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4:10 p.m. - 2007-07-05
Betty and the Fiery Gizzard
Here I am, back from vacation. We had lots of fun, hiked a few trails, poked around Chickamauga Lake in a nice little pontoon and bought a lot of fireworks for the family get together yesterday. So much in fact, we were invited to the Tennessee/Alabama Fireworks Store's preview party next year. Swank, eh? Only the finest in white trash parties for the BigHeads.

So, for the hiking story. We like to hike. We even like to hike tough trails, ones that might take a while to get through. Then we met the Fiery Gizzard. The thing is, though, we didn't know how bad this one was. It seems that Ed neglected to read the first paragraph of the trail description where it said things like "perhaps one of the most rugged and difficult trails in Tennessee" and "terrain in the gorge is steep and extremely rocky" and then "the millions of rocks you must step on or across all seem to move as you step on them making the footing very precarious." Long story short...we spent 8 hours hiking about 10 miles half of which was rock-climbing. We had plenty of bug spray, sun block and food; we were a little short on water but did OK. Our shoes took the worst beating. We were both wearing our running shoes, which usually do OK on hiking trails but the rocks did them in. Ed's are totally blown. Mine don't look too good. We will definitely need new ones for any more trips.

The scenery was beautiful. Deep in the gorge it was cool and breezy and dark. Every now and then the sun would come through the canopy of tree limbs and make dappled shadows across the path. On the upper plateau the views were magnificent. It's hard to imagine when people lived and farmed this area. We passed an abandoned coal mine where the opening to the coal seam was maybe 3 feet high. The sides of the gorge are so steep I can't think of how they hauled the coal out. Can mules climb rocks? At one point, about 8 miles in, I sat on a boulder and begged Ed to go on alone and send a helicopter to airlift me out. He wouldn't do it. The trail begins and ends on a little 2 mile, easy loop. We came up off of this loop to our car looking like 2 sopping, dirty sweat balls. Ed looked at me and said, "People are going to look at us and think we are just 2 old farts who can't even hike a quick 2-mile loop." I agreed that we needed a banner that proclaimed we had hiked the Fiery Gizzard and lived to tell the tale.

The best part was that we made it; we were tired but not exhausted. Aerobically we proved our fitness and the hours spent on the Stair Master paid off in leg strength. Plenty of Advil helped the knee pain and a good soak in the motel pool eased the sore muscles. After a couple of Bacardi Mojitos we fell asleep by 8:00pm. Hard partiers, we BigHeads.

Tomorrow, the rest of the trip.

 

 

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