I had made 3 separate plans to do the Tennessee high peak with 3 different people back to back that all fell through last minute. First I was going to go down with a guy I was dating, but he ended up being really really weird, so I cancelled all of that last minute. I called the campground and changed the dates for the following week thinking I might just go alone. Then someone my neighbors play games with said he would join on very short notice. I’ve seen him and hung out with him a few times over there and he’s cool, so I kept my bags packed. But then tropical storm Fred started dumping lightning storms all over the place down there and then our schedules did not mesh well after that with his new job. Yet, I still kept my bags packed and called and changed the campground dates…again in hopes of going right after the storm passed. Alone. But then, I found another guy that was willing and able to go with me and I thought the third time would be the charm! Nope. The day before we were all scheduled, packed and ready to leave, he got Covid-19, hurricane Ida was passing through AND we had a disagreement that ultimately led to us not wanting to go on a trip together even after he got better. Wow! Triple whammy!
Sooooo, I called the camp lady back again. 😂 Honestly, I was still feeling swollen and pretty beat up by Mt. Marcy anyways. I ended up doing Marcy days before the third attempt of TN. And even though I was OK with climbing during hurricane Ida, it was going to be much better to wait…again.
A weirdo, hurricaneS, and germs… Oh my!
I was starting to think Tennessee was jinxed for me until the 4th time ended up being the charm. I met an outdoorsy man that was super excited to go on an adventure in a state that he’d never been before. I called the camp lady back and scheduled the trip one final time for dates that worked for us spontaneously the afternoon before we left…
Sept 6th: I said my farewells to my sweet feline, Gingi, and set my GPS for Mount Vernon. I was to pick up my traveling companion, Steve, there and continue onto Tennessee. He lives an hour and half south of me. I scooped him up a little after 2 and continued on from there together. The 7 remaining hours of the drive was broken up with listening to a huge variety of music genres, awesome non-stop conversation and road snacks.
We made one stop to get Chipotle, gas and pee in Lexington, Kentucky. He does not drive because he is blind in one eye, so it sucked not to have any help driving the long hours, but I made it happen. I had a good night’s sleep the night before, so I was good to go.
We got to the Douglas Dam Headwater Campground well after dark around 10. It’s always hard to find the campsites in the pitch blackness of night, but we managed. Once we set up our camp, we drank wine and talked around the picnic table to unwind. It was the perfect weather and temperature around the table, however I still needed my under quilt for my hammock.
Sept 7th: I finally fell asleep around 4AM and woke up around 8! Dang, my inability to stop a good conversation in lieu of sleeping. Sure, we should have stopped the drinking and conversation earlier, but it was a fun time and a nice night. Also, who expects to be woken up to someone playing reveille on a bugle at 8 when not on a military base?! So that happened. I mean, it sounded good, but not when you haven’t had enough sleep. I tried unsuccessfully to go back to sleep. That’s normal for me to not be able to get back to sleep when I know I need to get moving shortly.
When I went to shower, someone was camping out in there already and then blow-dried her hair for a crazy amount of time especially for the amount of hair she had. So, I went for a small walk to the beautiful lake the campsite was on. Steve was already out of the shower and making his strong ass camp coffee to get us moving by the time I was finally done. We then found a Dunkin’ Donuts for some quick breakfast and got on the road. The highest peak of Tennessee was still an hour and half away from us and we were moving slow.
We had to drive through Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg to get to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I say, “had to” because it was the most touristy, neon lights filled, full of traffic, drive to a high point that I’ve seen to date. Tennessee completely copied Orlando’s International Drive complete with Wonderworks’ upside down building, Ripley’s Believe It or Not!, wax museums, random amusement park rides, and other touristy shops. Normally the high peaks are often in remote and beautiful wilderness spots, but most of the drive to Clingham’s Dome was wall to wall concrete and exhaust.
