Smoky Mountain Off Roading

On our second day down south we got up early and headed down to Bryson City, NC. The most direct route from where we’re staying is through the national park, but it’s been closed in the mornings for the last couple days… wild fires. Seems that half the big trips we take are in some way effected by fires: Colorado, South Dakota, and now Tennessee. It’s nothing like out west, but it meant that we had to take the long route around the park, which would take a little over two hours, compared to one and a half straight through. So we had to leave at 8 to get there at 10. And, of course, the route we had to take was full of long-term construction. Google factored that in, so we made it there a little after 10.

Having rented a few RZR’s before, we checked in quickly with Appalachian Off-road Adventures, the local Polaris Adventure place, and were off. The good trails were a little bit away, so the first half hour or so of our adventure was on public roads. The only side by sides this particular place rented were four seaters, which we had never driven before, and we both would tell you that the longer wheelbase was a lot more stable on-road. In North Carolina side by sides are legal on everything except highways, but we were really only on anything except for a back road for a couple minutes.

Polaris RZR XP 1000, before the mud

The rental place sent me a couple links to Google maps to get the most out of our trip. First was a bunch of decent trails up a mountain to a fire lookout tower. I, James, drove the whole way up. The trails were moderately traveled and maintained, with a few nice ruts and mud holes. As with most mountain trails we encounter, everything is a shelf road, just wide enough for one vehicle. For whatever reason, neither of us seem to have any fear of sliding off mountains when piloting performance UTVs. We twisted and turned up the mountain to the gate for the fire tower/cell towers, which was closed. Since we were again on vacation in a high fire danger area, we saw a few government fire people at the gate when we arrived. They were cool and we talked for a minute. They didn’t know much more than us about the area since they were only in for fighting fires. I didn’t ask where from.

Us

The tower that we could climb was only a 10 or 15 minute walk the rest of the way up the mountain, so we got to it. First forest “hike” of the year, and with it being steep we learned quickly it’s that time of the year to hit the gym again. We passed by a few cell towers and found the fire tower right at the top. It was only a couple flights of steel stairs and a pretty heavy steel door to get through to the top of it. It was quite a view up there, but we didn’t spend too much time on it since we wanted to get back to riding.

View from the fire tower outside of Bryson City NC

Hiking down was obviously much quicker than up, so in a few minutes after climbing down the tower it was Kacie’s turn to drive. Our other GPS spot was an old cemetery in the middle of nowhere on top of a different mountain. So off we went. On the way, we were told there were some more rugged pull-offs with some mud holes. So of course we were looking for them. And in typical fashion, for us, we missed them the first time. But, we turned around once we realized and Kacie went to bombing through them. It was a nice couple trails in which there was only one way in and out, so we couldn’t get lost and didn’t need to pay attention the where we were going. It was around there that we got soaked. I could describe it, but the video below does a better job.

After wondering through those trails a bit we were back on the way to the old cemetery. Half back tracking down the way we got to the tower. It wasn’t too hard to find with GPS and some of those trails were pretty nice too. We didn’t look around the graves or anything, so I couldn’t tell you how old any of them were, but it looked like there were old and new, probably old mountain families, but it looked well maintained, considering where it was. We cruised around some of the more fun trails around there until it was time to head back. I drove back to the rental place since Kacie didn’t want to drive on public roads. Below is a super-cut of us riding around.

Once we returned the RZR, we were talking to the couple that owns it and asked what the little town of Bryson City had to offer in the way of food, since we were hungry and hadn’t eaten all day. They recommended a place on main street that seemed like it just opened. It was a pretty nice place. I had a cheesesteak and Kacie had a chicken parm sandwich. Both were good. The best part on this day was the refillable drinks since it was unseasonably hot around here, hitting about 93 that day. After that, we stopped for gas in the Bronco and headed back through Great Smokey Mountain National Park, which was now open later in the day.

RZR after some mud

The main road through the park is also public, so you don’t need to pay or anything to use it. Actually, there are no fees to get into the park, but you do need to buy a parking pass to stop anywhere. We hit the visitor center as soon as we got in to see what that was all about. Kacie went in and grabbed a weekly parking pass for 15 bucks, not bad. And although we now had the pass, we didn’t plan on stopping anywhere on this day. So about a quarter mile down the road after getting the pass Kacie saw some elk in the creek cooling off and we stopped so she could take pictures. After that we did stick to the plan and just drive the rest of the way through. This is the most visited park in the US, so there was no lack of people around anyway. We are planning on exploring the park on Monday when hopefully less people will be around. It’s still a very nice drive end to end, and we were tired from getting up and riding around earlier.

Wildlife on the west edge of Great Smoky Mountains National Park

We had one more stop to make for a few things we still needed for our stay, mostly food. But since one of those things was pool cue chalk, Walmart seemed to be the best bet. We had hoped that this would be a nice Walmart, unlike the one at home. And it was a little better, but only slightly. It was packed, and since it was the first Friday of the month, it seemed as if the various people on government assistance were shopping for the month, with their whole families. Fun. We did find chalk, along with the meals we wanted, and got out of there, swearing off Walmart forever. Of course, eventually we will go to another one, but only for lack of better options. It was fairly close to our cabin, so we got home and made our bacon-cheddar-ranch chicken dish, with was pretty good. Of course we got home and immediately dropped the eggs we just purchased so, no breakfast tomorrow morning for us. It was only 6 of them so half a million dollars rather than a full million for the eggs.

After dinner we watched a few episodes of Justified and passed out. The next day we planned on wondering around the area outside the national park, more of the lesser visited spots in east Tennessee/west North Carolina.