The Hike to Rainbow Falls!

The whole reason for putting up with Gatlinburg and the rather hostile and frightening Hill billies was to go trek around a little in the Great Smokey Mountains national park. And so we did. I had found a few trails in the guidebook, that were not to long and listed as: Easy. Our guidebook ranges hikes as either Easy, Moderate or Difficult. The people who wrote about the national parks sound like pretty sturdy types, who knows their wildlife! Ivan and I are not sturdy and generally not well suited for the Wild, so we decided to keep on the Easy or at most the Moderate routes. But, plans can go awry. Especially when I am responsible for navigation. Naturally, we took a wrong turn and got on the wrong track.


We had walked quite far before we realised, that we were not in fact on our way to Grotto falls, but had endeavoured on a Difficult Hike to the Rainbow Falls. We met a nice couple from Indiana, who provided us with this information. They almost walked into us, since we'd stopped very abruptly, staring transfixedtly at a giant Snake on the path in front of us.

We didn't know what kind of snake it was, and the only kinds described in the guidebook could either cause a horrific, slow and painful death or a horrific, slightly faster and painful death. So we didn't want to irritate the thing. With the support of our brave new Indiana friends we edged around it and got on our way.

After walking up the mountain for a few hours it also became clear that we had not brought enough water... at all! We had about one third of a little waterbottle left and one apple. As Ivan was loosing a lot more water than me, we ended up deciding that Ivan would walk back down to the Car and our Waterreserves, and I was to finish the trek up the mountain by myself. (I had gotten stubborn and willful and highly irresponsible at this point which tend to affect my judgement and good sense). So on I went.

I ate the apple and hiked along deciding to save the water for the return trip. It was a very long, very arduous hike up to the mountain. When I finally got to the waterfall I was really quite proud of myself. I met the Indiana couple again there, and had a nice chat.

After climbing up the waterfall I soaked my molested feat for a while and looked at yet another adorable squirrel that was hopping from stone to stone.


I drank a little of the water, dipped my headscarf in the cold waterfall and started what I intended to be the trek back down to Ivan, the Car and the abundance of Water. But here my faulty navigation instincts took over again. I crossed the bridge (which I should not have done)

and went in the completely wrong direction... further up the mountain. It took me about 20 minutes to realize something wasn't right. It dawned on me, that I had at no point gone past a creepy-looking cave on my way up, and that it somehow didn't fit that I was still moving uphill. So with a nasty feeling of impending doom and images of being found by rangers after 4 days and having been largely eaten by Bears, I started to back-track. Luckily I found my way back to the waterfall and proceded down. The sun was getting low in the sky and even though I was in pain and rather exhausted it was a very nice walk.

I hurried along, since I had the feeling that Ivan might be getting a little worried back at the parking lot. As he of course had excellent reason to be, since I should never really be allowed to venture into Nature by myself. When I finally got to the parking lot I found out, that he had indeed bravely started back up the mountain with water to rescue me. He had thought better of it though and gone back to the car. Now on my way down, I had been thinking a little about Bear. This was Bear territory after all, and I was all alone and probably highly edible. But I kept my courage up, singing a happy little hiking song, only faltering once when I encountered the Snake again.
When I arived at the parking lot, Ivan came towards me and stretched out a hand to signal that I had better stand perfectly still. After a moment he waved me the rest of the way down and explained that a large Bear had run around the parking lot just a moment before, been peppersprayed in the face by a mindless Hill billie and gone rampaging angrily into the forest in my general direction.
...*

Here I would like to insert a link to the Danish newspaper Ekstrabladet, who reports about recent Bear attacks in the Great Smokies:
http://ekstrabladet.dk/nyheder/samfund/article1043709.ece

Well even though I only barely avoided a savage Bear attack It was a great day! We figured out that we had walked at least 12 miles... thats a lot for city-siblings!