One Last Yeehaw!

Nashville was the perfect place to end our trip. You know it’s going to be a fun town when the shuttle bus taking you downtown has a video screen playing Big n’ Rich with everyone singing along on the bus. Even better was the bus driver’s jokes. For instance (and you have to imagine this in a southern accent)…

“One day a man and his wife were sittin’ watchin’ TV when a commercial for Slim Fast came on. ‘You know honey, I bet if you sprinkled some of that powder in your panties, your giant bum would slim down’ said the husband to his wife. The next morning, the husband went to put on his underwear and noticed some white powder in them. ‘What’s this?’ he says to his wife, ‘Miracle Grow you sonofabitch!’”

I hope that made you laugh, though probably not as much as our bus did.

Anyway, we got off on Broadway, which they call Nashvegas, and ventured to a local spot off the main drag as recommended by a local Tennessean called Back Alley Diner (B.A.D.). There we had amazing burgers for pretty cheap plus all the live music we could have ever imagined. Literally they had two performers up at a time switching off singing and they only got three songs before the next two performers took the stage. And it was a Tuesday night. If that’s any indication of the how much a music town Nashville is, I don’t know what is. Some of the performers were pretty good, but my favorite was a tone deaf guy in his late twenties who had beautiful lyrics but no sense of pitch and who ended his performance with “find me on Facebook and Christian Mingle.” What a cutie.

From there we ventured back to Broadway for a change of scene and found Honky Tonk Central where there was a full band playing lots of country greats, including John Denver’s Country Road which made me very happy. It was also where we watched the Royals start their complete domination of the Giants, which made Ryan very happy. It was also where we discovered Honky Tonk Tea, made of lemonade and sweet tea Vodka, which maybe made both of us a bit too happy.

Craving something sweet, we left that bar for Mike’s Ice Cream, famous in the city and rightfully so. Cookie Dough and Oreo ice cream in thick scoops were creamy beyond belief, or maybe that was just the Honky Tonk Tea.

Our last stop was at the Tin Roof Live Music Joint where we had one last beer to cheer the trip. Then it was back onto the bus for the shuttle ride back to the hotel, (also fun) to finish up our last night of the trip.

But the excitement couldn’t end there!

At about 7:00am this morning, I heard a car alarm screaming from the parking lot. I woke Ryan up, “is that our car?” and he grabbed the keys to shut off what we figured was a false alarm.

Nope.

Luckily all our valuables were in the hotel room, so the thief only managed to get some of my clothes in the bag he grabbed… and Ryan’s swimsuit. Why the thief wanted Ryan’s torn, faded, mildewed swimsuit stuffed in the back pocket of the driver’s seat we’ll never know, but my guess is he’s regretting it.

I wore it all around Patagonia.

Honestly the most valuable thing he got was my Patagonia hat, which I got in Punta Arenas, Chile and is by far the warmest hat I’ve ever owned, not to mention the most sentimental. Bummer. L I guess that’s what we get for parking next to a Waffle House.

Damn you Waffle House

Anyway, it’s Day 100 and St. Louis is calling, so we’re currently driving a blustery drive back home to fix the window there. We’re still counting ourselves fortunate, even though we were robbed twice. This trip has been priceless, the good with the bad. Sometimes you just gotta laugh it off.

Nearing the End

The last few days of the trip we decided to change our plans around completely. We had originally planned on staying in two tiny state parks, one in South Carolina and one in Georgia, but we got snagged by the beauty of North Carolina and western Georgia and decided to kiss our plans goodbye.

From the Smokies, we descended into a beautiful river gorge not far from Franklin, NC with dramatic waterfalls, steep cliffs, and a pretty narrow road deemed a scenic byway and rightly so. We entered a national forest along the road, and Ryan recognized the name as an ideal fishing spot as touted by his father, the avid fisherman who taught us both.

Soon enough our plans were changed to camping in the beautiful national forest in order to make one last ditch attempt at fly fishing on the trip.

Luckily, it was not in vain.

On the pretty little Tallulah river in northern Georgia, in the Chattahoochee national forest, Ryan and I put our fly fishing prowess to one final test.

