Return to the Smokies

A few years back, Don asked if I would like to go back to the Smokies with him. He and Pat had traveled there recently and found a nice hotel just outside of the park. A hotel sounded much better than camping. I made sure the hotel was not named “The Shangi-La.”

We left early in the morning. It was a great drive out which took about eight hours. Townsend, TN is about ten miles east of Gatlinburg, which is at the entrance to the National Park. We arrived at the hotel in the early afternoon.  Don tried to get me in an argument over politics with the owner.  Don told him I was an Obama supporter. The owner said the polls showed the majority of the country was not in favor of Obamacare. He asked why he would push through something the country didn’t support. All I said was “That’s what elections are for”. That ended the conversation.

Fortunately the owner liked money more than politics. He wanted to a make sure we stayed more than one night. He offered to give us help with trout fishing. The owner had access to the river below the hotel. We could park at a caboose/cabin he had and fish all we wanted.

We fished all afternoon. I caught a trout. Don fly fished and caught several trees.  It started to sprinkle and we went in for dinner. I went in to wash up and get the fish slime off my hands. When I got back, Don got up to wash up. I asked him why, since he didn’t have fish smell on him.

The next day we fished back in the National Park, where we had camped years earlier. This was about ten miles from the motel. We parked in a small lot and walked to the stream. It started to rain pretty hard, so we moved under a bridge to fish. The water started rising rapidly. This flash flooding happens often in the mountains.

We decided to get out of the area before roads became flooded. We ran back to the car, stripped off our waders and left. After driving back to the motel, we discovered Don’s fly rod was missing. Then he remembered he had put it on the top the car while he was removing his waders.

We decided to drive back to try and find the fly rod. Driving slowly along the winding road, we kept looking for the rod. We backtracked the path we had driven until we re-entered the National Park. By this time it had stopped raining, but the creeks were running rapidly.

We got out and searched down to the bridge. Frustrated with no luck, we walked back to the car. Then I noticed a fishing rod standing by a post. It was Don’s fly rod, apparently retrieved by some helpful camper.

On the trip back, we saw some crazy guy in a tiny kayak traveling down the rapidly moving stream. The stream bed was full of boulders, but he kept going. He must have been traveling more than twenty miles an hour. We got ahead of him and stopped on a bridge. A small crowd was watching him come down the stream. We filmed the crazy guy as he shot past except I can't find that guy in the video and it won't upload.

The rain effectively eliminated any fishing. We decided to end the afternoon at a bar. We had an early dinner and hit the sack. We left the next morning. Eleven hundred miles of driving, one trout. Hey, it’s not about the fishing, remember?