I set out on the 10 hour road trip early in the morning – and by early in the morning I mean 8am.  By the time I had arrived I blew through Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee.  There’s not a whole lot to do on a road trip through corn fields other than listen to the radio.  Since most of my driving time was spent in Kentucky and Tennessee, that meant you had country, sports talk, christian talk, or conservative talk radio.  As best I could I picked the sports talk radio.  The trip to the Smokies was long and uneventful. Last year the Coin Flip Road Trip made driving actually exciting.  This drive was the opposite.

I got to the national park just in time to check in with the ranger station, set up my campsite, and drive back into a small town to pick up a few things I realize I needed.  My plan of car camping at an established site the first two nights really came in handy when you realize your dead tired after doing nothing but driving all day.  So at the extremely late hour of 8pm, I crawled into my tent and broke out A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson.  If you are a hiker or backpacker or just enjoy being outside, I HIGHLY suggest this book.  You will find yourself laughing and nodding along with everything he does during his prep and hike of the Appalachian Trail.  Not to give away too much, but he’s clearly afraid of bears and hillbillies – two things the Appalachian Mountain range have plenty of.

Sleeping in an established campsite has tons of benefits, but it also has one major disadvantage – people.  Whenever you stay at a campsite that can be reserved online and driven to, you get a lot of families.  Families have kids who travel in biker gangs on their 10-speeds.  Kids also dont like to sleep and once they go to sleep, parents like to stay up and talk about random crap until 2 am.  On more than one occasion I’ve been that guy who’s gone over to a campsite and – politely – asked everyone to shut the heck up.  I didnt do that on this trip, but I cursed them in my head as I closed my book and eyes at 9pm.  I expected the sounds of kids playing and adults laughing all night so I popped in my headphones – which do a great job of dulling out the sound – and fell asleep. (I fully realize 9pm is early, but when I woke up at 1am and heard them talking I knew I was justified in my cranky old man beliefs.)

The great thing about camping is you dont need an alarm.  At some point light will start pouring into your tent and you wake up naturally.  It’s one of the best parts about camping in my opinion.  There’s no better feeling than waking up without an alarm screaming at you.  The plan for the day was to day hike up to the AT via the Anthony Creek Trail. The first thing you realize when you look at a map of this trip is the elevation change.  From where you start to where you end there is a 3600 feet difference in just 7ish miles – most of it coming in a 3 mile stretch. As far as day hikes go, that’s a lot.  I knew this was probably a bad hike to get warmed up on, but I really wanted to see Rocky Top and Thunderhead – two mountain tops whom’s views were not supposed to disappoint. So I packed up my smaller 30L backpack with water, first aid, food, and a few other essentials then headed out.

The rule of thumb for hiking is you move about 2 miles an hour and add an hour for every 1000 vertical feet of hiking.  You can read more about hiking times and punishments for ignoring them later.  I was booking it on this hike. I wanted to be at the summit by lunch.  The trail starts out as a horse trail, which means it’s wide and not too steep.  Eventually you have to cross a few creeks and the National Parks Service has built small bridges for you to do so. The bridges arent much, just a tree with a handrail, but they sure beat slipping on a slick rock and busting your butt.

The trail eventually merges with another trail and then you start to head straight up – or at least it feels that way.  I may have forgotten to mention that the humidity in the Smokies is always high, even more so when it is going to rain.  I lucked out and arrived on a bright sunny day, but that still meant 70% humidity. Anyone who spends anytime outside can tell you that humidity sucks. It just plain sucks. And I mean literally. It sucks the life out of you and by life, I mean sweat. Wear something cotton outside on a mid to high humid day and it will be soaked through in no time.  I had made it halfway up and was already dog tired thanks to the humidity. Oh and the hard part was still ahead.  Luckily the higher you get out of the valleys the better the humidity gets.

Eventually I made it onto the AT and couldnt be happier. Earilier in the year I accidentally stumbled upon the AT when I was in New Hampshire.  But this time I knew exactly what I was looking for – a six inch long, two inch wide, white stripe painted on a tree.  And there it was. The trail was no wider than foot.  I had never been so excited to see a small dirt trail.