Growing up on a farm in rural Alabama where forest, rolling hills and cleared fields for cattle grazing and planting crops was the norm, a place with mountains was hard to imagine. I would often find time to day dream about what it would be like to go high up on a mountain and look down on the world from above.

For summer vacation my family would often take my brother and me to the Gulf of Mexico where the ocean and white sandy beaches were most enyoyable and also made for fond memories, but I was still curious about the mountains. Occasionally I would ask my parents about taking us to the mountains and whether or not they had been there. It turned out that my parents had visited the Smoky Mountains before and would tell me all about it, which made me all the more interested in finding out for myself what it would be like.

As I grew older the thought of going to the mountains would eventually turn into childhood memories while school, playing sports, homework, helping on the family farm, hunting and fishing would consume most of my time. A few years would pass before those childhood memories about going to the mountains would resurface. We never made it to the mountains as a family, so as a young adult I set out to do just that.