out and about

Weekend one in the Smoky Mountains

We arrived a the Smokey Bear Campground on a Saturday, after our stress filled drive through the mountains. It was a relatively warm, sunny day. We had somehow avoided a major storm system due to hit Asheville. After we setup the trailer, inside and out, and made the animals happy, we headed into Gatlinburg with almost no idea what to expect. We don’t generally travel based on what’s in the towns we go to but rather what they’re near to – places like The Everglades, “anywhere with alligators” or the Smoky Mountains, so although we knew Gatlinburg was different by looking at it a bit on google maps, we had no idea what a circus of a town it would be.

We started by driving through the center of town, the street were filled with meandering tourists and their hyperactive kids, adorned with brightly colored spray paint tees, funnel cakes and bags full of quirky “Smoky Mountain” memorabilia. We decided to park in a garage at the farthest end or town and take our chances walking to find a place to eat. As usual, searching for places that have vegetarian food in a small tourist town can be hit or miss (usually miss) so we headed to a place that had pizza. It was appropriately called, Smoky Mountain Brewery, and oddly our waiter and several other people working there were German. In many ways Gatlinburg reminded me of the German settled Fredericksburg, Texas, though with a lot less reference to its German origins. Since it was a Saturday, the restaurant was full, as was every place in the 8 blocks of downtown Gatlinburg, from Fudge Shoppe to Olde Tyme Photo Studio (Gatlinburg has about 20 of these). The pizza was actually pretty good, a veggie with white sauce and lots of tobasco. We went home with leftovers and a little bewildered from all the sights and sounds. Compared to the places we usually stay, Gatlinburg was to us, like a dance party is to a slug .
Having previously been excited about seeing the Movie Car museum and the Ripley’s Believe it or Not franchise, we realized that just walking past these places was almost as good. One of Ripley’s many buildings had great and creepy animatronic circus folk outside, luring people in with their surreal, desaturated demeanors. And the Movie Car Museum had the Dukes of Hazard car and Herbie the Love Bug parked right in the doorway- what more could you want from a Museum that most likely holds none of the original cars anyway. I was more interested in a small dose of people watching, than the attractions themselves. Although the main event is that Gatlinburg is the “Gateway to the Smokies”, and that was the supposed reason many people were there, the majority of people didn’t seem like the “hiking in the mountains” types and I suspect many of them were on a little day trip from Pigeon Forge, where they went to Dollywood, watched hillbilly family feud reenactments like the Hatfield & McCoy theater show, went to the Titanic Museum and had Southern BBQ every day. This may some of my anti tourist sentiment. Travelers and tourists are very different. At the same time, I don’t really blame anyone for wanting to get the hell our of their routines, kids and all, and go somewhere where they can just tune out, I just wish people wouldn’t encourage the atrocities that happen in downtown Gatlinburg and main street Pigeon Forge. Off the main strip, Gatlinburg can be really pretty.

Downtown Gatlinburg, Tennessee

Gatlinburg Downtown & The Space Needle

On Sunday, we headed straight for the park. We stopped at the Visitor Center where there was a small display of stuffed local flora and fauna, from poisonous plants to strange exotic flowers to the large and woolly, wild boar. From there we headed, whichever direction seemed interesting, and saw the signs for numerous trails, but the first one we pulled off the road for was probably my favorite. It was a seemingly uninteresting trail, but our first in the Smokies. It just sort of headed up a hill into the trees, no creek or cliff side to be seen, but the eerie lighting was great. The southern forests always make me think of epic and overly emotional independent films (sometimes horror films). Generally any film where the forests provides a creepy mood throughout (this is a good thing, I love movies). The climb took us to the top of a low peak with a fairly nice view. There was a small clearing with unmarked stones placed in rows, and for some reason, it took seeing a name on one of the stones to register that we had come across a cemetery – on a trail, on a mountain, in a National Forest. I imagined a family from 140 years ago who used to live on this land before it was a National Park, but the strangeness of a headstone from as recently as 1992 said whoever’s cemetery it was, was still somewhat around. We joked that someone must have snuck the body up the hill one night, headstone in tow, to put them in the family cemetery. How else does one get buried on National land? I know if I had 7 generations of family buried in a private cemetery in the Smoky Mountains with a great view I would.. somehow.. hmm.. maybe getting too morbid here.

