out and stole a tombstone one night. They both had the same nightmare that night and met each other in the garage before school to put it back. They say they didn't talk about it for about ten years until their parents had moved out of that house then told them what had happened.

 

Charliesgrave - If you take some blank copy paper and a couple of pencils, you can lay the paper on the face of the stones and hold the pencil at an almost flat angle to trace across the paper. It will make it much easier to make out any faded engraving.

 

And I'll jump in here....To many "Weird" things to list such as guns, marijuana fields and a manned liquor still when I was a young feller with my dad. One of the most interesting is also a grave. It's in the Uwharries also. Talk about a spooky place, in the summer the woods are DARK. Anyway, there are several slate headstones and one marked headstone. The 'ol feller was a personal paige for George Washington during the Revolutionary War and the Commander of the NC militia until his death in 1830. Me and the wife cleaned the place up a little out of respect.

 

I used to hike the old Mitchell toll road and the old rail trestles that run from Black Mountain NC to the Blue Ridge Parkway below Mt Mitchell behind Montreat NC . It's nothing but a washed out narrow dirt road bed now that runs along the ridges. Going around somewhat of a switchback in the middle of nowhere I could see the remains of a 1920's truck about 50-75 yards down the steep embankment in the rhododendron. Guess he didn't make the curve.

 

A really large Beaver pond out behind my house.

 

Do beavers *in* my house count?

 

Used to do some hunting in Hillsville Va when I was a teen. The highest point on this 400ac track of land that my friends family owned had a small graveyard on it. We went up one weekend to deer hunt and we were to meet at the graveyard mid morning to go home for lunch. There was a particularly old grave in the center with a woman's pic on it. In the middle of her grave going straight down was a groundhog hole

 

Up until the late 1970's you could still access Old US 70 between Old Fort and Black Mountain, NC. Not sure if you could even make it all the way through back then, and a few years later it was blocked off for good. I-40 had been cut through years before so "Old 70" got zero traffic.

We'd drive a few miles down there around the Buncombe - McDowell Cty line and stop at an overlook at night and drink beer when we were 18-19. You could look out in the distance between two ridges that were maybe 10-15 miles away and see lights floating low in the sky between the ridges. We talked about it all that year at school and would go back at night to watch.

We finally drove down there during the day to discover that there was a ridge much farther away that looked like it was just sky on a moonlit night and the "floating lights" were just cars driving across the ridge at night.

 

I was hiking out in the CO Rockies this past August and heard (didn't find) something very odd. My friend and I were awakened around midnight on a crystal clear full moon night to a distant voice clearly yelling "help me." We geared up and set out searching for whatever was going on...stood on a ridge top and shined flashlights. There was another hiker camped 200 yards or so from us (on the other side of a lake outfall/small waterfall, so it likely dampened any sound headed his way), and he didn't hear it. He asked if we hollered back...kinda had a "duh" moment. Whatever/whoever it was, we never found anything. I've not seen a news article about missing or injured people.

Same trip, we were hiking out and saw some Tibetan "prayer flags" similar to those found at the base camps for higher mountains (i.e. Everest). We walked through the brush to get to them and see what was up. Turned out to be a memorial for a small plane crash. Listed the names and a quick quote: "we've forgotten more than most people will experience." Kind of a somber moment, but also inspiring.

Out cruising the St. Johns River a while back, I was making my way up a tributary creek. I had heard a gun shot or two relatively nearby...came around the corner to a party barge (******* pontoon boat) parked with a drunk guy wading int eh chest-deep water shooting at a floating Budweiser can. He saw me and panicked, awkwardly trying to hide the revolver behind his head like he was yawning/stretching...but forgetting that the barrel was a bit longer than his head was wide. Sort of a tense moment...thankfully a friendly wave seemed to calm him.

 

Not in the woods but interesting non the less.

I was pitching a jig along a long set of docks on the St. Lawrence River, when I noticed something white in a boat tied to the dock right in front of me. Then it moved ... I could have reached right out and touched it. It was a set of female butt cheeks. Then out from under the covers two guys sit up and asked me if I would move along because they were wanting to "finish up".

I said ..... no problem and gave the trolling motor a little nudge.

 

So that's why your screen name is "tailhunter"....

Gotcha [emoji6]

 

Back in the 80's in Northern Maine I found a laced up boot in the woods with the top rolled down.
I put the boot on a stump next the logging road.

I told my cousins about it. They called the cops.

The cops said it was done by a bear to get the foot out.

 

We have a pumping station that is way out in the middle of no wear. I always hike to it because driving back there is a pain.
The power went out to it and I found this little guy with his lungs ,ribs, liver and heart blown out through his chest and burn marks. He chewed on one of the fuses that sits above the transformer.

 

We have a pumping station that is way out in the middle of no wear. I always hike to it because driving back there is a pain.
The power went out to it and I found this little guy with his lungs ,ribs, liver and heart blown out through his chest and burn marks. He chewed on one of the fuses that sits above the transformer. View attachment 97258

In the words of Doug from Up:

Only thing better than a dead squirrel is an excessively dead squirrel! Bravo to that fuse!

