From the Hills to the Mountains

The Virginia countryside was a charming landscape of rolling hills and green fields. The Smokies in Tennessee are REAL mountains - as close as anything we've seen in the eastern United States to the massive Rockies, Cascades, and Sierra Madre that we're used to back home on the West Coast. And, we had the pleasure of a front row seat. I know I already posted a photo of the view from our porch, but I can't help doing it again. 

These photos show how different the Smokies can look from one moment to the next. Looking out my "office" window truly does feel sometimes like the greatest show on earth. The bottom photo is a great example of how the Smokies got their name. Often, in the mornings, the fog rolls down off the mountain looking for all the world like smoke. Sometimes it settles into the valleys and looks almost like a river or roadway of fog descending from the mountaintops. 

Sadly, the town of Gatlinburg is the polar opposite. As soon as you pass through the exit gate of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, you're greeted by a pretty gnarly collection of Vegas-y restaurants (think Margaritaville and Bubba Gump), tourist trap attractions (e.g., the Ripleys Believe it or Not Museum), gun shops, and cotton candy stalls. It's like a little slice of Hollywood, Vegas, or Atlantic City tucked into the foothills of the Smokies. 

The National Park System was created, in part, because Americans had seen the way that natural wonders like Niagara Fall could quickly become commercial tourist nightmares. Gatlinburg, unfortunately, comes very close.

But, enough about Gatlinburg. The park was incredible! After several pleasant, but not overwhelming, experiences with eastern parks, we didn't expect much from the Great Smokies. We figured maybe this would be like an extension of Shenandoah. We couldn't have been more wrong! 

What we found was an amazingly beautiful range of river-laced and snow-covered mountains, full of charming trails, amazing views, and, thankfully, small crowds! This last part was a real concern because the Smokies are the most visited unit of the National Park system, probably due in large part to location. The one exception to the low-crowd rule was Cade's Cove, a park favorite, where visitors can take a driving tour of the last inhabited village subsumed by the Park when it was created in 1934. The traffic in Cade's cove reminded us a little too much of Los Angeles!

Thankfully, other trails also gave us a little more of a personal experience with the Park's history.

But again, the trails were where this Park truly shines. It was like a fairyland!

Can you find the troll in this picture?

We even had some hide and seek fun on the trail.

And we barely scratched the surface! I'm looking forward to coming back for more adventures next weekend!

Nathan's Stuff: I Heart Reading

Today I finished a really good 376 page book. It is kind of a Christmas based mystery book. It might sound strange but it is really good. It's a really good book. I loved it. 

... and, by the way ... Tennessee! (Mile 6,125, Trail Mile 149.22)

I almost forgot ... we made it to Tennessee! Gatlinburg, to be specific. And yes, we are talking about the Gatlinburg that's just down the road from Pigeon Forge and that great American institution: Dollywood! If only it wasn't Covid time. 

It was a long but pleasant drive from Virginia through rolling hills, under gray winter skies. When we arrived, we drove through downtown Gatlinburg and saw what I can only compare to a country Hollywood. They had Ripley's Believe it Or Not, a bunch of Vegas-style chain restaurants like Margaritaville, and crowds - yes, crowds! - of non-mask-wearers milling about. Oh my!

And, off to the side, by the way, is Great Smoky Mountains National Park - the most visited unit in the National Park System. This is going to be great!

And, our home base for all of this is a lovely cabin in the hills ...

... with a million dollar view of the Smokies ...

... some highbrow art ...

... and a cozy living room. And yes, that's a Christmas tree in the corner. Since we're now in late January, I'm not sure if this is festive or depressing.

Here's the map.

Seeing History in America

Every once in a while on this trip I pause to think about history: America's and our family's. It's easy to get lost in the logistics of moving from state to state, LOTs of driving, adjusting to new houses, home-schooling Nathan (mostly Rachel), and finding the right hikes to do in our various parks. We can forget that we're in the middle of the "Trip of a Lifetime!!!!" and I have to really snap back into the moment and appreciate our amazing adventure for the unique undertaking that it is. 

On another level, our country's history has been unfurling around us in this incredibly turbulent, troubled, and hopeful time. And, we've had the privilege of seeing it from every corner of this great country.

We started the year in California, experiencing the first seven months of the Covid-19 pandemic at home. We watched the pieces of our life fall slowly away as school, Little League, PTA meetings, church committees, and all but our closest friendships dropped one by one. In September, we finally said goodbye to our old life and launched into life on the road.