At least the hustle and bustle gave way a little bit of some scenic driving closer to the high point, but that was still filled with so much traffic. It was supposed to be an hour and half drive, but with a stop for photos, playing around the Newfound Gap, the touristy traffic in town and then the high peak traffic, it took us close to 3 hours to get to the actual trail. It was a slow going, windy road to the trailhead. So. Many. People. For. A. Tuesday. I have heard about the crazy traffic on the weekends here, but a Tuesday?!
The Newfound Gap was a little turn off on the road to the Clingmans Dome Trail. We climbed around and up the rocky Rockefeller Memorial. The memorial was completed in September 1938 and was the spot from which President Roosevelt dedicated the Great Smokey Mountain National Park in September 1940. The gap is right on the Tennessee / North Carolina line, so we got a photo in front of the sign by one of the many passing tourists.
So, we pulled into the parking lot that the All Trails map directed us to for the Forney Ridge trail that leads to the Clingmans Dome trail , but it didn’t seem right. We talked to a park ranger upon getting out and he pointed us to the trail head, but we were still confused because the map wasn’t in scale. Nevertheless, we figured it out and ended up doing the trail that I wanted to do. Forney Ridge Trail is a 4.5 mile round trip out-and-back trail that leads to a .5 mile short, but pretty bypass trail (AT) that spits you out to the Clingman’s Dome paved Trail. Then the Clingman’s dome trail is a 1.2 mile round trip paved path. The trails were marked as moderate and I would say that was accurate.
Forney Ridge Trail takes you to Andrews’ Bald and back. Andrew’s Bald is a double peak situated along Forney Ridge, just south of Clingman’s Dome. It is on the North Carolina side and is the 62nd-highest mountain there.
It is a very well maintained trail through dense woods covered in moss. There were only a handful of people of the trail to Andrew’s Bald because everyone was taking the short concrete path to the summit. So it was a pretty detour away from the crowd and I recommend it.
When we started getting close to the bald, the trees started getting misty and the bald itself was shrouded in clouds. We sat down to relax and watch the wind blow the clouds all around us. So ethereal. We snacked and closely observed a bunch of bees swarming around Goldenrod and getting pollen drunk.
Our pace quickened on the way back from the bald because it was nearly 7pm and we still had the bypass trail to do. At the very least, I highly recommend this trail to bypass some of the people walking the paved path all the way. It’s a really beautiful green, rocky path that takes you along side the concrete trail. You then pop out of the woods and eventually have to finish the rest of the busy path to the top of the observational tower.
It was a very inclined walk up the coolest overlook tower that I’ve seen at a high point to date. The 45-foot concrete tower with spiral ramp felt much higher than it was. It was getting cold and windy, so I was happy to have a jacket to throw on. With the wind gusting and moving me around, I felt a bit of vertigo close to the top of the ramp. The sides do not seem high enough for us tall people to feel safe from flipping right over it with a decent blast of wind. The view from the tower was similar to the one we had at Andrew’s Bald. Still amazing looking being inside the clouds, but we couldn’t see very far. Just like my recent Mount Marcy trek, Clingmans Dome summit was completely shrouded in a smokey haze. On a clear day apparently you can see 7 states: Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi. This is what we saw…
Once we started the decent, gravity just took us quickly down mostly at a jog. I ran partially to get warmed up and partly cause it was easier than fighting against the intense gravitational pull. Around 8, we were back to my car and started driving back down to a pink and orange sunset happening through the trees.
We were starving and ready to find food. We figured we would find something driving back through the tourist trap. The only place that seemed good that was still open was a pizza joint in Pigeon Forge, called Geno’s Pizza. It was right next-door to a very touristy gift shop called, Goats On the Roof. The only thing that made me go inside was a sign saying that they had real baby goats inside. I made a beeline for the goats all the way in the back. It was a mama and 2 babies and only one was awake of the three. The sweet baby that was awake was so preoccupied with eating everything that he never even looked up at me even though I was talking to him and trying to get his attention like a crazy person. After I got my animal fix, I wandered around and got some Tennessee taffy and a lama sticker for the neighbor kids that were watching my kitty while away.