 

I was fishing a little trib to a trout stream a few summers back. Got maybe 100 yards up the trib away from the trail and found a fairly sophisticated series of PVC pipes siphoning water off.

I was smart enough not to investigate further. I'm sure if I had headed down the ridge I'd have found a nice pot field or still.

 

I know an island here, middle of nowhere, nothing on the island but swamp, and there sits an old train. couple of cars, and a couple hundred feet of track.

 

Fitzcarraldo!

Not exactly a 'find,' but I was hiking up to the head of Bridal Veil Falls near Telluride, CO, and came to an old hydroelectric power station perched on the edge of the cliff where the river flowed over a 200'? 300'? drop. I recall I later found out it had been in service from the 1890's to about 1950. The generator and transmission castings all had that the 19th-century look to 'em--spokes shaped like "S", flat belt stuff. While small by today's standards, it was all obviously manmade, massive on a human scale.

Gave me quite a buzz just walkin around it.

 

1. - A field of marijuana.
2. - A blow up doll at an old campsite. Still had the donut hole smile......

 

- A blow up doll at an old campsite. Still had the donut hole smile......

You found Cindy? I'll PM my address and send a check for shipping. Thanks man.

 

I had a guy up in Alexander Co. take me over on neighboring property and showed me a round rock structure that was used for drying apples. It had a fire pit built under the lower side and had a rotating rack inside to hang the racks of apples. It was up the holler from the remains of an old liquor still.

 

It wasn't in the woods (the jungle of downtown Baghdad, if you will), in and amongst the shitty desert tan buildings and trash in either the Rusafa or Sadun districts (due North of the Tigris' dick, just across the river), there was a building on a corner that looked like it had been plucked out of a historic suburban neighborhood in the US: it was a two story colonial house, dark wood siding, shingled roof, shutters, porch, some shady hard woods on the property, little fence.

I saw it (I was rear gunner so it was a surprise to see in passing) and was unable to get my camera out in time...pre Go Pro days. It was SO out of place and we never passed it again. Sometimes I think I hallucinated it.

 

Back about 1970 when I was about 14-15 years old, I was squirrel hunting alone with my dog and a single barrel .410 shotgun beyond Pine Ridge NC near the VA line following an old logging trail up the mountain. I had walked in at least three miles or more from the nearest house. I heard a rustling noise and looked up to see a pair of wolfs laying in the leaves about 30 foot ahead of me. The one on the left took off high tailing it up the trail as soon as he saw me. The other one stood up growling at me standing his ground. My little dog ran behind my legs and hid behind me. In my mind I quickly realized I was under gunned sporting a single #6 shot shell in my little Topper against a wolf. He was bigger than a German Shepard. If he charged us, I was calculating a near point blank shot from my old H&R might have some effect on him if I had to shoot, so I cocked the hammer and just stood frozen staring at him. I'm not sure if I blinked or what, but he finally turned and ran after his buddy leaving me and my shaking little sooner mutt alone. I have always been told that there are no wolves left in NC back then, but I know there were at least two up in those Blue Ridge Mountains.

 

Well if foreign countries and non-forest AOs count- I stumbled across a shotgun-toting poacher once. It was in THICK jungle in Central America. SG was a single barrel, breach loader. I had a carbine so I guess he figured he was out-gunned(I had no live ammo). He turned out to be a pretty cool dude. I gave him an MRE and we had lunch together. I got him to give me a ride up river in his dug-out canoe, which seriously shortened my walk. He knew no English and we communicated w/gestures.

 

I've found lots of old, abandoned railroad gear up around Black Balsam knob and in Shining Rock. Little East Fork still has small gauge tracks mangled up in the creek from flooding. Was hiking up there last summer and took a break in a campsite. Looked down and dug a silver dime out of the dirt. Kind of cool. I was cutting through the woods at the wilderness program I worked at one day. I stumbled on a 3 hole nuttin rock, indians would use them to smash acorns and such. Just sitting on top of the ridge. Lots of artifacts down there; points, knives, arrow heads, pottery. Wife and I were hiking from Eagle Creek back to Fontana dam and came across a car that looked to be from the 30's just sitting right by the trail.

 

Really big deer up close and bears at a safer distance.
Other Guys with guns, People doing it, Old cars and trucks
Still camps, no stills
Vehicle tracks from,to nowhere
Odd clearings, probably old pot fields or camp sites.
China dishes all busted up like someone doing target practice.
Volunteered to help search for a lost guy and found him dead from a fall, hit head.
Bumped into a girl one time, scared the hell out of me. She was yelling, she got lost hiking alone(!) crazy fool, helped her back to her car.
Sometimes the forest is really great, sometimes it creeps me out.

 

Great country song! Post the chords so we can learn it!