dunkyb is driving and hiking around North America for a few weeks.
This site is his journal for the trip, and a repository for photos and GPS tracking data. Enjoy!
If you're looking for the 2008 road trip, it's been archived.
dunkyb's leave of absence
Bleueergh
Posted by dunkyb on Sunday, 20th May 2012 at 14:29 GMT
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Wurgle. That is all.
Day Eleven
Posted by dunkyb on Sunday, 20th May 2012 at 05:37 GMT
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Good news! I managed to find Corky at Knoxville airport. Sure, he was looking the wrong way, but thanks to a lack of hold luggage we were able to head towards the car.
After a brief introduction to the Beast we whisked towards our hotel for the night. Good news everybody! I explained how much I missed my status at this chain (sob sob sob) and they upgraded us both to suites. Oh no!
On the bright side, it turned out we weren't too far from some excellent bars. One of which served various English ales. Well, it would have been rude to reject these - so we made our best attempt to drink the bar dry (you ask why I'm still able to type this? Well, Corky saved me from myself!).
We (Corky really) got talking to a Barmaid and we discussed our options for the morrow. Where should we go? With the car and several days before the Indy 500 we have several options. Corky was impressed by her descriptions of Asheville, so that's where we head tomorrow. It's entirely in the wrong direction, but maybe that's all part of the fun! Afterall, what could possibly go wrong?!
Still, on the bright side, neither of us has lost his credit card. Twice. So far.
After a brief introduction to the Beast we whisked towards our hotel for the night. Good news everybody! I explained how much I missed my status at this chain (sob sob sob) and they upgraded us both to suites. Oh no!
On the bright side, it turned out we weren't too far from some excellent bars. One of which served various English ales. Well, it would have been rude to reject these - so we made our best attempt to drink the bar dry (you ask why I'm still able to type this? Well, Corky saved me from myself!).
We (Corky really) got talking to a Barmaid and we discussed our options for the morrow. Where should we go? With the car and several days before the Indy 500 we have several options. Corky was impressed by her descriptions of Asheville, so that's where we head tomorrow. It's entirely in the wrong direction, but maybe that's all part of the fun! Afterall, what could possibly go wrong?!
Still, on the bright side, neither of us has lost his credit card. Twice. So far.
Day Ten
Well, I'm knackered.
I was going to go out and have a few beers tonight, but at the ungodly hour of half nine I'm back in my hotel room with a bottle of diet coke (and they said I wasn't Rock and Roll!).
Anyway, guessing my final hike has knocked me out more than I thought it would.
On the bright side, it was only 10.5 miles. On the downside it required climbing the tallest mountain East of the Mississippi (not highest though!).
Actually, this was by far the best walk of the week. The views were awesome (see here - by the way, if that's not working for anyone, I've uploaded some of the smaller photos to this site, but the biggest (and obviously best) are on facebook). The walk was pretty tough - at least as tough as the 14 mile hike I did the other day but for the first time was starting to feel good about the exercise. Plus, it's a fairly decent sized hill to have dragged my somewhat unfit self up.
Got to the trailhead around 0900 in beautiful sunny weather - was looking forward to some nice views from the top and I certainly wasn't disappointed on the way up. However, after slogging up five miles of increasingly entertaining terrain (you know it's bad when they've put wire hand ropes by the tricky bits to slightly reduce the chances of you dying) it had clouded over, so my views from the top were pretty crap. Well, no point sitting around and getting bored - time to head down!
This is an extremely popular hike (handy if you do anything stupid, like fall off the trail - they'll probably be a fat chap to land on) so spent a lot of the way down passing people on the way up (overtook a few people on the way up as well, which has got to add a few more man points!). Amazing how daft some people can be. About 2 miles from the top passed one couple who were, to be charitable, seriously out of shape. They were wearing trainers and had no water, or anything with them (and I'm carrying about 5 kilos of miscellaneous survival gear, just in case..). I actually have no idea how they had gotten up so far in the first place. Still, hopefully they've made it back down now!
Just to add a small element of surrealism, there's a lodge at the top of the mountain. It has what looked like a dozen small log cabins for bedrooms and a dining cabin - all very neat and tidy, but quite a surprise after a climb like that. I'm told they use llamas to supply the lodge during the season but was unable to see any of these. Did see another couple of deer though, just below the summit.