Back at camp, Steve started a fire and I busted out with the boxed Merlot again. We hung out a bit, but were tired from the night before. I went to my hammock around 2 and drifted off to sleep without too much trouble…
Sept 8th:
We woke up at around 9am after a good night’s sleep. Figures that I didn’t hear the reveille on the morning after I actually got enough sleep. Steve made coffee when we got moving and we sat around the picnic table chatting. We decided, the night before, to stay another night and just have a chill day at the campground. When he walked down to the office to book another night, I tried to dig up dandelion roots to make dandelion coffee, but the ground was so dense and it made it hard to pull them out without breaking them. Damn tap roots. So my attempt for dandelion coffee will happen at another time. Instead, I gathered pine needles from a nearby White Pine for Pine Needle tea.
Meanwhile, at the office / store, Mary Lou (I finally learned her name), told him that he had to tell April to come see her! I had booked and moved the camp dates four times and with the same lady every single time on the phone, so we felt like we knew each other already. So, we walked down there and I got to meet the face behind the voice. Shortly after I had met Mary Lou, another lady joined the conversation. Mary Lou looked over at her and said, “It’s April!” Excitedly and then she echoed, “This is April?!” 🤣 😂 I felt famous. We got some butter, an individual blueberry and cream cheese pie, cheese, ice, and a case of water then walked back.
Back at camp, we started looking for things to forage to add to our meal. At one point I scared a bright blue Five-Lined Skink when I was rooting around. I tried to go after him for a photo shoot, but he was gone in a flash and I never saw him again. He was so pretty and bright and I was bummed that I couldn’t get even one photo. So, we then walked around a gorgeous lake scene and foraged for dandelion greens, plantain greens and plantain seeds. We didn’t want to gather stuff so close to our camp cause it was all trampled on and possibly tainted with weed killer. Once we had a good amount for the both of us, Steve sautéed the greens in a lot of butter and then added them to eggs and cheese. The eggs were taken right from his chicken’s butts before leaving for the trip and the butter and cheese was from the little camp store. I actually found someone that didn’t think it was weird to forage around for edible greens and eat them for once! It was really good, but that was with lots of butter and cheese. Ha!
We took our time foraging on our walk on our super chill camp day, so we didn’t even finish eating until after 4. I, then, set up a nest by the fire pit with our matts, blankets, pillows, camp fan, bug spray, ukulele, citronella candle and wine and wrote some notes about our time thus far. While I was doing that, Steve went and scoured for more wood to make a fire.
We hung out at that spot by the fire for the rest of the evening and night. We had great conversation and watched an amazing sunset from our site on a hill. We watched the area wind down for the day from our vantage point. I played uke for an hour or 2 and stopped right at 11 even though I was having a wonderful time and didn’t want to stop. But I also didn’t want to be that person keeping the entire campground awake and annoyed. I liked these people. They were friendly. I could live there.
After awhile, it got late and we went to my car to warm up and talk. I chilled in my hammock and he was next to me in the back seat. Then out of the blue, it started raining hard. He sprang into action to get everything under cover, but many things got soaked regardless.
Once again, I was up too late and couldn’t sleep once I was trying to…
Sept 9th: I unhappily woke up at 8. Seriously, why does my body wanna keep waking me up so early after no sleep?! With maybe only 4 hours of sleep in me, I crawled out of my hammock to Steve hanging things up to dry on a line he hung. He was already making his sludge coffee by the time reveille sounded off at 9:44 in the morning. I gathered more White Pine needles to make more tea to take with me since I knew my severe lack of sleep would kill my immune system and Pine Needle Tea is packed with vitamin C. We took our showers, packed up the car and my tea to go and slowly got moving around Noon.
I thought it was super nice that the campgrounds people waited for us to pull out before they blew out the campsite next to us. He saw us packing up and said that he would wait. I pulled into the bathhouse and waited for Steve to use the bathroom, so the grounds guy could start his cleaning work on the site next to ours and then ours. They really take care of the campground. It’s very well-maintained.
