Welcome to Old Dan Walking, a site dedicated mainly to the hiking journals and ramblings of your average lover of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and beyond.
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Dan DeSetto
Leafsnap - Great idea a year too late
You ever have one of those brilliant ideas that you know right away will make you a zillionaire, only to find out that somebody else beat you to it? Nope, this time it wasn't the Snuggie. 
Yesterday my son Thomas and I took a little walk around Dreher Island State Recreation Area, a small park on Lake Murray just a few miles from home. While we were walking I picked up a leaf and was trying to figure out what it was when my tech savvy 13-year-old son said, "hey, there should be an App that can do that for you." I thought Thomas' idea was brilliant...
So Thomas immediately got on the phone with his Uncle Joe, an Apple App writer by trade, who burst our bubble by informing us that the University of Maryland, Columbia University, and The Smithsonian Institute were already way ahead of us. The App is Leafsnap (opens in a new window), available currently for Apple devices and soon for the Android. 
I will certainly enjoy using this App, but bummer...I guess we'll have to wait a while longer to be zillionaires...
Palmetto Trail Conservancy December hike
Christopher Burnette (handle XtremeKatfishn) is a co-worker who has recently been hiking all the miles of South Carolina's Palmetto Trail. He has a wealth of informative videos taken from the trails that you can follow on this site:
XtremeKatfishn (opens in a new window)
Chris will be leading a hike on December 18th on the Awendaw Passage, the coastal terminus for the 425 mile mountains-to-the-sea Palmetto Trail. (not to be confused with North Carolina's Mountains-to-Sea Trail, or MST)
Contact Chris if you'd like to join in on the fun. I may have to dust off my hiking boots for this one.
The Palmetto Trail Conservancy (opens in a new window)
The Awendaw Passage (opens in a new window)
