Day 21: The Gatlinburg Zero, Part 2!

March 28: I woke up bright and early and packed up my pack. I still needed to resupply food before I left town since I had been thwarted in my attempt to get to the grocery store the day before due to a distinct lack of sidewalks, but my plan was to take a trolley to the grocery store, restock, then get a ride back to the trail.

I was excited to get back onto the trail because a light dusting of snow covered everything in Gatlinburg. Four thousand feet up in the mountains, they definitely got more than a mere dusting! And I wanted to get on the trail and start taking photos of it!

It’s hard to take bears seriously when they dress like this! (In case it wasn’t obvious, Easter was about a week away.)

But my plans hit a snag when I went to the front desk to check out. The guy at the front desk told me, “You know the road to Newfound Gap is closed, right?”

Well… no… I didn’t know that. “Closed, closed?” I asked.

He nodded affirmatively. “Closed due to snow.”

Well, shoot. I definitely hadn’t planned on that. He did tell me that it was likely the road would reopen later in the afternoon after it had warmed some and they had cleared the road of snow, but as of right now, it was still closed.

I was torn. To stay or to go? I waffled back and forth for a couple of minutes, but finally decided to stay an extra day. I wasn’t going to get very far on the trail today anyhow since I still needed to go to the grocery store and get some shopping done, and to the post office to pick up a flat rate box to ship my laptop ahead. Now I could take my time instead of rushing things. And maybe see a bit more of Gatlinburg to boot. When would I ever be here again?

So I paid for another night at the hotel and went back to my room unpacking everything I had just packed up. I was stranded in Gatlinburg for at least one more day. There are definitely worse places to get stranded, though!

A small suspension bridge in the NOC in Gatlinburg. If I haven’t said it before, I love rickety suspension bridges! Even if they’re indoors! =)

I met up with Click who also wanted to go to the post office to check if a maildrop for him had arrived, so we walked through town to the trolley stop at the aquarium. We saw probably a dozen other thru-hikers during that short walk, and most of them I didn’t know but Click seemed to know them all. There were a couple of people I knew, such as Poppins and Stoat. And Click, of course, who I was currently walking with.

Stoat had some taffy she tried to push onto us, rather urgently. “It’s fresh! Less an an hour old!” she insisted. Her insistence for us to try it raised my suspicions. “What is it going to do? Turn my mouth blue or something?”

She insisted that it wasn’t trick candy and just to try it, so eventually I caved and tried it and there was nothing tricky about the candy. Just regular old taffy, freshly made. I’ll need to apologize for doubting her intentions the next time I see her. =) (To be fair, though, I totally would have been pushing trick candy on other people saying it was “freshly made.”)

Click and I finally arrived at the trolley stop, and apparently we had just missed the last trolley and wound up waiting nearly 40 minutes before the next one arrived. Ugh! We could have walked there in that time!

And we were doubly disappointed when we arrived at the post office to learn it had already closed for the day. It was Saturday and their hours were much more limited than either of us had realized. It wasn’t a total wasted trip for me, however, since the grocery store was right across the street, but Click was clearly upset about the situation. He’d wasted over an hour to get somewhere that was already closed and now still needed to get back. I felt a little sorry for him, but we parted ways. He went back to the trolley stop and I headed into the grocery store.

I bought all sorts of food and items to last me through Hot Springs, my next resupply point, making my way out of the store with a pack full of food about an hour later. Click was already gone, presumably picked up by a trolley already. I sat down to wait for the next one when I realized that the cars heading out of town were backed up and at a complete standstill. That was odd…

I looked up the hill and noticed emergency vehicles with their lights flashing a short ways ahead and, did my eyes deceive me, or was that a helicopter in the middle of the road? It was a helicopter in the middle of the road!

Why yes, that is a helicopter I see in the middle of the road! They’re transferring a patient on a gurney from the ambulance to the helicopter in this photo.

