Months ago, my wife and I decided to book a vacation and visit the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. Little did we know that the federal government, in all it's infinite wisdom and glory, would get all fucking dysfunctional and close down. This totally affected our plans of glorious hiking and trail running in the mountains of Tennessee. Being just as stubborn as those dickheads in Washington D.C., the wife and I chose to go ahead with our plan and make the best of it. Mostly because if we didn't; the terrorists would win.
I have never been to this national park so I had no expectations. I was severely disappointed that all the daydreaming of trail running in the mountains was to be about as close as I could get to actually trail running in the mountains though. Days before we were to leave Erin, my wife, took to the internet and found some promising things to do though.
I scoured the internets and found some great places too. Great places that were all in the park. Or great trails that were out and backs with a total distance of a half mile. The day before we were to leave I slipped into the library and checked out some books about hiking in Tennessee.
So then we were off. On the drive, I discovered that one of the books I got was for the wrong region and the other two focused on the park. "A" for effort, but an "F" for execution. It turns out Erin, my wife, found a pretty cool place in North Carolina called Pisgah National Forest. Technically it would be "shut down" as well but since there are so many roads in the area, it was impossible to enforce. This sounded perfect and we were off for adventure !!!
The way there was a single lane dirt road that winded up the mountain side and when we got to the trailhead it was super foggy.
We took the trail up and around until we came to a junction that led to the Appalachian Trail !!! This was going to be awesome.
This portion of the AT was either all uphills and downhills. No flats whatsoever. The fog made the run a real awesome experience. I hadn't run inclines like this since Erin and I were in Yellowstone National Park last year. Just when I thought a hill was done, it would take a turn and continue to go on for several hundred more feet !!! Then the decline part of every incline went on for for a long while too. Quad killing awesomeness !!!
I did about 12 miles total and, according to my Garmin watch, it took forever. I loved every minute of it. During the run I made a habit of running up a hill and then turning around to go down the way I came until I found Erin and then turned around to retake the hill. It was a good system to keep close to her and get a good run in. Overall, it was about 3,400 feet of elevation gain for the out and back that I did. At times I was grinning from ear to ear and loved every minute of it.
When we returned to Gatlinburg we stopped in a local outfitter store to check it out. While there, Erin struck up a conversation with one of the employees who was also a trail runner. He gave us some advice about the park. It turns out there were some parking areas that the park rangers had to open up because people were parking unsafely along the road. Eureka !!!
The next morning we headed for the "closed" Gatlinburg trail. It was a two mile out and back and it was an easy trail. I did about 4 laps of it for a total of eight and a half miles. We were trying to be conservative since we wanted to hike later in the day. This trail runs by a park ranger station. On one of my laps a ranger drove by in a SUV and I thought "Uh-oh" but he just smiled and waved at me as he drove by. I smiled and waved back. Totally awesome.
We headed for the Newfound Gap area that afternoon and for the rest of the vacation. The main way to the Appalachian trail had a street barrel barrier thing standing in the middle of it. There was a note saying that the trail was closed and to expect a delayed response if you choose to ignore the barrier and break you leg somewhere up the trail. We decided to take our chances and go enjoy some nature. We switched up hikes going one direction to the chimney tops one day. And then to a site called Charlie's Bunion the next.
Overall, I was really happy with our vacation. Luckily the Great Smokey Mountains National Park has a major highway running through it so it is near impossible to shut down. I must admit that my hopes were crushed when the pinheads in Washington D.C. were going to effect our plans. Luckily civil disobedience is still alive and well in the land so we got to appreciate the natural beauty of one of the most gorgeous places in the world.
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