Sunday was our nature day. There was a lot of nature.
Anthony's goal for the day was to go on one of the nearby trails for a hike and see natural beauty and all that stuff. He bought a stick for the purpose and everything!
(Anthony is a hiker. During the beginning of the pandemic, going on local trails with him was the only way we got to see him for months. Steve also likes hiking, although he doesn't do it much.)
I'm sure you will be shocked to know that I'm not exactly an outdoor type of girl. It's not my fault, really, because when you live where I do, going outside usually ends with me getting hot, dirty, cranky, and allergic to every plant that has leaves, so over the years I've learned to be outside averse. However, I think I would love being outdoors if the climate were completely different, or if I lived near water, or if all mosquitos had been obliterated during the last ice age.
BUT...since we were in a place with beautiful scenery, and it is currently winter, and the bugs would be at a minimum, I put on by borrowed toque, laced up my shoes, and went on a hike. It was actually a lot of fun! We walked and talked and saw a lot of nice dogs along the way. The trail we took wasn't rough, thank goodness, because I hadn't been prepared to climb or descend anything. It was wide, had been graveled, and was well traveled. It also went right next to the Little Pigeon River almost the entire way, which was beautiful. For some reason, walking next to water is much more enjoyable to me than walking on a trail without water nearby. It wasn't a particularly long trail, just being shy of two miles, but we made it to the Sugarland Visitor's Center, and we turned around and went back. It was a really great way to spend the morning!
After that, we got in the car and Steve drove us through the Smoky Mountain National Park. That was really lovely. It would have been nicer had there been some leaves and stuff, but even with bare trees, the scenery was gorgeous.
I felt kind of bad for Steve, because he was driving he couldn't look through the windows and enjoy the scenery himself. I could have driven (we were in my car) but apparently my driving scares everyone, and me driving on twisty, mountain roads would not let anyone else enjoy the scenery while they were terrified for their lives. Pffft.
But seriously, that's probably true.
We drove all around for a long time, stopping here and there to take pictures. We stopped at the Appalachian Trail, where Tennessee and North Carolina meet, and walked for a little bit on that so that Anthony could say he'd walked on it (and to justify getting an AT staff badge for his walking stick. He and I collect them, but I justify getting my badges much more loosely than he does.) We eventually made it to the very edge of Cherokee, North Carolina and stopped at the visitors center there. We had wanted to go onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, but it was closed because of ice and snow that had happened earlier in the week. Eh, well, we enjoyed seeing the elks and the little buildings at the visitor's center and decided that we'd head back into Gatlinburg to try another driving trail that is just off the main street out there. Unfortunately, that trail was closed due to the weather as well.
Now, there is kind of a big blank spot in my memory here and I can't remember what we did at this point. Maybe we went to lunch? Maybe we went back to the hotel? Could be both. I don't know. Shut up, I was tired!
However, I do know that a while later we walked down to the Sugarland's Distillery so that Steve and Anthony could do a moonshine tasting. I can't drink alcohol for another 8 months or so, so I couldn't join in on this one. That was perfectly ok with me, because I did that once on a very hot day, and I ended up sending drunk videos to my family and texting a friend of mine from high school. Moonshine may be legal now, but it's still kind of dangerous in a very different way!
12 different flavors of moonshine in little, plastic communion cups measures out to about 3/4ths of a cup of a very high ABV beverage. (I checked after I did it that one time) so by the time they were done, they were feeling pretty good. We went to dinner after that, and then visited the "faux-dega" where we bought sundries and stuff for our trip home the next day.
It was a long, but very fun day.
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