Day 1–Cades Cove

After a long 2 day drive in my beautiful new car, Fiona, I decided to take today to walk the Cades Cove Auto Tour route.

The auto tour route is an 11 mile loop road thru Cades Cove. There are several historic sights just off the trail.  I had read somewhere that walking the tour was a great way to see all the sights.  I thought, 11 miles doesn’t sound to bad.  And cove is what they call an open prairie area.  How bad can it be.  Its like Kansas with mountains around it, right.  Wrong.

My first Cheryl Strand moment came about .5 mile into the tour, all up hill in the sun.  What the hell was I thinking. I can just turn around and get my car.  But it would suck to have to drive and look around.  I got this.  The first sight on the tour was the John Oliver house.  He was the first white settler in the cove.  The house was .25 miles off the road.  OK, no biggie, hiking, I can do this.  When I got on the trail, I noticed a young couple in front of me appear to be stalking something.  As I got closer I noticed they were watching a deer.  The thing actually got pretty close to us before it wondered off.

I made it up to the house.  It was a small cabin made by very short people.  I had to duck thru the doorways and the ceiling was just barely off the top of my head.  But I’m a giant compared to 1800’s standards.

The next stop was the Primitive Baptist Church.  This was about a mile off the main road down a narrow dirt road that also seemed to be mostly uphill.  Its your basic old church with an old cemetery behind it that had several of the first families buried there.  The next church was a Methodist church.  While I was walking up to it, there was a major traffic jam.  I was walking faster than all the cars.  As I get closer, I ran into the couple from the Oliver house.  They said I missed a black bear and 2 cubs playing in one of the open fields.  This was the cause of the traffic jam.  I stopped and had lunch at the next church, the Missionary Baptist Church.

 

 

 

 

As I continued to walk along the road I had another Cheryl Strayed moment.  I felt like my big toe nail was falling off.  Then I remembered I didn’t buy my shoes from REI so I was just screwed.

Next as the Elijah Oliver house.  This is John Oliver’s son who came back to the Cove after the Civil War.  Another half of a mile off the trail. As I’m walking up this trail, a lady stopped me and said “you're the lady walking thru whole thing, that’s great, good luck”. Again I ran into the same couple.  I was like, you guys are getting as far as I am in your car.  I took a few pics of this little cabin, but I was starting to get pretty exhausted and photography was no longer interesting me.  I just wanted to get to the end at this point and I was pretty sure I was only about half way thru this adventure.  From there I was able to catch a back trail headed toward Abrams Falls.  It was about .6 miles to the area that catches up with the cars.  From there it was 2.5 miles back to the falls. I started walking it, but then decided, nope.  I found a place on the trail that was close to the creek that runs to the falls.  I walked down there to get my shoes off and put my feet in the water.  This brought my next Cheryl Strayed moment.  I remember watching the movie when she was sitting next to a cliff and took her shoes off and of course, one rolls down the cliff.  I was thinking why would she sit there and do that.  So, as I was sitting right next to this cold, fast rushing river trying to get my shoes on, that’s what I thought about.  What if I dropped my shoe in this water…I’d be screwed.

So, I walked back toward the parking lot and ran into a ranger who told me I looked tired.  I told him what I was up to and told him I needed to find the visitor's center, which was the next stop on the tour.  He pointed me to a secret ranger path (he said it’s a path not a trail, what’s the difference?) that leads to the visitor’s center and the rangers use it as a shortcut.  He said I’d be there in 15 min.  It was a small quite path with no screaming children.  Just me and some banjoes.

I got some water at the visitor’s center and used the facilities, then began the final 5 miles of the trail.  I eventually gave up taking photos.  I pretty much hurt from the waist down.  Every time a truck went by I wanted to jump in the bed and ride the last few miles out.  I finally got back to my car and talked to the ranger at the starting point of the loop.  I said the brochure makes it sound like everyone walks this thing.  He said “not really, that’s quite a feat”.  Then I went and had ice cream.

On the way back to the hotel I called the rafting company and told them I was going to reschedule my rafting/hike trip that was planned for tomorrow.  Now I’m not sure what I’ll do tomorrow, but I think I will definitely sleep in.

Even though it hurt to walk, I decided to venture out into the town and find food.  The closes steakhouse was .6 miles down the road.  That is a really long way, but I made it.  I had a great steak dinner.  Now I am gonna get to bed.