Fifteen Minutes

One mountain that was definitely on the to-do list was Clingman's, the highest peak in Tennessee. Going there, you go through Gatlinburg; as soon as you enter the town line, you are hit with what is, acre for acre, the only place on earth with more tourist crap than Myrtle Beach and the Jersey Shore combined. Fortunately, as you exit, you are hit with the oasis of beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The main drag goes straight by a ranger station before going up the hill; I stopped at the ranger station to get a map, asked about Clingman's (The response: "Uh, that's twenty miles from here") (Incorrect: with my map-reading, it was a mere forty miles).

Exited the Park ranger station, and started a steep uphill, as expected. Rolling hills before big ones are pretty common, so when I hit a slight downhill, I wasn't worried. But like Britney Spears, just when you thought you couldn't go any lower, you'd turn a corner and get an unexpected surprise: ANOTHER low! Seeing as the ranger station was at 1500 feet, and the top of the hill was at 6640 feet, you'd think I'd quickly come to the conclusion that I was going the wrong way; but I'm a little dense; it took me about ten miles before I realized that, contrary to my map, there were TWO roads going out of the ranger station, and of course, I happened upon the wrong one. So, turned around and started back up…

Now, Clingman's was by far the most populated mountain I went to - at most places I saw two or three people, max. Clingman's had dozens of cars passing me on the way to the top, but for the most part, I had the road to myself; including Clingman's interesting spiral-road. Yes, you read that correctly: like a spiral staircase, the road winds up over itself at one point to deal with the elevation change. Either they hated switchbacks, or Michael Baker designed it, I'm not really sure.






After about three hours of misadventure, I got to the top, and it was a little crowded up there. Most of the people up there had passed me on the way up - and many of them now wanted to talk with me. At one point there was a line of people waiting to chat. Now granted, the line was only four people deep (perhaps coincidentally, that was the collective number of teeth between them all), but they're my adoring fans, and I love them almost as much as they love me. One husband started interviewing me while his wife videotaped. A small motorcycle gang chatted with me for at least fifteen minutes. One woman insisted upon giving me a bottle of "The best water in Laeeziana" (it was actually pretty good). In all, I'd guess around fifty people talked with me/shouted words of encouragement. None shouted obscenities, which was how I knew I wasn't still in Michigan. Well, that, and there was a hill.






Don't hate me because I'm famous.