The next place we came across was the Laurel Falls trail. There was actual parking for this trail, lots, and several cars already there. We brought only our regular walking shoes, mine flat black Keds and Ross with some worn out Asics. This didn’t actually matter though, the trail was relatively wide, paved and occupied by some of the larger and more elderly tourists that I thought I’d never see off the streets of Gatlinburg. Surprisingly, the trail wasn’t as short and easy as I expected. It was about 1.3 miles each way, a steady climb though with little to no risk to life or limb. Along the way we ran out of water, unprepared to need more than one bottle, and filled it from a small waterfall coming out of the rocks. When we reached Laurel Falls, there was a bridge over the water and about 15 people lingering about. Some resting, others taking photos. We looked around for a place to sit and opted for the more inaccessible lower falls, which could only be reached by maneuvering down a rocky cliff side trail, difficult with flat soled slippery shoes, but worth it to see the jealous faces of the people above who were unable or unwilling to climb down.

Lower Laurel Falls

After Laurel Falls, we continued our drive into the park, finding a campsite we could never stay at (because of our need for internet for work), and stopped for a cold pizza picnic next to a postcard perfect creek – complete with a fly fishing Boy Scout and dorky swimming teenage girls (there weren’t many places to pull off the road). We watched the young boy continuously get his fly caught in the trees, and quietly laughed as we watched the girls’ sandals float down stream. The ants had left us alone and it was time to move on. We had time for one more trail before heading back to check on the animals. This trail was marked and had some parking, but was ultimately unchallenging. Really a perfect trail for the end of the day and a great place to see some of the flowers and insects of the park. The trail basically stayed on even ground, leading into an “open” meadow filled with amusingly placed fallen trees and enough sunlight for life to be interested in.

We headed home to our lonely pets after that. Dreading the work week ahead but with 3 more weekends in the Smokies to look forward to and a great view, we couldn’t complain too much. Our campsite, right across from the park, and neighbour with 15 bird feeders, would prove to be a great view while we worked.

Chena at Smokey Bear Campground, Gatlinburg Tennessee

Asheville, North Carolina

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Katya Posted in out and about | Leave a comment

Raccoon Mountain Cave Crawl, Bump, Slide & Climb

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Katya Posted in out and about | Leave a comment

We were in Chattanooga sometime last year, at this exact campground, Raccoon Mountain Campground, and managed to convince ourselves not to take the cave tour. Partly because we don’t like group guided tours, but mostly because we are cheap. We spend enough money on traveling and bills, and there are so many free things to do, hiking, biking, walking around downtown Chattanooga, why would we pay for something that might be sub par? Well, as logical as that sounded at the time, it was bullshit. We returned to Chattanooga after our long Georgia and Florida stays and finally took the tour. It was probably one of the best things we spent our money on in a long while.

We requested the 4 hour Echo Room Tour on a Saturday and by Monday we were scheduled for Wednesday Morning. This didn’t give me much time to limber up or get into shape, my muscles weak from excessive time at the computer and staying indoors most the winter, but I stretched as much as I could the night before. However, the night before was not followed by a restful sleep but rather a night of no sleep, old movies and Battlestar Galactica on my iphone. We stayed up all night because our schedule would never work well with a 9:30am cave expedition. I would rather be “haven’t gone to bed” tired than “just woke up” groggy. Staying up all night also allowed us to go to breakfast at 7am at a restaurant in town that serves vegan food, but is only open till 1. I imagined the carbs and calories from a great tofu scramble and fluffy biscuit would give me more energy for the 4 hours of labor ahead, though I really had no idea what to expect of the cave.