At some point in the night I brought up that I was bummed that we couldn’t find the stupid benchmark at Clingham’s Dome. Steve said that we could go back to look for it again before we went home and I agreed that I would like to do that since I was still nearby and more than likely would never be there again. We tried to look for it when we were there, but it was very foggy and our cell service was limited so we couldn’t even look up it’s location. We meant to drive until we got in cell range and then look it up, but the sun was already setting when we left, so there was no further discussion until we were about to head home.
So, before we pulled off of the campgrounds, we had to make the decision to GPS home or back to Clingham’s Done…an hour an half south of us. Sigh…I quickly looked up where the benchmark was while I had service and even though I was painfully tired, I made the final call to head back. As a consolation prize, I was hoping we might have a better view this time around as well. Good-bye awesome camp family! It was starting to feel like home and I was sad to leave…
Soon after getting on the road, I realized just how sleep deprived I was, but we were already heading through the touristy hell again and I was determined to keep going at that point. The traffic was still horrendous! In fact, It was worst than the day before because they were doing some maintenance on the road that led to the dome. We sat for an annoying amount of time breathing exhaust fumes on the one lane road waiting to be let past.
We finally made it back to the parking lot… 2 and a half hours later when it was supposed to be half that time!!!! By 2:30, I had spotted the benchmark! From my research, I knew it was supposed to be embedded in a boulder at the base of the look out tower, so I was checking every boulder from the parking lot to the trailhead. Was it just there in front of my face the last time?! because once we walked by it, I saw it right away! In my defense, the last time, I was looking for it on flat ground where they normally are. Soooooo…yeah…
We decided to head back up the Clingham’s Dome Trail since we were there and I wanted to see it in different weather. This time we were doing the entire concrete path up because we had already done the other wooded way, so we mixed it up. I gotta say, it seemed harder to go up the concrete way, but it was probably because I was overly exhausted and I had less pretty scenery to look at. But, it was very steadily steep.
It was 4:30 by the time I was driving through slow ass Dollywood hell traffic again. It was getting late and I was already fading…I knew I could not make it all the way to his house to drop him off and camp there. I made it about 2 and a half more hours to Rocky top, Tennessee and stopped to eat more than car snacks at Cracker Barrel. I needed that. I started to feel a bit better, but I knew I still could not make it another 4 and a half hours. It does not sound that long, but in the state I was in, it was. I needed to be horizontal and not driving. While eating, we looked up spots nearby for free primitive camping.
Steve found a TVA public game land that was supposed to be 20-something minutes away. Yeaaahhhh, it wasn’t. Maybe to the very start of the public land, but to get anywhere to have a decent camp, it took closer to 45 minutes with a tiny Walmart stop on the way. We could have been on our way sooner, but I sat there at Cracker Barrel, waiting for my dude to come back and check on me while getting anxious watching the sun setting for what seemed like an hour! I was hoping to get a camping spot lined up before total darkness. That did not happen. That was not even close to happening. So, there I was diving on extremely rough dirt roads further into the wilderness on unknown land. It was pitch darkness and I was so tired I could hardly function anymore. But, wait! It gets better…
After an excruciating amount of time bouncing around on all sorts of small dirt roads trying not to kill my car, we found a spot that was acceptable for us to camp. It was covered in litter from what I can only imagine is kids partying back there. But the litter was amazing compared to what else was out there. While walking over to help Steve set-up, I look down and completely freeze up. “Poison Ivy!…Why are you setting up the tent in Poison Ivy! It’s everywhere! I’m standing in it! Ahhhhh!” Shit was lost. That was my final straw. I love nature and all, but my sensitive skin hates Poison Ivy. It is the bane of my existence and I already had it twice since it got warm…although not severe. So, there I am like an overly tired child freaking out in the middle of the woods cause all I wanted to do was close my eyes and now I felt completely contaminated! Ahhhh!