I was seriously curious now and started walking up closer to the action. A helicopter was idling in the middle of the road near an ambulance, and from what I could gather, they were transferring a patient from the ambulance to the helicopter. A few minutes later, the helicopter took off and the fire trucks allowed traffic to resume. I walked back to the trolley stop to wait.

Several minutes later, another person arrived at the trolley stop and asked me if a helicopter had just landed on the road again. Again? This happens often over here?! I guess so… It was right in front of a fire station, and I surmised that it was the quickest place that they could stop traffic to allow a helicopter to land safely on the road  and where an ambulance could safely transfer a patient. I was a little surprised, though. Really, is there nowhere else in Gatlinburg a helicopter could land?

Eventually, the trolley arrived and I made it back into the town center. I headed back to the hotel where I repacked all of my new food into ziplock bags and worked on this blog.

Near dusk, I decided to go out and explore Gatlinburg some more which is how I ended up on the Sky Lift. It’s like a ski lift, except I wasn’t wearing skis and there wasn’t any snow on the ground. Not down here, at least. In the mountains rising high above Gatlinburg, there was clearly plenty of snow. Anyhow, I jumped on the Sky Lift to get a bird’s-eye view of Gatlinburg.

I’d wave to any kids coming down in the opposite direction because kids like that sort of thing. =)

But that was it for me for the day. I learned later in the evening that the road to Newfound Gap had reopened, so hopefully I’d be good to go come morning!

The Sky Lift headed to the top of this ridge. Looks like fun to me! =)

The view from the top of the Sky Lift overlooking Gatlinburg. That green streak in the middle is the “Space Needle.” Notice the white mountain tops in the distance. Those are the Smoky Mountains, that’s where the Appalachian Trail is, and that white stuff is SNOW! There’s snow on the Appalachian Trail, and I can’t get to it!

I took a video as the helicopter took off into the proverbial sunset...

Day 20: The Gatlinburg Zero!

March 27: By morning, rain had settled over the town of Gatlinburg. I didn’t let that hinder me from checking out of the Days Inn and move over to the Grand Prix which had several advantages over the Days Inn including wifi that actually worked (most of the time), laundry facilities and was even cheaper. However, no continental breakfast was included, but I was willing to forego that. The Days Inn hadn’t even bothered to include a waffle maker with their breakfast, so who cared about the Grand Prix not even having a breakfast? I wasn’t going to miss it! It’s not really a breakfast if it doesn’t include a waffle maker.

I locked myself in my room and immediately started using the Internet to catch up on everything I should have done the day before. By afternoon, the rain had stopped and I was anxious to get outside and experience Gatlinburg rather than merely just seeing it.

Looking at maps of the area, I noticed that I could make a large loop to the grocery store a few miles outside of town (across the street from the post office) which rather appealed to me. It also meant I’d pass by the Hillbilly Mini Golf, which I was anxious to try. With all of the putt putt courses in Gatlinburg, I figured I had to try at least one of them, and this one apparently started with an inclined railroad taking you a few hundred feet up a mountain then you play your way down back to street level. Sounded cool to me! And to putt through outhouses and moonshine contraptions. Yep, I could do that. *nodding*

The Hillbilly putt putt course took you up this inclined railway, then you played your way down the slope. (See the moonshine apparatus near the top of the photo? That’s part of the course!)

Except I couldn’t. Because when I arrived, it was closed. There was no sign explaining why it was closed. Was it closed for the day? Or had it closed for winter and hadn’t re-opened for the new tourist season yet? I didn’t know, but it looked like it hadn’t been open in a while. In any case, that shot my original plan to shreds.

My plans further became derailed when the roads I intended to follow to the grocery store ran out of sidewalks and I wasn’t inclined to walk on the street with busy cars to get there. So I turned back, dejected.

