Now I’m a couple days behind but I have caught up on a little sleep at least, even if I haven’t caught up on posting. Saturday we didn’t get up as quickly as we had for bear day, both of us were dragging. It was another double Starbucks morning. We had been considering the extra day but decided to scrap that idea and start making our way home on Sunday as planned. Since I was coming off vacation on Sunday at midnight and wouldn’t start another vacation day till 8 am I needed to check the board to see when I would be lined up for work. It didn’t look like I would have any problems and everything should work out just right. I’m on call 24/7 when I get a phone call I have to be at work in an hour and a half. I can somewhat predict when I’ll get out but things do pop up, checking the boards multiple times a day is how I stay on top of things, it’s annoying. It was nice to have a break while we were on our trip.
We set out for the twin arches, Siri said it would take 3 hours to get there. I had my doubts, it was only 60 or so miles. Turns out she thought we’d have to walk 6 miles to get to the trail head, it only took 2 hours to get there. I learned to not trust the miles because I’m use to high speed trips not all the hills, curves, and 30mph speeds limits. I’d checked trail app we were using and it said to take the trail counterclockwise because it has less stair steps going up but more going down. That was the best for Amanda, inclines and stairs are still her nemesis. Going down stairs though is mine at least steep ones. When the steps overlap each other and are super steep it’s hard to get a size 15 on them, it’s a little precarious. The arches were fabulous and grand, we actually hiked over the top of one and down to the base of the opposite. I got a few good pictures but it’s really hard to capture the grandness of them. I found the same to be true with the landscape, it’s hard to capture the depth of things.
We left there for another state park not far in miles but still almost an hour of winding roads. Amanda was getting hangry after we ate a snack, so we stopped at an overlook that was high up and had some burritos I’d made that morning. Leftover cauliflower, potato, corn, and peppers from taco night that I added black beans and jalapeños too. We also finished our last heart cookie from the party, we never eat sweets like this! Amanda got a short nap in so I lost my copilot reminding me of turns and speeds, I’m a looky-loo for the scenery much more interested in that than road signs!
We stopped for a bathroom break in the most backwoods town we’d been to yet, pretty sure there was a faint banjo sound in the background. I was checking the tires and noticed the front ones were wore on the inside pretty bad. I’d known about the problem just before we left but talking to the tire shop it was fine to wait to partially replace time under warranty when we got back. I needed to get an alignment before replacing the tires to keep it from happening again. We’d planned to do that when we returned. The state park was close by so we made the trek out there and just drove through then headed to Knoxville not but 30 minutes away. We buy our tires at discount tire so they would rotate them for free. I just wanted the front tires on the back side incase if we had a problem it wasn’t in the front. All you mamas calm down its not that bad I’m just being cautious!
One thing about the backwoods areas there are a lot of churches. I don’t think I’ve seen this many Baptist churches in a short span ever! I guess that’s why this is part of the Bible Belt. The only thing we’ve seen more of than churches are Dollar Generals! The closer we got to Knoxville, I assume as the median income increased, the larger the churches became and better stores started appearing. We had to wait a while to have the tires rotated being a weekend. Then it was off to see ozone falls not far from where we were staying. It was getting close to sunset and I had one more park I wanted to see. I used siri and not the trails app to find the falls which was a mistake. Looked like we weren’t the only one lost looking for the falls, once I used the trail app coordinates we found it quick. We walked right to the top of the falls but Amanda was done and wanted no part in hiking to the bottom! It was busy with a good many people around. Some brave enough to be jumping around close to the edge and hanging their feet off this 110 foot falls. I could only muster the courage to get within a few feet. The sun went down while we were there but it was still light enough to make the other park about 15 minutes away, there was a neat at bridge/dam at it. We drove over the bridge and back to the visitors center and I walked down to get a few pictures of it Amanda stayed in the car. We made a quick grocery run for a couple things for a salad for dinner, trying to redeem ourselves after such a large meal the night before. I was tired and didn’t even want to make a salad when we got in so I plopped n the sofa, only the second time I’d sat down since we’d been staying there. It had only been out of bed to the car and back with the occasional meal at the dinning table, we’d been going hard. So once I finally got motivated we celebrated our last night in Tennessee with a salad and some muscadine grape juice!