the faint hope that a search helicopter would suddenly appear and a good-looking ranger would rescue us occurred to one of my friends (she's obviously seen too many movies). but then we realized that no one actually knew we were missing yet and therefore no one would be looking for us... so we pressed on.
the gravel road of despair had a profound effect on us. once we realized how truly and utterly lost we were, our thoughts were no longer of outback steaks and ice-cold colas. with no real end in sight, our pace slowed, our lively conversation ceased. we decided to concentrate on just putting one foot in front of the other.
we knew we had less than a couple more hours of daylight left and i started mentally preparing myself to sleep overnight in the park (we were all wearing tank tops and had no other clothes, or a flashlight, or a lighter, or ... well, we basically had no supplies).
we made the decision to turn around on the gravel road of despair and retrace our steps until we found the path again. shortly we did find it -- overgrown underbrush had covered the sign that showed the path back to the park. we surmised that if we followed the path we were on, we eventually had to come out at an entry point, which would lead to a road, which would lead us back to civilization (and vending machines).
and herein lay the great life application. by this time, we had been hiking for more than 7 hours without a single rest break, but once we knew we were on the right path again -- and now that we had a destination -- our pace picked up and the weariness melted away.
this, in a word, was "hope."
when you don't know where you're going, despair is inevitable. however, the reverse is also true. when you know where you are going and have the hope of your goal within reach, you can endure an awful lot. i no longer noticed how hungry i was or how painful my feet were (possibly because my toes had gone completely numb round about the 6th hour). we even started joking again.
finally, we came to the end of the path and came face to face with a trail map and realized what we had done. when we took the fork in the road, we had inadvertantly ended up on a now unused path which took us so far off course that we had literally walked "off the map" -- and out of the park! our intended 16 km hike had ended up being an 8 hour endurance test of close to 45 km.
we flagged down a pickup truck (the dangers of hitch-hiking no longer mattering at this point) and the driver told us to help ourselves to the ice-cold colas in his cooler while he ferried us to our car. thinking it might be too great a shock to our dehydrated bodies, the three of us shared one coke. it was truly the best tasting third of a can of coke i have ever consumed.
sadly (or comically, depending on your perspective), our troubles did not end there. we also got lost on our way back to nashville. somehow, we missed the turnoff to the small town with the outback restaurant and had to settle instead for a sandwich at arby's...
THE END 
You had to get lost to give us this great illustration! 