To appease some of my misfortune, I did stop at the Mountain Coaster place and bought myself a ticket. It’s like a mini roller coaster for people to shoot down one at a time. A waterslide without the water, as it were. The contraption they put you on has a lever you can pull up to brake, but why would I want to do that? I figured these things were built so nobody could fly off the tracks no matter how fast they were travelling so I let gravity run me as fast as it could. I carefully stowed my hat, sunglasses and other paraphernalia so I wouldn’t lose it on the ride down, and the cart was slowly pulled to the top of the course before gravity had its way with me and I shot down the track like a bullet.

An exhilarating thrill! But sadly, it didn’t last very long…

It was exhilarating! I grabbed hard onto the brakes… not to actually brake, but you have to keep them pushed down so as not to break. And it helped keep me connected to the kart as it pulled high G-forces around the curves. Oh, sure, I had a seatbelt on that should have kept me in place, but I didn’t intend to flop around everywhere either!

My only complaint was that the ride was over much too quickly. Seemed like it was done in a minute. Maybe going a little slower would have lengthened the ride, but then it wouldn’t have been as fun either. It’s a dilemma, really!

I walked back into the main part of town and decided to try another putt putt course that I knew was open because I had passed it earlier and it had Indiana Jones theme music blaring out the entrance: Treasure Golf!

It was okay, I suppose, but it didn’t have an inclined railroad for me to ride. I was still a little disappointed about that. This was also an indoor course (the Hillbilly one was outdoors) so it was warmer as well. I scored poorly, but I always do on putt putt courses. I haven’t had a lot of practice. But I was also playing by myself so technically, I did come in first place. =)

But I left feeling a little cheated. I really wanted that inclined railroad.

Indy! You’ve got it backwards! The ball is supposed to be chasing YOU!

Part of the Treasure Golf was decked out with black lights.

My next stop was a haunted house. The best one, I had read, was just off the main drag on River Street, and since I hadn’t walked down that street yet, I did so now. It was pretty obvious which building was the haunted house, and I paid the entrance fee to get in.

They initially invited me into a lounge-like room and asked me to wait. I took a seat and waited for about 30 seconds before a zombie (or something weird) opened the door and told me to push the mantel of the fireplace in the room. I wasn’t sure what was going on yet… really? Push it? I put my hands on it and pushed lightly, but nothing happened. “Push harder,” he told me. So I put some more muscle into it and the fireplace fell back with a secret compartment behind it. COOL!

Immediately, three other people started pushing their way in the opposite direction. These people weren’t dressed in scary costumes or anything. They looked like me, except that they were lost. “Is this the right direction?” they asked, pointing back to the lobby from which I had come. “Uh, I’m pretty sure not.” And I started thinking, “How could these people be so lost that they’re thinking the entrance is the way forward?”

It didn’t take long before I realized how that had happened, because next thing I knew, I was in a small room with half a dozen identical-looking doors in pretty much every direction. Some of the doors didn’t open. We pushed on others. It was definitely easy to lose one’s sense of direction in this kind of place! Eventually we found an exit that wasn’t to the entrance from which we had come and continued the journey.

All-in-all, I absolutely loved the haunted mansion. Characters would try to jump out and scare us, and really, I don’t scare very easily in these places because I know nothing is going to hurt me. The actors aren’t even supposed to touch you! But the maze-like quality of the house thrilled me to no end, trying to find the hidden exits. At one point, we went down a hall with nothing but a closed door at the end. It looked ominous, but obviously, we were meant to open that door. What lay on the other side? I joked with the others in the maze with me, “Do you wan to open it, or shall I?” Because we just knew something would jump out at whoever opened that door. “I’ll open it,” I said. “I’m not scared of no door.”

I opened the door and… there was a brick wall. Huh. Not what I expected.

I pushed the brick wall. Maybe it was a false wall, but it held firm. “Nope,” I told the others, “that’s not the exit. We missed something somewhere! Start pushing the other walls!”

Which we proceeded to do and eventually found the secret panel that would open the next section of the maze. I loved it!

