All This for One New Mile (Martins Gap Trail in the Smokies)

Sometimes, we are efficient on hikes and able to count over half of our miles as new. Other times, it's like this hike in the Smokies where we hike 16 miles round trip just to reach a small section of trail we had to leave undone. The Martins Gap Trail that connects Sunkota Ridge to Deep Creek was such a section. Every time we passed the intersection for it--and we're talking at least half a dozen times--it seemed we had to take a different route back to our car for one reason or another. Not this time. We set out on this hike just to pick it up. It was a big climb up part of the Sunkota Ridge trail to reach Martins Gap and then we hiked it down to Deep Creek and back to the car.
There's big changes coming to our lives and although we don't talk about it in this video, this entire hike was devoted to talking through what we want the upcoming years to look like in terms of work, life, hiking, and all the stuff. We have been so thankful that the Smokies have been a place we can go to have these conversations during our time here in Athens.
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We are Kelly & Michelle of Drive Hike Repeat. A few years ago we decided to try to hike every mile of every trail in every National Park. There are about 9200 miles of trail in the current 63 National Parks and we are over 36% done.
Thanks for joining on our adventure of a lifetime. We're here to have fun so if you have something negative to say, please just move on.
If you're interested in supporting our journey, you can follow us here, on instagram, or on Facebook. Kelly's prints are for sale at fineartamerica...
We have loads of info about the National Parks up at our website: drivehikerepeat.com