Steve backed out of the area although he did not believe that it was Poison Ivy that he was standing in and that he just laid the tent in a bed of it. I quickly pulled up my trusty Seek app to show him that it was, in fact, all bad news. To try to ease my panic, he had me sit down on the car bumper as he carefully took off my tainted sandals. I had him put them in a garbage bag, so the oils would not spread to everything else. He then had me grab his camp soap (his hands probably had Poison Ivy oils on it) and proceeded to wash my feet, and his hands, with a bottle of water. The most panicked and tried moment of the trip turned into such a sweet gesture that I couldn’t be upset anymore even if I tried.
Once I felt better about the Poison Ivy situation, I calmed down and hung up my hammock in my car. Steve decided not to set-up the tent now cause it was undoubtedly covered in hellish Ivy oils. He, instead made a fire with wood he found nearby and made some late night food that he got at the store on the way. Once my hammock was ready, I climbed in and didn’t leave until I had to pee..which is all the time, but still… We kept hearing what sounded like teenagers partying in another part of the woods nearby. Once Steve was done eating, he joined me in the car. He was going to attempt to sleep in the back on the hard back of the seat that was folded down to make room for my hammock to swing freely. I didn’t think that sounded comfortable whatsoever, but he thought he could sleep like that. A 6 foot 6 man sleeping crunched up in my Kia Soul. That’s a tired man. Ha!
I had one window cracked open by my head so that I could talk to Steve when he was still out by the fire and I was chilling in my hammock. My screen was over the window to keep the bugs out, but let the air in. However, once we were trying to sleep things got creepy. I kept telling him that I was hearing sounds of someone walking outside. The more I intently listened, the more I was convinced that someone, or something was walking around by the fire.
Steve finally had enough and got up and grabbed a flashlight to check it out cause I clearly was not sleeping with that going on. He came back and said that there was no one and no animals that he could see. I shrugged it off as me being deliriously sleep deprived with a Benadryl hitting me hard and I passed out with all the noises still going on…
Sept 10th: I felt SO much better when I woke up at 8am. I slept hard! When I got out to pee, I was able to see my surroundings finally. I’m always more anxious sleeping in a spot that I haven’t seen in the daylight. It happens often when I roll into campsites after it’s shrouded in darkness. While I was peeing, he made a fire again and started making coffee. I was still sipping on my Pine Needle Tea from the day before. After I walked around a bit, I discovered that the noise I kept hearing was from the waves lapping the shores all around us. We camped on a huge, oddly shaped lake called Norris Lake. Interesting fact I just looked up: the shore length of the reservoir is 809 miles!
I knew Steve liked the area and wanted to hang out there longer, but as much as I was enjoying it (minus the litter), we needed to get moving. He nicely wrapped the tarp and tent into a roll with the Poison Ivy part contained, so it wouldn’t get all over everything and then I slowly drove back out of that area. It was a rough going long dirt path back to a paved road, but at least I could see my surroundings that time! Then 2 hours later, I stopped at another Cracker Barrel, because they are everywhere down there, and had a late breakfast.
Fueled with food and coffee, I pushed on driving for another four hours. We then stopped at a little park just 30 minutes from his house in Alexander, OH to take one more little hike. Lobdell Reserve had a wide, green and grassy trail that led to a shadowed creek area with a hidden bench. We sat and chatted a bit there, but the mosquitoes quickly became annoying. So, we ended up laying our camping stuff in the soft grass and watched the sun start to set. Then I had to run before I became even more of a blood donor.
We arrived at his house shortly after dark. As he got all of his stuff unloaded, I peed in his front yard. I mean, I really had to go and he was taking awhile to get the dogs secured in the house…so yeah. Also, he lives in the country.
Clinghams Dome was most defiantly the most touristy and over populated high peak for me to date. At an elevation of 6,644 feet, it is the highest mountain in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the highest point in Tennessee and the highest point on the 2,192-mile Appalachian Trail. The round trip was 1,254 miles for me. And lastly…I only brought the tiniest bit of Poison Ivy back with me!
