My friend Ryan and I had been scheming to destroy some sweet southern singletrack for a majority of the winter. Our time finally came and we piled all our stuff in my car and pointed it toward North Carolina’s Great Smokey Mountains. About 16 hours later and a scoot up the legendary Dragon’s Tail, we arrived in the general location of our adventures.
Out of all the great trails in the Pishgah National Forest Area, we decided to ride Tsali as this was our first real mountain bike ride of the season. The weather called for two straight days beautiful weather. After spending the night at the trailhead, we geared up and headed out on the trail.
We marveled at the grand sights offered up by the mountains and savored every second of riding the sweet singletrack. We weren’t even bothered by the amount of climbing we had to endure.
And then the weather started. We were setting up a shot with our cameras when out of nowhere, rain drops started falling from the sky. It didn’t last long though. This happened several more times before we were finished with our ride. Then, in the last mile or so of the ride, a brief down pour hurried us off the trail.
Our evening ride was rained out so we spent the night hanging out at one of the coolest coffee shops/bars in the mountain town of Franklin, NC called the Rathskeller. It’s amazing how things work out sometimes. Instead of riding like we had planned, we spent the evening conversing with the owners and other patrons and taking advantage of the wifi and electricity to charge our gear and check out the media captured from our day on the trail.
In the morning we work up early to sunshine as the last of the night’s rain hung from the leaves and grass. We took the opportunity to take some amazing photos and explore the campground a little bit.
The sun warmed and dried things up quickly and we headed out for another ride. After our ride we tore down camp and headed up to Indiana to ride the trails at Brown County State Park.
It was in the 70’s when we left NC and in the 40’s when we arrived at Brown County where according to weather.com, it was supposed to be beautiful and sunny the next day.
We were awoke in the middle of the night by thunder and lightning. It rained all night and completely soaked the trails. So we broke camp and headed home early.
Moral of the story: never trust the weatherman and bring all the gear you will need for all conceivable weather conditions.
