Nate's Blog

My adventure started its planning stage all the way back in September, when I decided the the Month of October was going to be life-changing. I had 4 of the 5 weekends activities figured out, but I didn't have any awesome plans for the 4th weekend in October. So after the AFB trip went through and I revitalized a lost enjoyment of being outside and seeing cool places, I decided to make a trip somewhere with at least one of my friends.

Amanda is the girl in all these photos, and she was really excited to go on a hiking trip to the Smokies. She hadn't ever really been hiking or camping before, and our trip was definitely interesting.

Friday afternoon, I went to T-Recs, where Students have the ability to rent Backpacks, tents, sleeping bags, bicycles, and all sorts of stuff, pretty much anything you need to go hiking, and got a backpack, tent, two sleeping pads, and a sleeping bag. (I already had one, I promise we didn't share Mr. Amanda's Dad Sir) The whole lot of that cost me $28 bucks. So this trip was not expensive.

We left at Noon on Saturday, and went straight to a visitors center to get a Map and get pointed in the right direction of what to see and do. The first Visitors Center was helpful, but they couldn't supply backcountry camping permits, so we had to go to the Sugarlands Visitor Center, which is actually inside the park.

When we got there, it was about 3:30-4 and we got our permit and a location to hike to. We drove to our trail-head, made sandwiches and started to hike in. After about 45 minutes of hiking, I decided to re-evaluate our plan of hiking all the way in. It was still a couple miles out, I had a lot of crap in the Backpack, it was going to be getting dark pretty soon, and I am very out of shape. We looked at the map, and decided to go hike somewhere else with a campsite less far from the trailhead. We hiked back out, and got to my truck, and it was already starting to get a little dark. I was skeptical that we were going to do any more hiking at all that night. We looked on the map and tried to find a new spot. Everything seemed to be at least a couple hours hike, and I decided we were going to be using a Campground for the evening. We were near the City of Gaitlinburg at that point, and since I was hungry for something that wasn't a sandwich, we went into town and got Texas Roadhouse. (Roughing it I know) From there we left for our Campground.

We got lost for a while looking for the Campground, but eventually we got there way after dark, and I promised Amanda either a fire of our own, or a fire with some people we would meet in the campground. We parked the truck in the assigned late arrival campsite, and I grabbed some marshmallows and a flashlight we walked up the road a bit to some people who had been sitting out by a fire. They were very very friendly people and we had fun just joking around with them about all sorts of stuff, and Amanda ate more S'mores than she knew what to do with.

After we left our new friends of the Smokies, we walked back to the truck. I knew it was going to be a clear night, and I knew Amanda(who is from Knoxville) still hadn't looked up yet, so I recommended we sleep in the bed of the truck with the Cover rolled back. She was satisfied with that and after we got all the stuff from the bed into the cab, and the sleeping spots set up, she finally looked up. She might or might not have said whoaaaaaaa for a full five minutes. I love the stars, and they were out bright and absolutely beautiful that night. Eventually I fell asleep.

When I woke up, she was cold and ready to be in the truck with the heat on, so I got the heated seats cranking and made her sit in the car to warm up while I finished moving stuff back into the bed.

By about 8 we were ready to leave, and I really wanted to see somewhere epic. We didn't want to hike in to somewhere cool, so we decided Clingmans Dome would be perfect. Clingmans Dome is a Mountain top in the Smokeys, and I'm pretty sure its the highest point in Tennessee. It is def higher than anywhere else we could see from it. We got there about 9am, and the hike to the top takes about 30 minutes, and is paved all the way up to an Observation tower. It has a 360 degree view of the national forest, and is incredibly beautiful. All that white you see in the photos is clouds/fog. It was chilly that morning, and you can see the fog move through the valleys. It would pour over some low spots and looked like a very slow moving river through the place. There is a mountain that is 73 miles away that we could make out slightly, the visibility was awesome. We took some pictures up there, and it made a great ending to our adventure.