The Smokies

On Tuesday we slept in a little bit once again, even though we were outside in a tent.  This is the good thing about vacation; you don’t have a care in the world.  There were no ducks to greet us when we got up, at least not at first.  We were also happy to see that no animals had found our campsite overnight, at least none that we could hear.  Sometimes when we camp you can hear animals scurrying around in the bushes at night.  They sound so big but being that it is so quiet they are probably no bigger than mice or chipmunks walking in the leaves.  The quiet of the night makes them sound much bigger than they are.  Last night we had nothing, just that stupid bird that wouldn’t shut up.

We ate leftover bagels and cream cheese for breakfast, took a shower in the extremely clean shower that we had mentioned yesterday, packed up, and were on our way.

The first stop was for a geocache on the way to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  We had been driving for only about an hour, first through hilly terrain, and now through a narrow valley which had a river running through it.  The river was small and somewhat fast moving and as a result, there were numerous rafting companies up and down both sides of the road for miles around.  When we stopped along side of the river for the cache, a woman was walking up from the river wearing a lifejacket and carrying paddles.  The only problem was she had no boat.  Apparently she fell off of her raft and the raft kept going downstream.  She was left to either walk back to the rafting company (only about a quarter mile up the road) or wait for someone to come get her.  We wondered how often that happens, we suspect pretty much every day.  After taking some pictures of the river and the rafters we continued driving.

We hit the visitor’s center for Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Cherokee, NC a little less than an hour later.  We stopped in to get some maps and some information on the park and to get our National Park passport stamps.  At each National Park you can get a stamp from that park with the date on it and you can “collect” these stamps.  Years ago Jackie said that we should collect these stamps but for whatever reason we never did.  Only now that we’ve been to dozens of National Parks, we have decided to start collecting these stamps.  We also learned how these mountains got their name.  The name "Smoky" comes from a natural haze that often hangs over the mountains and looks like smoke.  The haze is a result of warm air from the Gulf of Mexico quickly cooling in the higher elevations of the mountains.  The Great Smoky Mountains are fairly high in elevation as well, with several peaks over 6000 feet in height.  The highest point east of the Mississippi River is in the Smokies.  There is also a fairly large black bear population in the mountains.

While at the visitor’s center we inquired about Blue Ridge Parkway maps and guides.  They ranger told us that there is a Blue Ridge Parkway visitor’s center in Asheville, NC, about 90 miles away via the parkway, or a little shorter via faster roads.  The Blue Ridge Parkway was the main reason for us choosing this particular route north from Alabama.  The southern end of the 460 mile parkway is in Cherokee, NC, so we would be on the parkway for much of the next several days.  The ranger told us that Asheville, despite being only 90 miles on the parkway, would take about 3 hours.  This is not a parkway as you would find in metropolitan areas, but instead it is a two lane road (one lane in each direction) with rarely more than a half mile of straightaway.  The speed limit is 45 and there are lots of things to stop and see along the way.  We had planned on getting to Asheville for the night but we also wanted to get over the mountains and into Gatlinburg, TN to stop at a Hard Rock Café.  Gatlinburg was only 30 miles or so over the mountain, but those 60 miles out and back would likely take us 2 hours or more, as Gatlinburg is touristy place and the road was very slow moving over the mountain. Plus we wanted to take a side trip to the top of Clingmans Dome, which is the highest point in Tennessee, but another 7 miles (one way) off of our route plus a half mile walk to the top from the parking lot.  Given this fact, we started asking about campgrounds along the way, but since we had just camped last night we didn’t really want to camp a second night in a row.  So by this point, we weren’t sure what we were going to do for the rest of the day and we figured we would decide as the day went on.  By now we were getting hungry.  There wasn’t much choice for food back in town except for fast food, which we were not in the mood for.  Since we knew we were likely not camping that night, we decided to stop at a picnic area and cook our remaining burgers before they went bad.  We stopped at one of the park’s picnic areas, set up the grill and had a late lunch of cheeseburgers.  While we were eating, Chris kind of planned the rest of the day.  We decided not to go all the way over the mountain to Gatlinburg, as it would take too much time and the real reason we were going was just for a Hard Rock magnet.  Instead we would go to the top of the pass, head up to Clingmans Dome, then back down to the parkway, drive park of the way to Asheville on the parkway and stay in Asheville for two nights using points that we had accumulated at one of the hotel chains over the past year.

So we drove to the top of Newfound Gap on the NC/TN border, and then headed up the side road to Clingmans Dome.  The road goes almost to the top of the mountain.  Almost is the key word here.  It gets you to within a half mile of the top, and then it is all uphill from there.  We figured a half mile, no problem, right?  Not.  The climb probably isn’t so bad but in the middle of the afternoon, when it is still 80 degrees out and the sun is shining, it is a little tougher.  We had to stop several times to catch our breath but we found it comforting to see that young kids were also sweating and stopping frequently, as were people who were in much better shape than us.  Maybe the slightly thinner air contributed as well.  The paved trail climbs 330 feet from the parking lot to a tower on top.  The summit of the mountain is 6643 feet, it is the highest point in Tennessee, and it is the third highest point east of the Mississippi.  The TN/NC border actually straddles the top of the mountain.  Up on top there is a futuristic looking tower that you can climb and look in every direction.  The concrete tower is actually kind of ugly and looks like something out of the Jetsons.  

