Hollows of Tennessee - Week Six

If you ever pay a visit to Roan Mountain in Tennessee, make sure to locate dinner before eight.  On Friday, we had to go several towns over to find a place open until nine.  But at least it was good food.  There was also a live musician playing for the nine whole patrons of the restaurant.

Since we were on a mini-vacation and I'd completed my speed workout earlier in the week, I decided to forgo my tempo run in favor of reading in the hammock on the front porch and hiking the Appalachian Trail.  The bed and breakfast we were staying at offered a one-way shuttle to a trail drop point four miles away (they offered further ones but we weren't feeling that ambitious) and the trail came back to about a quarter-mile from the inn.

Appalachian Trail - follow the white rectangle trail markers

We started looking for food quite a bit earlier that day to avoid the lack of selection we'd experienced the day before.  For lunch, we went to a pizza joint in an old barn.  Supposedly, a food critic had given it no stars for atmosphere but four for the food itself.  There were like four tables so we ended up sharing with some locals and they gave us some recommendations.  Dinner was at a restaurant on the lake with the best fried green tomatos we'd found yet.  We also got a show watching the tubers try to hang on.

Watauga Reservoir

I had to time my long run in the morning for breakfast.  Since it was at eight, I started my run about five o'clock.  I was supposed to run fifteen miles...but running up a mountain proved a little much for me (our car complained going up some of those hills).  I ended up walking a good portion of it and only went nine miles total.  At least I had company on my run.  Around the end of the first mile, a dog came out of a yard barking at me.  Then he started following me.  Since he'd greeted me with his hair standing up, I was initially wary but after about a mile was enjoying the company, especially being unfamiliar with the area.  He accompanied me for six miles before something else required his attention.

My canine running companion

A minor consolation prize for running when most sane people are still in bed is getting to see the sunrise...

After breakfast (which featured my favorite dish of the weekend:  sweet potato pancakes and raspberry syrup), we packed up and headed for Blowing Rock, NC.  We finished out the weekend doing some tubing on the New River, which turns into a whitewater rafting destination in West Virginia but was barely knee deep in the sections we were on.