Barenaked Ladies and Smoky Mountain Climbing

It all started with the band. We have been wanting to see Barenaked Ladies for a long time, but we usually just miss them.

Either we’re out of town when they come somewhere close, or we just miss them by a few days when we happen to travel to one of their tour stops. This time it was Joe’s work and the fact that he was in ratings that made us miss their concert in Nashville recently. So we did the next best thing, we went to see them in Knoxville, TN and decided to make a mini vacation out of it and do some hiking in the Smokies.

Joe was able to take that Friday off so we could leave early and have plenty of time to get there, find our hotel in Pigeon Forge and get back Knoxville and find the Tennessee Theater.Apparently, there was some other concert in the park going on down the street with a

performance by Blues Traveler, so traffic was a lot busier then we

thought it would be. We soon discovered that we would have to park a ways and walk. We found a place about a mile away and had to hustle to make it to the theater on time.

It was a cool place, a 1930’s era theater complete with a marquee in lights. If it weren’t for the marquee we would never have known this was a theater. It was just a big, old-fashioned, multi-story brick building with a lot of windows, something that belonged in 1930’s cityscape.After we got through the front door, it was a completely different building with a spacious front door, it was a completely different building with a lobby and two grand

staircases, one on each side.

The auditorium was a step back in time as well; it looked like this place had been restored to its original splendor.

The concert was awesome. It was great to see one of the greatest bands of our generation perform live. But of course, as with any band with twenty years of greatest hits, there were songs we wished they would’ve played but just didn’t have the time to.The next morning we had to be somewhere we weren’t looking forward to, a meeting that loomed over the first half of our trip.

Joe had gotten some pretty good deals on a hotel but managed to get wrapped into a time share pitch. On the phone they told us we could

choose any time we wanted, to get the presentation out of the way, but

when we registered into our hotel room we heard a very different story. We had to attend a 1:00 pm sales pitch that would last about 2

hours… so much for our plans for hiking in the Smokies. The morning of the meeting we called the actual place we were going and asked if we could squeeze into the morning presentation and luckily we could. Well, lesson learned. We will never do this again. It was a very lengthy, hard sale, one on one with a sales rep. That lasted over three hours including a tour of the grounds and a dream cabin that we could own 1/25th of for a nice little second mortgage. But we would get super low rates if

purchased today. We had to say no to three different salesmen, each pushing harder then the former. They just couldn’t seem to understand the concept of us wanting to live a debt free life.

With the time we had left in the day we grabbed our hiking packs and headed for the mountains. Joe had been researching hiking trails in the Smokies before coming here, and there were a couple of trails he wanted to tackle if there was enough time.

The first of which was the Chimney Tops trail.

This trail looked very interesting and challenging and we had

heard stories confirming its challenging nature. It was only 2 miles in length, but in those 2 miles, the trail climbed over 2,000 feet straight up to the top.

The road twisted and turned has we drove closer to our destination. We forgot how beautiful this area was. As we got closer to the trailhead, we approached an overlook where we could see the top of the jagged peak we were about to climb to. A few yards and a tunnel later we got to the trail.

The first hundred or so yards of the trail was relatively easy and crossed a couple large streams. Some people were down in the stream playing in the water. The sky was overcast, and sounds of distant thunder made us wonder if we should go back to the car and wait for a storm to pass,

but we pressed on, hoping that we might make it back before the storm came through.

After the first hundred yards the trail began to climb. It crossed over another stream and began to climb even more steeply. We

just took our time and went a gentle pace since we knew it would just get harder. As challenging as this trail is known to be, it was surprising to see so many people, mainly families hiking along with us. We climbed and climbed and decided to rest on a log for a little while thinking maybe we were halfway there.

We climbed some more and crossed the creek a couple more times before climbing some more and reaching the half-way point. From here it just got steeper. The trail turned into a stone staircase that relentlessly climbed up for the next mile alongside a humble mountain stream that got smaller as we got higher. Looking up, the summit still seemed so far away, and we knew this trail wouldn’t stop until we got there.

Finally we got past the hardest part, climbed a couple switchbacks, then the trail leveled out as we headed for the chimney top. The vegetation got thinner and the trail got narrower with a steep ledge on the side. There were places where the park provided handrails because the trail was so narrow. We finally got to the chimney top.

This was a formation of treeless slate rock that formed a bald, but jagged peak… this was the end of the family friendly portion of the trail.The trail used to continue around the base of the formation but was closed for rehabilitation. Of course Joe wanted to climb to the very top, but Amber didn’t share the enthusiasm, especially after a series of dreams she had before, where we

were climbing something similar but fell off. Joe assured her that this wouldn’t happen but none the less she wouldn’t climb it.

Joe started climbing by himself. At first it was easy but it quickly got steeper and harder to find the next step or handhold.

Looking up, the top seemed so far away but he pressed on. The tree line finally topped off and he could see the mountains around him, halfway up the rocky formation.

This was where the formation got steeper and narrower and more exposed, and each step made his leg shake for fear of heights. This was the highest he was going to go today. The view of the surrounding mountains was beautiful. He could look down and see the overlook we stopped at on the way to the trailhead where we could see the top. He snapped a few pictures and we headed down.The hike down was actually harder then we thought it would be. Hiking down that steep for that long puts a lot of stress on leg muscles that we aren’t used to using.

We made it back to the car still dry.

Maybe we’ll come back here in the future and attempt to make it to the peak, after a couple more years of hiking and climbing, when our fear of heights won’t be so bad.Before we headed back to the hotel we decided there was time to hike a short trail, so we went to Laurel Falls. This trail was just a mile and a half long, to a nice waterfall and back that was paved the whole way. We figured this would be a quick and easy trail and a nice way to end our day of hiking. Almost halfway to the waterfall we heard thunder, and then felt a couple drops of rain. Those drops of rain led to more, harder drops of rain until it became a total downpour.

We didn’t have any ponchos or umbrellas with us, we didn’t even have our backpacks with us since this was supposed to be a quick and easy trail. We were too far along to turn back to the car so we pressed on and got completely soaked. At least it was warm outside. By the time we got to the waterfall, the rain had let up enough for us to take pictures. We headed back to the car, rung out our clothes and headed for the hotel where a nice warm shower was waiting for us, then to pizza hut!

We headed home the next day the scenic way but unfortunately not the way we had planned due to the road being closed. We later found out that the road was closed because of a landslide.

We stopped over in Chattanooga for some BBQ, then explored a little bit.

We happened upon a railroad museum that had a running steam locomotive. We definitely had to stop to take pictures.

We eventually got home to look forward to the start of another work week.