At one point, the journey took us to a balcony that overlooked the river outside, and just for kicks, I put my head out the window and yelled down to the people walking by on the sidewalk, “Help! Help!” while reaching out like I was in mortal danger. Then tucked my head back inside to leave everyone on the outside wondering exactly what was happening inside this house! =)

If this house isn’t haunted, then there is no such thing! See that open window near the upper-right corner of the mansion? Imagine me sticking my head out, waving frantically and crying out, “Help! Help!” Yeah, I did that. *nodding* =) I so wish I could have seen someone else doing that!

Another prop I absolutely loved was a balcony on the inside of the house that was rigged to drop a bit when someone stepped onto it like it was collapsing. I think that might have startled me pretty good if I were the first to go on it, but one of the other people had stepped out on it first and screamed when they thought it had collapsed. Kind of ruined the surprise for the rest of us, but it didn’t stop me from walking out on and off of it several times to check out how it worked.

All-in-all, I had a blast going through the Mysterious Mansion. That was a heck of a lot of fun! =)

I wandered around a bit more, finally passing a shop promoting henna tattoos and I thought, “YEAH! That’s what I need! A tat! I’d be a real badass if I had a tattoo!”

So I walked into the place where someone else had just had a tattoo completed. It was a gorgeous flowery thing on her hand. They had posters of possible tat options, and books which I flipped through. I wasn’t sure what I wanted—just something trail related. Hiking, backpacking, AT, whatever, but I wasn’t really finding anything I liked.

The girl who was doing the tattoos said she could do custom ones as well, but I was still scratching my head until it finally hit me—my signature stamp! Heck, it’s already a stamp! I could practically stamp myself and call it a tattoo! But… oh, drats, I left my stamp back at the hotel.

Then I remembered I had a business card which I had pre-stamped, so I pulled that out and asked if she could do that. Yes, she said, she thought she could. Sweet!

I said something about looking like a real “badass” on the trail with my new tat, which I guess she interpreted to mean that I thought the tattoo was permanent because she then told me, “You know, these aren’t permanent, right?”

“Lord, I should hope not! I’d be really upset if they were!”

She trace my image onto another piece of paper, then tried to transfer the outline to the back of my hand. She had to do this a few times before it turned out to her satisfaction. I guess my stamp had too much detail that was messing up the image since she had such a thick marker she traced with, but I said it was okay to simplify it and eventually it worked out.

As she painted the ink or whatever it is they use for henna tattoos, I asked for the gossip about Gatlinburg. What should I see or do while I was in town? She said she wasn’t much impressed with Gatlinburg the city, but she grew up there. She told me she’d normally suggest going out to the river or other nature stuff, but seeing as I was getting away from that by going to Gatlinburg, that advice probably wasn’t as useful for me. Yeah, not really…

A short while later, the tat was done and I was free to go. I immediately ran into my first problem. You’re not supposed to touch or rub the henna tattoo for the first half hour so it won’t smear, and I had taken off my jacket when I went inside because it was a lot warmer inside than outside. But now, I realized, I couldn’t put my jacket back on without it rubbing the back of my hand. Hmm…. Well, at least the hotel wasn’t far away! I should be able to get there before I froze to death outside. =) In any case, I slide my jacket up my right arm so half my body could be warm outside. I probably looked quite strange walking around in the cold with only half my jacket on.

My new henna tattoo is drying. Yeah, I’m a total badass with a tat like this! =)

And finally, I headed back to my hotel room. I still had some of these blog entries that needed to be typed up, but I felt like I had got to experience a pretty good chunk of Gatlinburg in my few hours of wandering around. =)

Day 19: Clingmans Dome!

March 26: Somewhat surprisingly, I was the last person to leave the shelter this morning. Usually, I’m among the first to leave, and I did leave at 8:30 which is pretty normal for me. Everyone else, however, was out of there before 8:00. A bunch of early risers!

