Smokin' Smokey and Smiling Faces Beautiful Places
On a warm Friday evening I started my trip to Smokey Mountains and Charleston. I reached the airport on time and waited for R to join me at the airport. Once R came we went to our gate after the security check. We boarded the flight to Detroit, which happens to be our stop over city. When it was about time for the flight to take off the ground there was an announcement from the flight captain, saying that there is some mechanical glitch and we will be delayed by a few minutes. By the time the flight was ready for take off it was already 1 hour late. I was a bit worried as there was only 1 more hour for the connecting flight from Detroit to Charlotte, NC.
We reached Detroit at 9PM and our next flight was at 9:10PM. Since I was in the last seat I had to wait until everyone got off the flight. Meanwhile R had enquired about the gate number of our next flight. The flight from Chicago to Detroit was at A6 and we had to go to A76 for the next flight. We came to know that we had to catch a train to go to that gate. We went running and missed the train station. But soon R realised that we came past the station so we did a about turn and went rushing to the station but we just missed a train and had to wait for the next train. After about 5 minutes the next train came and we boarded it. Once we got down from the train we went running towards the gate. We just managed to catch the flight while they were closing the gate door. Once on the flight, we were happy that we made it to the flight, else our whole plan would have been spoilt.
On reaching Charlotte, A was waiting at the airport to receive us. Once we reached Charlotte, we went in search of a good place to eat where we can get vegeterian also. We searched for so long that it was 12:30AM. Finally we went to a Mc Donald's drive through, where we got some hopeless food to eat and drove towards Smokies.
By the time we reached our camp site it was 4:30AM on Saturday. After we reached the camp site, we immediately started putting up our tent as we wanted to have a quick nap and get ready for the next day's activities. One of the tent was easier to put up. The other tent was A's friends tent. So none of us had an idea on how to put the tent. We strugled for quite sometime learning from our mistakes we finally put the tent at 5:30AM. Soon we filled the air beds and crashed into our beds.
Morning at around 9:30AM we woke up and got out of our tent to see everyone else enjoying their camping by ride bikes, skates, scooters etc. Soon we freshened ourselves and had corn flakes for our breakfast. A prepared some amazing coffee for us with his camp site stove. After the breakfast we got ready to go to a place called Cades Cove in Smokey Mountains.
On reaching Cades Cove after about a hours drive we started to drive through a trail which had some real scenic places through out the trail. There were similar houses at many places on the trail, we walked to one such house and had a qucik photo session. After the photo session we ventured into the woods in the name of hiking. Later we came out a field which was green and pleasing to the eyes. Later we took our car and went around the trail. On the way we spotted a deer busy eating. Later we found that we were running short of time for our next activity which we had reserved, so we rushed through the roads to make it on time for our next activity.
At 5:00PM we reached at the banks of Pigeon forge river for our next activity, which none other than White Water Rafting. We made a quick change of costume and went running to the already started safety briefing session given by one of the guides at the Appalachian Outdoors. We were given a life jacket, a helmet and a paddle. After the session we boarded a old school bus which took us to the river. While going on the bus the guides played pranks on each other and made us all laugh and enjoy the otherwise boring ride.
After reaching the river near the North Carolina Hydro Powerplant we lifted our rafts through the ramp to the river. Once into the water we had a teriffic 2 hours of rafting.
After rafting we headed towards the city of Gatlinburg driving through some scenic view points on the Foothill parkway. By the time we reached Gatlinburg it was 9:30 PM. We walked through the busy road in Gatlinburg looking at each and every shop on that road. Later we had our dinner at a Italian place. A was astonished by the delivery speed of all the dishes that we had ordered. After dinner we headed towards our camping site wishing for someone to put up our tent before we reach there. We know that our wish cant come true as the tents were in the car with us.
On reaching the camping site, we started to put up the tent and to our surprise we finished putting up our tent in 25 mins, which took us about 1 hour the previous day.
The next day, we got ready and went for horse riding. After a wait of about 40 mins we got our turn to go for the horse ride. I sat on a brown horse called Copper Head. While going on the house we saw a small water falls. Looks like my horse was very hungry, whenever it saw some green leaves it stopped and started to eat. I was last person in that horse ride and at one place Copper Head got so tempted by the leaves that it stopped going any further irrespective of what I told or did to it. It didnt even give a heed to me. Later suddenly it heard the voice of the next batch guide, immediatly it started running, I was jumping all around as I am not used to a running horse. I some how managed to stay on the horse back. Thank god.
After the horse ride we stopped for a hike to Laurel Falls. We saw a lot of Indians on the way to Laurel falls. Seemed every Indian in US was in Smokey Mountains that time. After a hike of 30mins we reached the falls. We tooks some quick pictures and then headed back to the car and started our journey towards Charleston.
We reached Charleston at around 8:30PM and went for dinner and went to bed.The next day we went to Fort Sumter, which is a Island. Fort Sumter was a strategic point during the Civil war in 1860. The Fort is surrounded by Charleston, James Island and Morris Island. The Fort was occupied by Union's during 1860 which was captured by the Confedrates in 1861 and again captured by Unions by 1865.
After Fort Sumter we went on the Arthur Ravenel, Jr. Bridge to the Patriots point to take a tour of a World War II aircraft carrier.
Later in the evening we went to the Santee state park where we had a river side cabin booked for us. We enjoyed chatting and watching the sun set at the river side. Later in the evening we played a few games of cards and watched some tamil movies before going to bed.
Next day morning we found that we could rent kayaks at Fish Eagle Tours, which was on the bank of Lake Marion. At about 9:00AM we rented a tandem boat and a Kayak. We went on the Kayak till we reached an island called "Persanti island". On the island we took some rest and photographs and headed back to Santee state park. On the way back we saw a vulture's nest. Lake Marion is a scenic place with a few tree's submerged under the water. There are many small islands which we can Kayak to. After reaching our cabin we got ready to leave to Charlotte. We reached Charlotte at 3:40PM and we boarded our flight back to Chicago at 4:45PM bringing the curtain down on a activity packed trip.
