April 17 Monday
Miles today zero
Total miles 206.8
Stay in gatlinburg at days inn
We took a zero today bc some of us were having foot issues. We tried to take advantage of this unplanned zero and went and walked around the town of gatlinburg Tennessee. It has a Main Street where there are quite a few things going on! Tons of food places of all imagineable choices, chain restaurants, mom and pop places, etc. There is a ripleys believe it or not museum, and an aquarium. If you're not aware, there were lots of significant wildfires in that area within the past year. There was lots of worry that the aquarium and all the animals were in danger, but by a miracle, the fires stopped just short of doing may damage to the building or its inhabitants. There were several buildings on the fire side of town that had burned down and the remains were still sitting there as though it had just happened. I took some pictures of the damage, it's crazy and sad. The driver who took us to newfound gap said that his apartment building had burned down and had a couple videos of how smoky the town was, the ash raining down, and the orange yellow glow from the fire that cast over the town.
We took the trolley further into town so we could get a google chromcast and use the hotel wifi to watch Star Wars rouge one, it was good. We hope to be able to use it for future hotel stays as well and watch some movies etc on our zero days. I would recommend taking the trolley into town to the family dollar that is there if you're resupplying. The trolley was only 0.50 cents and we could have saved more money if we would have known there was a family dollar we had access to. We will figure things out soon hopefully! It's hard to believe we've been out for almost a month at this point!
Being able to rest and recuperate on a full zero is much better than just taking off one day or doing a Nero. There are so many things to be down when you get into town each time; finding a way to get there, getting a place to stay, usually doing some amount of laundry and finding where to do it at, getting restock supplies and usually a meal in town full of calories is the minimum list haha. It's a lot to do, especially if you're only staying a few hours or just one night. This zero was sort of a nice surprise because we had already done all the errands since we didn't think we were staying an extra day so we got to have to real time to relax a little. The actual building and rooms at the days in were decent but they increased our rate the second night a little so eh on that. It's been nice to have split the hotel stays and rides between 4 or so people because it suddenly makes things much more affordable.
We ate at Texas Roadhouse for a big meal and it was delicious. First steak I've had in a while and we went early so we could get their lunch special, it was fantastic and our server was great. We went back and hung out and watched a movie and took it easy. We were planning to get up early, finish packing and do around 10 miles the next day. Until then, happy trails!
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