I ended up not quite getting to see all I hoped, but at 27.5 miles it wasn't exactly a short day.  I felt like I lost an hour when I got to the busier middle section of the park and considered my timing and water situations.  With the time zone changes, and daylight savings time all happening I never checked my GPS clock but it did in fact lose me an hour.  In my mind that lost me a lot more than an hour.  I was thinking I would be at the halfway point, with the first half having an extra hour added to it.  This made me estimate the second half time as much slower than it would have been.  As you can see in the image below, the western half of the route I took ended up much more direct than the wandering eastern section because I was trying to cut some distance.  There was some great stuff out there.  I just wish I had a tour guide to make things a bit smoother.

I am too lazy to put in a bunch of thumbnails here, but there is a set of pictures in my gallery.  The slideshow and show in google maps button are pretty cute there.

I got to the trail with not a whole lot of light left in the day, but I figured I could get the flavor of the trail.  I started out from Fishing Village heading north.  The trail sections I liked the most snaked along a narrow tread cut out of the hillside above the river.  It was in sections steep, loose, narrow, plus everything was blanketed in leaves.  A great challenge.

It's been too long since I've seen all the family I have in Dallas, TX, so it's time for a roadtrip.  It looks like I might be able to sneak in some mountain biking on the way.  With 8 IMBA epics obviously on the way and 3 more possible with an atlernate route back, finding spots to ride doesn't look like it's going to be a problem.  I need to do a bunch more research with the details because trails like Tsali in NC is only opened to bikes certain days of the week.  I made a basic map in just connect the dots fashion so far.  I'll keep updating as I get a better idea of what's out there.