This is Part 1 of my Road Trip Across America story.
Before I get fully into the story of my road trip, I’ll go over a few details. In April, I quit my job. And no, I did not win big in the lottery or stock market and I am not retired. How unfortunate. However, it did give me plenty of time for a month-long road trip. I left on May 13th and returned on June 20th. Over the course of the trip, I drove almost 10,000 miles and went to 19 states. I fell in love with a couple of the cities and towns I visited and met some very cool and interesting people. I guess that’s as good an intro as any, so I’ll get into it.
The first part of my trip coincided with a camping trip in the Great Smoky Mountains with a friend. We met up that Friday and camped at a large campsite before beginning our hike the next day. We woke up, ate breakfast, and drove to the starting point for our hike. I can’t remember exactly, but I think it was a five-mile hike to our campsite.
The Great Smoky Mountains are known for, well, being smoky. This is because many weather patterns collide in this area. You’ll see many stringy clouds hovering along the mountain ridges. Before hiking down to our site, there was a fork in the trail. If you take this trail there is a really nice overlook, but the weather pattern didn’t leave much of an opening for us to see. To make it worse, it started to lightly rain. We gave up that spot and started heading to our campsite. This was pretty much all downhill. More on that in a bit.
The hike down is through dense forested woods. We had to cross several creeks and rivers to make our way down. There are also some tiny waterfalls, if they can be classified as waterfalls at all. I got some neat pictures of them.
Eventually we made it down to the camping area, however, the camp sites were not obvious to find. We did find them after some searching. There were two campsites and we chose the one slightly further back. A river runs by either campsite so water can be filtered and collected. We set up our tents and had some dinner. My friend also brought some beers. My friend was thinking ahead. About 7:00 or so it started to rain. We got in our tents for the night. Lucky for us because it started to pour down soon after. Camping in the rain is the literal worst. After we woke up, we had breakfast and started packing up our bags and tents. Wet tents are gross.
We started our hike back out afterwards. Because everything was downhill the previous day, all of hiking was uphill. This was pretty miserable with heavy packs on. We had to make many breaks along the way to rest. When we got to the top, we decided that we didn’t want to do the last hike that we had planned and went to Gatlinburg to grab some food instead. My friend left to go back home afterwards.
I had some other friends that were coming to Gatlinburg for vacation, so I hung around to meet up with them. They got in somewhat late, so we grabbed drinks at some bar. We planned to have breakfast the next day.
I got a hotel that night. At the check in desk, there is a picture of a bear in the parking lot. This is to warn you that bears might be around. And, sure enough, the next morning there were some bears. I went to go check out of the hotel. To do this, I had to go around the backside of the building I was in and take an elevator down. I could not see around any corners. There is another hotel right next to the one I was in and those rooms had balconies. Before I turned the corner, I heard a lady say, “Watch out thars a far!” I looked up at her and asked “A fire?” She said, “No, a bar!” Now I got it: a bear. But not just one bear. It was two cubs and a momma bear. I waited around to get a look at the bears. One of the cubs came around and looked at me. I was about 30 feet away. It wasn’t scared or anything, but I wouldn’t get closer.
At breakfast, his wife and I got biscuits and gravy and my friend got buckwheat pancakes. He had to have buckwheat pancakes. That was the first three days of my trip.
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| A view of the Great Smoky Mountains |
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| One of the small waterfalls. |