The top of Clingmans Dome is in view!

Despite the predictions for heavy rains today, none of it actually happened. It was, however, extremely foggy and misty with absolutely no views from the highest point of the Appalachian Trail. I wasn’t too upset over that, however. I had grand views the last time I passed through and frankly, an unobstructed view from anywhere at these elevations was going to be good. Being a couple of hundred feet higher on this particular mountain wasn’t going to make the views a couple of hundred times better or anything.

Unlike my last visit by Clingmans Dome, however, there was absolutely nobody else on the observation deck. Which wasn’t a surprise—the road to Clingmans Dome hadn’t opened yet, so the only way for tourists to get up here was to make a long hike up one of the trails to the top, and most people aren’t prepared to do that. There were two NPS personnel doing some work near the bottom, Although it wasn’t readily obvious to me exactly what they were doing in the brush around the observation deck. I also thought a bit about the 1,200-mile Mountains To Sea Trail through North Carolina. It starts at Clingmans Dome. If I wanted to, I could follow it all the way to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I wasn’t going to do that—not this year, at least, but it felt like a decision point in a sense. Although I had planned to hike to Maine, I could still change my mind. Right now. I could start hiking to the Outer Banks instead.

Yeah, but the view in that photo definitely didn’t match the view I was actually seeing…

The rest of the day’s hiking was fairly uneventful. Once I reached Clingmans Dome, the trail generally headed downhill and I sped along quickly. I was surprised at the number of people I passed going in the opposite direction—I didn’t really expect to see much of anyone—especially given the dire snow predictions for tomorrow—but I probably passed about 10 hikers headed up towards Clingmans Dome.

Then the trail dumped me out at Newfound Gap, which is something of a culture shock because there’s a giant parking lot with what seemed like hundreds of cars milling around or parked. There’s not even any real “civilization” at this location to speak of except a couple of rest rooms, but the road is a major artery across the Smoky Mountains and happens to be the highest point for the road and directly on the Tennessee/North Carolina state line. It seemed like everyone driving through had to stop for some photo ops! And wow, were there a lot of people! (Unlike at Clingmans Dome, Newfound Gap was a bit below the cloud level so there actually were views to be seen.)

I took a few photos myself, then walked to the exit of the parking lot looking to hitch a ride down with anyone headed towards Gatlinburg a mere 15 miles away. The first few cars that drove past were obviously stuffed full or headed in the wrong direction, but it didn’t take more than 5 minutes before a vehicle stopped and the window came down.

“Where are you headed?” he asked me.

“Gatlinburg,” I answered, pointing to the right.

“Is that north or south of here?” he asked me.

That’s an interesting question… I wasn’t sure. I thought it was west. The AT, generally speaking, I think of as a north/south trail, and everything off of it is either east or west depending on which side of the trail it is. Technically, the trail runs all sorts of different directions, but it’s always “trail north” and directions are based on that. Clearly, I must have been at a place where the trail wasn’t actually heading due north.

“West?” I answered. “Where are you headed?” I asked him.

He pulled out a map to figure out if we were headed in the same direction or not and finally decided that we were going in the same direction and I jumped into the vehicle.

He introduced himself as Jay and he was currently on a 50-state, 8-month long driving adventure. He was now on his 13th state or so. I told him that I was thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail and on my own long-term adventure, though at a slower pace than a vehicle could cover, and he wanted to know all sorts of stuff about the trail.

When we arrived in Gatlinburg, he pulled over and I jumped out. The nearest hotel I saw was the Days Inn, so I meandered over there to inquire about a room. I checked in, but it was still before the official check-in time and I was told that the rooms weren’t ready yet. No problem… I left my pack with them in the lobby and decided to take a long walk through Gatlinburg. I’d heard a lot about this town, and it’s finally time I saw it! Anyhow, there was a maildrop at the post office I needed to pick up, which according to my guidebook, was a few miles outside of town. By walking to it, I’d see most of town and kill enough time for my room to be ready.

