Returned from the Smokies

After having a dry spell in fishing that I hope to not repeat....ever, Chris and I did a bonzai-run to Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We left Thursday night after I got off work and packed up; that put us leaving STL around 9:40pm with a 9-10 hour drive ahead of us. Our plan was to drive through the night, switching on and off, sleeping when possible, and arrive in the morning rested enough to do some fishing Friday. After that we'd fish all of Saturday; Sunday would offer no fishing, only the longish drive back home.

A bonzai trip, to be sure, but one we would both repeat without question. Those were our plans, and we stuck to the itinerary, but the rest of what we had planned didn't work out quite right on any level. On one hand the trip could be called a failure, on the other hand a complete success.

I jotted down cryptic notes today to remind myself of the various and lengthy list of worthy-to-tell stories wrung from the soggy (that's three stories right there) hours of the trip. As I write, there are no fewer than 26 tales I'll be trying in vain to weave cleverly together into something that resembles the trip--a series of otherwise disconnected events that somehow came together to form one damn great fishing road trip.

I have photos, some photos. I'd have more, but one of the 26 stories has as its climax my digital camera pretending to be a streamer as it went in....along with me. Hopefully Chris will have some photos to fill in the dark side of the trip as I have it recorded in photos.

I'll try to be regular, brief, and tireless in my accounts in the coming...weeks. Or months, I'm not sure. I'll get 'em in.