We drove steadily north and east through California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah as our country suffered through the pandemic, and we saw the diverse ways that Americans saw the world as that world, in many ways, came crashing down around them. 

We also ran the political gamut as Joe Biden and Donald Trump carried out one of the most distressing, disorienting, and nerve-wracking election campaigns we'd seen in our lifetimes. We watched the first disastrous presidential debate from the shores of Lake Almanor in northern California. We watched a fly park itself on Mike Pence's head during the vice presidential debate from a cozy suburban neighborhood in Boise. Finally, we suffered through the agonizing 2020 election night while we ate pot pie in our Trump-friendly neighborhood in Montrose, Colorado. 

In an amazing turn of events, fate rewarded us by giving us the amazing news of Biden's victory as we arrived in Santa Fe - one of my favorite places in the world. Then, in an unexpectedly glorious turn of events, we learned that scientists had finally developed a Covid vaccine! We celebrated with margaritas under the bright, New Mexico stars.

Even after the election was over, we watched the political temperature rise through Kansas, Indiana, and New York as Trump tried every desperate trick in the book to convince the world that he'd won an election that he'd lost by seven million votes.

The holidays in Connecticut gave us a brief moment of calm. But then, in Virginia, just an hour and a half from Washington, D.C., we watched in horror as Trump whipped up a group of domestic terrorists to storm the U.S. capitol, leaving dead or wounded not just participants and police but, for many of us, the comfortable notion that our democracy is an impenetrable fortress. The news unfolded as I sat on a work conference call in the basement, watching the news unfold on my computer screen and hearing Rachel cry in the living room upstairs.

Then, today, in Tennessee, I watched Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' inauguration with their message of hope and the promise that maybe our country can go back to something like normal. As I sit here now on the evening of the inauguration I feel alternately thrilled, horrified, saddened, and grateful for what that we've witnessed over the last few months. And, the one thing I can say with absolute certainty is that I hope the rest of the trip will be boring in comparison.        

  

Good Ol' Shenandoah

I'm not sure why I named this post "Ol' Shenandoah," other than the fact that Shenandoah sounds like a name that should have "Ol'" attached to it. I guess that's just the country in me coming out!

This stop was a serious change after two weeks in Connecticut. Rather than crowded, downtown Mystic, we were in the middle of Virginia horse country. We could see for miles, outside our back door.

And, as you can see, our home came with its own derelict old fashioned car (a Ford Country Squire, probably early 60s) in the yard!

The industrial-looking building next to us was the ornamental glass shop owned by our hosts. We never did make it over to do any memento shopping, but we did enjoy some of the beautiful glass art they used to decorate the house.

Of course, the main attraction in (or, more accurately, sort of near) Harrisonburg was Ol' Shenandoah National Park. I never would have believed this to be true of a busy mid-Atlantic park, but Shenandoah was actually closed! That's not to say that the gates were locked; rather, that there were no visitor services. So, we could go pretty much anywhere we liked to hike, but there were few open bathrooms, no visitor center, and no gift shop to buy stickers or get a passport stamp. 

Even in the dead of winter, the park was pretty, and we enjoyed some lovely hikes.

Nathan got to play with some epic frozen puddles.

And we even got to walk a tiny little chunk of the Appalachian Trail!

We mostly just enjoyed the quiet solitude of the winter woods and some pretty amazing views.

While we were in the area, we decided to take a day-trip to Charlottesville - home of the University of Virginia and my old stomping grounds during a short period in the early 2000s, when I attended the Army JAG school there. To be clear, there is ONE thing everyone must do when they visit Charlottesville: Monticello! Thomas Jefferson's home was a particularly relevant stop for us; we'd been passing time in the car listening to the audiobook version of Undaunted Courage, a history of the Corps of the Discovery. Here, we could see the grounds that Merriweather Lewis walked with Jefferson as the young President schooled Capt. Lewis in the finer points of botany, science, medicine, and sundry other skills that would come in handy as the Corps made its way to the Pacific Ocean (go Oregon!).

Turns out Mr. Jefferson dug his booze; he had a wine cellar AND a beer cellar!

Seems he was also a gamer!

This was a President who liked to have a good time!

We appreciated that the folks at Monticello took their Covid responsibilities seriously. They dramatically limited the number of visitors, and they were quite serious about masks. It was nice doing something touristy, with other people nearby, but still the ability to social distance and feel safe. 

This was also the weekend following the horrifying riots in DC, incited by Donald Trump. It seemed like a great time to visit a place that celebrated a true statesman and a real president. It helped restore a little of our faith in humanity.