Ryan's beauty

At first all we caught were trees and dead leaves, but then Ryan got a bite and pulled in a good sized rainbow for our first triumph of the day, and our first success fly fishing in seemingly forever.

With some lessons from Ryan on my cast (it would have been romantic, with his arms around me showing me how, except for the enormous over-all waders we were both wearing) I started to get the fly further out into the depths of the stream. On one cast, I didn’t notice much of a nibble at all, but when I pulled back to cast again, sure enough a little silver flash almost went flying backwards with my pole before I realized “oh hey! There’s a fish on there!” Sure enough, behold my first fish caught fly fishing ever.

He may be small, but I am still quite proud.

But we weren’t done with that. Ryan managed to catch another little guy, and then, again by some miracle, I caught a good sized rainbow in the rapids of one deep pool. In all my excitement I started reeling him in, although he was putting up a mighty fight against my rod. *Snap!* Completely bewildered and upset, I looked at Ryan with my now loose line and no fish. “I was so focused on teaching you how to catch fish, I forgot to tell you what to do when you actually do catch them” Ryan said laughing. Apparently you’re supposed to let them fight until they tire themselves out before reeling them in. What I feel worse about is that there’s a fish down in the creek somewhere with a hook stuck in his mouth. Sorry buddy!

Now, the four fish that we caught could have made a very nice trout dinner, except that Ryan and I had already bought steak to stir fry for our last night camping and therefore didn’t need more protein, so we released all that we caught. Probably a good thing too since neither of us are particularly knowledgeable about how to clean a fish and we didn’t have internet access to ask Google. They did look pretty tasty though.

That night we decided to scrap our plans to camp in the state park we’d planned on and instead camped on the side of the river, reminiscing and enjoying some beers before a crackling fire and bright stars above. We’ve camped in canyons, deep woods, on mountainsides, in cold weather, hot weather, fog and sunshine. The trip as a whole has been absolutely unbelievable we decided – the best 100 days of our lives. Sure my computer was stolen, I got sick a couple times, and we almost died in the Tetons, but while we knew the trip wasn’t going to be perfect, we have to say it came pretty darn close. After all, if we can count the amount of “big bummers” on one hand, we’d like to think it was a pretty successful trip.

From Georgia, we had just one last stop before heading back to Saint Louis. We decided to finish off the trip with one last city, the heart and soul of country music, Nashville Tennessee. Farewell woods and picnic tables and gravel tent pads! Until next summer – wherever we’ll be then.

The Award for Best East Coast National Park Goes To…

The Great Smokies National Park!

Really though, it was such a beautiful place. By some miracle, we managed to catch the park at peak leaf peeping time, so our backpacking trip was accompanied by showers of gold, orange, and red leaves. The mountains themselves were more like gentle giants than anything like what we experienced in the Andes or the Rockies, but the deciduous forest was such a nice change to pine trees that we were absolutely enchanted the whole time we were hiking.

We followed this beautiful stream up the mountainside, with lots of gorgeous cascades to oooo and awww at as we went along. 

There was even a hidden waterfall off a little unmarked side trail that provided ample photo opportunities.

At the summit of the mountain ridge, the trees were thick, but we could catch glimpses of the far mountainsides aflame in fall color, and the carpet of leaves blanketing the ground was like a colorful quilt sprawled under our feet. Several creatures found shelter underneath the colorful quilt, and blended in almost to invisibility. 

The air was cool, but comfortable, and we came to our last backpacking camp after nine miles of beautiful hiking. At this point, after about 23 days in the backcountry, we’d like to think we’re pretty experienced at this whole backpacking thing, and Ryan’s found lots of ways to bring creature comforts to the backcountry as well.

It was sad though, in our little cathedral of yellow trees, knowing that this was our last time of the trip to be camping away from it all. We’re lucky to have had such incredible experiences backpacking, from our first journey together up Aconcagua to our favorite trip down to Havasu Creek, backpacking has certainly been a memorable activity for the trip.

Back to the Smokies though, after completing our last backpacking trip, we drove south through the park to Georgia, which brought even more incredible views of clear streams, stunning leaves, and mountains aglow. It was one of the prettiest drives and sights we seen in a day driving and we were certainly determined to come back to fish, camp, and hike the area more in another autumn hopefully not too distant.