Made decent time on the way down - a total of just over 4 hours for the round trip (almost exactly 2.5 mph, including breaks), not too bad compared to the 3-4 hours expected one-way time (and people were starting at 1300?!). Getting down may have required a little jogging on some of the flatter bits - anyone would think I'm getting fitter...
Still, that's the end of this phase of the trip. Tomorrow, Alex is flying out to Knoxville and I'll be picking him up whenever I've worked out where the airport exactly is. I have no idea what we'll be getting up to, all I know is that next Sunday (the 27th) we'll be watching the Indy 500. I've just had a look at the driver entry lists and I'm pretty impressed. There's a bunch of American's no-one has heard of but also some proper drivers like Justin Wilson and Mike Conway. Katherine Legge is also representing the UK (along with Dario Franchetti, of course!). However, they'll also have Takuma Sato and Jean Alesi! (and Rubens - meh) so I'm expecting quite an entertaining race (though I hear that Alesi has a Lotus engine and is roughly 20 mph slower than the rest of the field, so that won't last long. What does LOTUS stand for again?). Should be fun.
Shall keep you all updated on the publishable elements of our adventures!
I was going to go out and have a few beers tonight, but at the ungodly hour of half nine I'm back in my hotel room with a bottle of diet coke (and they said I wasn't Rock and Roll!).
Anyway, guessing my final hike has knocked me out more than I thought it would.
On the bright side, it was only 10.5 miles. On the downside it required climbing the tallest mountain East of the Mississippi (not highest though!).
Actually, this was by far the best walk of the week. The views were awesome (see here - by the way, if that's not working for anyone, I've uploaded some of the smaller photos to this site, but the biggest (and obviously best) are on facebook). The walk was pretty tough - at least as tough as the 14 mile hike I did the other day but for the first time was starting to feel good about the exercise. Plus, it's a fairly decent sized hill to have dragged my somewhat unfit self up.
Got to the trailhead around 0900 in beautiful sunny weather - was looking forward to some nice views from the top and I certainly wasn't disappointed on the way up. However, after slogging up five miles of increasingly entertaining terrain (you know it's bad when they've put wire hand ropes by the tricky bits to slightly reduce the chances of you dying) it had clouded over, so my views from the top were pretty crap. Well, no point sitting around and getting bored - time to head down!
This is an extremely popular hike (handy if you do anything stupid, like fall off the trail - they'll probably be a fat chap to land on) so spent a lot of the way down passing people on the way up (overtook a few people on the way up as well, which has got to add a few more man points!). Amazing how daft some people can be. About 2 miles from the top passed one couple who were, to be charitable, seriously out of shape. They were wearing trainers and had no water, or anything with them (and I'm carrying about 5 kilos of miscellaneous survival gear, just in case..). I actually have no idea how they had gotten up so far in the first place. Still, hopefully they've made it back down now!
Just to add a small element of surrealism, there's a lodge at the top of the mountain. It has what looked like a dozen small log cabins for bedrooms and a dining cabin - all very neat and tidy, but quite a surprise after a climb like that. I'm told they use llamas to supply the lodge during the season but was unable to see any of these. Did see another couple of deer though, just below the summit.
Made decent time on the way down - a total of just over 4 hours for the round trip (almost exactly 2.5 mph, including breaks), not too bad compared to the 3-4 hours expected one-way time (and people were starting at 1300?!). Getting down may have required a little jogging on some of the flatter bits - anyone would think I'm getting fitter...
Still, that's the end of this phase of the trip. Tomorrow, Alex is flying out to Knoxville and I'll be picking him up whenever I've worked out where the airport exactly is. I have no idea what we'll be getting up to, all I know is that next Sunday (the 27th) we'll be watching the Indy 500. I've just had a look at the driver entry lists and I'm pretty impressed. There's a bunch of American's no-one has heard of but also some proper drivers like Justin Wilson and Mike Conway. Katherine Legge is also representing the UK (along with Dario Franchetti, of course!). However, they'll also have Takuma Sato and Jean Alesi! (and Rubens - meh) so I'm expecting quite an entertaining race (though I hear that Alesi has a Lotus engine and is roughly 20 mph slower than the rest of the field, so that won't last long. What does LOTUS stand for again?). Should be fun.
Shall keep you all updated on the publishable elements of our adventures!