Prior to starting our trek up we saw a sign warning us of bear activity in the area.  We figured at some point on our trip we would see bears, we just didn’t think it would be right away.  About a quarter of the way up we saw people stopped on the side of the trail taking pictures.  There was a ranger there too pushing the people back.  The ranger was taking an air gun out of his backpack as we approached.  There were two cubs just off to the side of the trail, they were really small, we figured they were born over the winter.  (turns out bears give birth usually in February while they are hibernating)   We got a picture of one of the cubs before the ranger opened fire with his air gun.  The gun he used doesn’t really hurt the bears, it instead is intended on making the bears afraid of people.  It looks and shoots like a small uzi but it shoots quick shots of air at the bears and it is kind of loud.  Bears, especially cubs, while very cute, are still quite dangerous.  Bear attacks on people, especially black bear attacks, are very rare, but if they feel threatened, the bears can still attack, and they can easily kill a person.  With so many people in the park, human/bear encounters are more frequent, but they rarely results in bad encounters.  But it can still happen and the rangers do their best to make sure that the bears are afraid of people rather than comfortable around people.  After chasing the bears back into the woods (one of the bears actually climbed a tree…they are excellent climbers) the ranger said that the mother bear was just out of sight down the hill.  Having cubs around makes the mother bear a little more dangerous as she is quite protective of her babies, but even then, attacks on people are rare.  In fact, according to Wikipedia, only 23 people died from black bear attacks from 1900-1980.  Nevertheless, the park does whatever it can to make bears afraid of people.

After spending some time on top of the mountain and looking for bears on the walk back down we drove back down to Cherokee.  While the road was extremely steep, Chris wanted to see if he could make it all the way down in low gear without stepping on the brakes.  We almost did it but we did have to step on the brakes a few times, as even in the lowest gear the beast was starting to get away from us on the steeper hills.  We now see the real use of those runaway truck ramps you sometimes see on the highways. 

Once back down at the bottom of the mountain we stopped at a working grist mill.  A grist mill’s basic function is to turn grain into flour.  Today most grist mills use either electricity or some kind of fossil fuel to crush the grain, but the historic type, or the kind we saw, uses water to turn gears which in turn drive a mill stone (large round stone) which rests on another stone.  Grain is poured between the two stones and crushed into flour.  To give you an idea of how long grist mills have been around, in England the number of grist mills in use peaked at around 17,000 in the year 1300!  We were lucky enough, or so we thought, to see a functioning one, which as it turns out is only 1 of about 50 functioning grist mills in the country.  Turns out the grist mill is in operation daily from 9 AM to 5 PM.  We arrived at 5:08.  We were still able to take some nice pictures of the mill.  We were able to see where water was diverted from a stream and into the mill, which was pretty cool in itself.

After leaving the grist mill we headed into town where we had better cell reception so we could make a reservation for the night in Asheville, NC.  We chose Asheville because we wanted to visit the Biltmore Estate, which is located in Asheville.  We figured we would drive 30 or so miles on the Blue Ridge Parkway and then head into Asheville via a faster road part way through the trip.  Those 30 miles probably took us a little over an hour.  We stopped frequently at many view points and pull offs. 

When we finally got to the point where we could head into Asheville via the quick route our choice was to continue on the parkway for 55 miles at 40 MPH with stops every 10 minutes, or we could cruise into town the short way, 35 miles, at 70+ MPH.  We took the quick way because we were eager to get to our hotel.

We used two free night certificates that Chris had from gathering points at the Holiday Inn chain.  We chose to stay at the Hotel Indigo which is part of the Holiday Inn chain since the free night certificates allow us to stay at pricier places.  The Hotel Indigo is a fairly new chain with only a few properties (31 worldwide) and they call themselves boutique hotels.  We like this chain but unfortunately due to the cost we only stay when we have free nights.  They usually have very spacious rooms, hardwood floors (not real hardwood, more like laminate), huge showers that you could fit a small family into at once, and good views.  They are usually centrally located in whatever city they are in.  The last one we stayed in was in San Diego, which was downtown with great views of the city and a cool rooftop bar.  The one in Asheville overlooks the city and the mountains and given our platinum status with the Holiday Inn chain we were upgraded to a corner room on the 6^th floor with views in two different directions.  As we were sitting in our hotel writing up yesterday’s report we read that Asheville is nicknamed Beer City, USA.  We will have to see what tomorrow brings.

The desk where the last two days' blogs were written from.