Fiery Gizzard Trail

I'll make some comments on this trail. My wife and I came to Monteagle Tennessee for a weekend looking for some light hiking. Weather was not cooperating so we found a quick 3 mile hike called the Fiery Gizzard. Legend has it that it got it's name because Davey Crockett burned his mouth on a Gizzard at a camp there. I know that because I searched this trail on the internet looking for other survivors and wondered if there was perhaps a medal, or at least a badge or decorative headband you have to sign up for or whatever. Listen. Listen as hard as you can. There's a sign that takes you back out the way you came if you want the 3 mile hike. If you don't want that, if you want 6 hours of Navy seal training, you blow right past that sign and just keep on following the white rectangles. This is what my wife and I did. I'm what the hiking community would refer to as a beginner. My wife is I guess, more of an experienced novice. Now... The first mile and a half in the Gundy Forrest are a cakewalk, and gorgeous. Then you walk down these rock steps that pass by some house sized boulders. Then all hell breaks loose. Think of the most rocks you've ever seen. Not gravel, not pebbles, rocks. Rocks the size of tires. Now multiply that number by itself and break both your ankles and one elbow. These rocks look fine. They look safe and fine. They are slicker than a greased ice cube. But it's fine because there's only about 3 miles of them. Then there is some mud on a 30 degree pitch next to a switchback cliff that is easily 50 feet down. Did I mention we were carrying a puppy? We were carrying a puppy. I mean if you want to up the challenge, by all means, carry a puppy, or perhaps a Bengal tiger. Same thing. Anyway, this mud is not like regular mud. It has some alien ability to suddenly accelerate both your feet in opposing directions at dangerous speeds from a complete standstill. It's like sudden and also for some reason completely unplanned splits when you haven't stretched your hamstrings in 25 years. Which leads to a condition that I believe should be called the "fiery Gizzard." This goes on for a while and then you're rewarded with what looks like a prehistoric fern patch that I'll refer to as God's Blind Spot. Anything can happen in here. At this point my wife is looking to call the park ranger, the police, her 6th grade math teacher, anyone. But there's no cell service, and we havent seen another hiker for hours. The trail markers are hard to follow. Sometimes you have to look straight up and levitate to get to the next one. I didn't know how to do that. So I just slammed my ankles and elbows into every manner of hard object until I pinballed myself to the next area. You can pretty much reread this for the next section because it's more of everything I've listed. At this point we've been at it for 3 hours. We now know this isn't a 3 mile hike and we've gotten off trail. Worried to continue to the next hellscape, we do the unthinkable. We turn around. We turned around at what I now know was about 10 miles in because there was some horrible gorge that we were supposed to climb. So we walked all the way back out from that point. So if anyone knows where we get our medals or headbands or whatever, I mean shoot me a link? I'm totally rocking that thing.