Walking through the main area of Gatlinburg was an adventure in itself. Haunted houses, putt putt courses everywhere, buildings that looked like they had been damaged in earthquakes and even a miniature Space Needle of sorts. Once I got out of the main tourist district, the sights became a bit more mundane, but there were still a heck of a lot of wedding chapels dotting the area.

Eventually, I reached the post office where I picked up my maildrop. The main thing it included was my laptop so I could start writing more of these blog entries before anyone noticed they stopped. =)

Given the long walk out of town to pick up the maildrop, I wasn’t inclined to do the full walk back into town and instead waited for a  trolley that would whisk me back into town for a mere 50 cents. The trolley seemed like it took forever to arrive—I heard they ran about every 30 minutes, and I must have just missed the last one! Eventually one did come by, however, and it carried me back to town as far as the aquarium. Then I walked back through the main tourist area to the Days Inn and picked up my room key.

First things first… I showered. Then I tried to get online to do some work, but blast it, I wasn’t able to connect to the Internet. Seemed that the signal was too weak. I headed back to the lobby to try logging in from there, but it didn’t work there either and now I was really getting ticked. I thought this hotel was supposed to have wifi—it said so right on the sign in front! I asked the desk clerk where I could get on wifi, and he didn’t know. Seriously? There’s nowhere in this whole damn motel I could get online? There’s not even a nearby restaurant where I could eat dinner and get on their wifi?

Frustrated, I went back to my room and washed my clothes in the bathtub. I would have preferred a real washer, but they didn’t have laundry machines available here and told me that the closest place where I could do laundry wasn’t in “walking distance.” I might normally scoff at that assessment, but truthfully, I was done walking. Between the 11 miles of trail I covered and the several mile walk to the post office, I was done for the day. I made a real mess of the bathtub too, but I didn’t care. I was pissed at the hotel for not having wifi. Take that, bathtub!

The rest of the evening, I tried to catch up on as much email as I could with my smartphone (so slow to type on!) and processed the photos I had taken to date making copies, backup copies and rotating the images so they were all right-side up.

Trees in these parts can be awfully hairy!

This was one of the most interesting springs I’d ever seen. The water is coming out of a crack in the rock, and when I went to fill my water bottle from it, the spring suddenly went “limp” and came to a trickle. About five second later, it started gushing at twice the volume that it had when I first saw it, eventually settling back to it’s “normal” flow rate that I first saw. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen the flow rate of a spring actually changing before my very eyes! None of which, of course, shows up in a photo at all. But something had happened to that water underground causing that flow rate to change!

Just in case you forgot which way was north, they marked it here!

This gate was designed to keep out wild hogs (non-native) from this area while allowing hikers through.

This large wall certainly suggested we were getting near a road!

Newfound Gap, at the Tennessee/North Carolina state line.

Just look at the size of that parking lot! There’s gotta be at least a hundred cars parked up here, which is pretty amazing when you consider that there’s actually not anything for people to do here except admire the view of other tourists. =)

Well, okay, there might have been a few views in other directions as well.

Jay, who gave me a ride into town. (You can read about his 50-state, 8-month tour at http://somethingsarecool.com/. He also blogs about me at http://somethingsarecool.com/?p=626)

They call that tall structure a Space Needle! Can you believe it? *shaking head* Lest you’ve forgotten, I live in Seattle with the real Space Needle! =)

A couple of shady-looking characters I crossed paths with in Gatlinburg.

On my walk to the post office, I discovered that Gatlinburg was also home the world’s only museum of salt and pepper shakers. The banner across the front says so. As if anyone would have guessed there was another one of these kinds of places somewhere…

Also on the walk to the post office, my hat was attacked by this bee. I flicked it off my hat where it fell to the ground and strangely, decided to stay there long enough for me take its photo.

Well, welcome to you too! =)

This building looks like it just suffered through an earthquake!