TENNESSEE WALTZ

Christy and I recently journey to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to witness Appalachian State’s second straight appearance in the Division I college football national championship game. We had gone the previous year and watched them come from behind to win their first championship. That time though, a late start and bad traffic caused us to arrive only a couple of hours prior to kickoff. This year, we vowed to get there earlier.

Getting there ended up being the least of our worries. I spent most of the day on Monday trying to get through by phone to the ASU ticket office. Unfortunately, an unprecedented volume of calls caused the phone system to crash. The line at the ticket office on campus was 3-hours long, and the school sold out of tickets around 1:30. I even attempted to order tickets through the University of Massachusetts ticket office (our opponent), but they had sold out, too. In fact, there were no tickets to be had anywhere. By late that afternoon, there were rumors that tickets to the game were going for $300 on EBay. I couldn’t believe we might actually miss the game.

Luckily I got a hot tip off the internet about a lawyer in Chattanooga with tickets to sell. I got through to him the first thing the next morning, and was relieved to find that he still had tickets available. The tickets were marked up a few dollars, but the proceeds were going to the Special Olympics, which was fine with me. I ended up overnighting a check to them, and made plans to pick up the tickets Friday afternoon.

We left before dawn on Saturday morning, and took the back way through Asheville, Andrews, and Murphy to avoid Atlanta traffic. This was a huge improvement from the route we took the year before. We arrived in Chattanooga around noon, and even though we got off at the worst possible exit for lunch, we still had our tickets and a prime tailgating spot by 1pm. That gave us 7 full hours to enjoy the pregame festivities.

The tailgating was legendary. The large lot north of the stadium was almost completely inhabited by Appalachian fans. We were lucky to nab an unusually wide spot with a few trees. We ended up near some tailgating friends of ours that we’d seen prior to most of our games that season. We relaxed there with a few drinks, before practicing our cornholing with a pair of friendly young women who may or may not have been lesbians.

This was the loudest tailgating party I’d ever attended. Aside from the music and general revelry, the owner of the RV in an adjacent spot blared his airhorn every time a victim, I mean, a UMass Minuteman fan, wondered by. To top it off, the Air Force jets scheduled to do flyovers at the beginning of the game made a few practice runs over the party. They were flying low, probably so they could check out the college girls.

All that racket made it almost impossible to communicate by cell phone with my friend who was meeting us for the game. When I spoke with Tim a few days earlier, he’d been thrilled to find out that I’d come up with tickets. I don’t see Tim often these days, as he lives in Huntsville, Alabama. Huntsville is a fairly short drive from Chattanooga though, so we’d made plans to get together for the game. After some challenging phone calls and some mutual wandering around, we finally found Tim and his friend Adam. The occasion called for more drinks, as well as steaks on the grill.

The tailgate party wasn’t all bliss. At some point we discovered that the car battery was dead. Fortunately, some adjacent tailgaters were kind enough to give us a jump. Also, toilet issues were a concern, as the nearest porta-potties were all the way across the parking lot. After making that pilgrimage twice, Christy and I began resorting to more desperate measures. Tim secured access for Christy in the RV’s facilities, and the men utilized more creative options.

We eventually wrapped up the party, and headed into the game. Just walking in was a blast. Along the way we spotted dozens of hysterical signs. A few of my favorites included:

Go APPS, kick some UMass

Mountain men last longer

Real women prefer mountain men, not minute men

We also saw some great costumes, including some of our favorite characters, like Yoda, Elvis, the Gorilla, the Banana, Santa Claus, the Appaholics, and Thing 1 and Thing 2. We didn’t see the fellow that’s taken to bringing his live pet lobster to the games, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. There were some new characters as well, including 5 or 6 Darth Vaders and the Santa hat girls. I call them the Santa hat girls because they were wearing Santa hats, and not too much else. The Santa hat girls were remarkably popular. Some people will do anything to get on TV.

We witnessed a lively pep rally featuring a battle of the bands before heading into the game. We bought one more round of beers that we didn’t really need for the long line to get into the game. We got in early, which made it easier to appreciate the pre-kickoff fanfare, including the previously mentioned jet flyovers as well as skydivers.

The game went well, too. After a slow start, ASU rallied for a hard-fought, 28-17 victory over the Minutemen. We tried to party afterwards, but quickly realized that we’re way too old to party twice in the same day. We retreated to the Super 8, which was ok except that the “8” in the hotel name must refer to the water temperature (in Celsius) in the shower.

The next morning we had a late breakfast at IHOP with dozens of other happy and / or hungover APP fans. Then we joined the caravan for the ride home. On the way though, we decided to stop for a short hike. Christy and Saucony hadn’t been hiking since their surgeries a month earlier. I thought that afternoon might provide a good opportunity to stretch our legs. A bit of brief research revealed a short hike to a waterfall that sounded like a good choice. It was a short, easy hike, and it was only a short distance off of our route home.

We drove up along Ocoee Lake, and picked up a paved forest road that took us to the top of the mountain. From the top of the ridge, we had expansive views out over the lake and the foothills to the west. A few miles later, we reached a campground and a small lake with a beach for swimming. We had to pay $3 to park there, which was annoying, since the bathroom that the parking fees allegedly pay for was closed for the season. At least there was a porta-potty nearby.

From the parking area, we hiked around the lake and into the woods. We followed an old logging road, which provided easy footing. Along the way we passed several connecting trails consisting of footpaths and other logging roads. We passed a couple of other hikers, and before long reached Rock Creek and the brink of Benton Falls. A quick descent of a staircase brought us to the base of the falls. Rock Creek is fairly small, but the waterfall is quite impressive. My book states that it is 65’ high, but I thought it looked taller. The creek tumbles over a cliff of striated rock, creating dozens of minor cascades within the main falls. We took a long break there, while I attempted some photos. Unfortunately, the sun was shining directly on the upper part of the falls, which ruined any chance of making a decent photo of the entire waterfall. Luckily, the lower part of the falls was in the shade. I spent several minutes there attempting some photos before we began the walk back.

On the return, we took some connecting trails to make a partial loop. This worked well, except that we had to walk back through the campground to reach the car. We enjoyed our tour of the campground, which looks like a decent place for a base camp. We might return to the area, as there are several other trails in the Rock Creek Gorge Area.

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