The only shoes I had were my 80s rebocks that I was planning to throw away because of their unfixably ugly tongues. They were the grippiest shoes I had so I hoped I could depend on my years of skateboarding and gymnastics to keep me on my feet and out of crevasses. Ross had hiking boots so he was set but neither us had any disposable clothing. Our guide was a tall bearded professional “cave tour aficionado” looking guy named Jerry Wallace, who also happens to be the cave’s photographer and graphic designer. I was happy we didn’t get a cocky young guide with a napsack full of ego and only enough facts about the cave to impress an 8 year old. Jerry knew everything we asked and was loaded with tons of geological, historical and biological information to please our curious and tired brains.

The first part of the tour was the Crystal Palace, a developed part of the cave filled with stalactites, stalagmites, cones, drapes and various other crystallized formations. While the rest of the tour was wild aside from the various butt and knee polished areas along the way. During the cave tour we crawled through spaces I didn’t think my head would fit through, climbed a rope up a slippery slope, slid down a 20 foot rock slide, teetered over a canyon, talked about the move The Descent, and spent allot of time on our knees. Randomly we would enter rooms like the echo room, whirlpool room, elvis room, music room and several awesomely tall dome rooms with crawls between called things like the back scraper, the 49 cent squeeze, the birth canal and the ankle breaker. At first I was a little worried about how I would feel in the tighter squeezes but after I learned how to crawl through them, using your finger tips and pushing with your toes ( I started by trying to drag my legs haha, fool!), I enjoyed the tight fits and awkward mid tunnel turns. When we got to the Sandpaper slide, looking down at a steep rock slide with presumably, rocks at the bottom, taking the plunge felt like the last time I tried to roll gracefully into a half pipe and ended up on my back on the concrete 12 feet below, or driving my motorcycle into the back of the truck with the ramp at a 45 degree angle (15-20mph needed with 3 feet to stop – I don’t do that anymore). When I finally leaned forward and just did it, the bottom was only a 2 foot drop and you were tossed forward into some dirt. Aside from my wrists already hurting from all the lifting needed (and my time on computers) it was a completely painless trip down.

Photos by Jerry Wallace

Four and half hours later – my legs, shoulders and arms sore, scraped and weak, we finally exited the cave alive and getting along pretty well with our guide. I’m an awkward conversationalist with strangers so I made my share of morbid or strange statements and jokes, while Ross balanced us out by being the sane one with little to say. At the building where we turned in our gear we swapped flickr accounts with our guide Jerry and I gave him the address to Nerds on the Road. Hopefully our next guide, at our next cave (if even possible*), we will have a guide as good as him.

Jerry takes all the photos in the gift shop/cave entrance as well as the website for the cave and has had his awesome photos published. Check some of them out on his flickr and check out the Raccoon Mountain Wild Cave website to see some photos not found there.

* find out more about why caves around the country are being closed (link) (Federal are already closed and there are threats that private caves may be closed as well).

Last goal for Florida, the Keys

Posted on December 17, 2010 by Katya Posted in out and about, state parks, travel | Leave a comment

We have been in Florida since September after almost not coming here at all. We were thinking of jumping straight to the Smokey Mountains after Savannah, but since the Everglades and Florida Keys were a major goal of mine on this “trip”, we decided to take on the potentially ’full to the brim with retirees’ state. After spending this last month in South Miami, a time where there wasn’t much to see or do unless we left town on the weekend, we finally made it to the Keys the day before leaving town on a 600 mile drive back north. This time we took Chena, something we don’t get to do often because it is either too hot, or she’s not allowed where ever we’re going (which is most places, especially since ‘pitbulls’ are banned in Dade county), but the drive down the keys could be as far as 300 miles round trip and she couldn’t stay alone in the trailer that long. Luckily the weather was cool the entire day and although she is used to sleeping 80% of the day away, she managed to stay up most the trip and get some vacation time in.

The unpopular beaches and old bridges were the best part of the Keys for me, especially the remnants of an old rail road bridge that still ran along side parts of the main bridges. We stopped at one of many state parks along the way and walked around the beach a little but the second state park we stopped at, Long Key State Park, had far less people and a beach-side boardwalk that was missing the typical “no dogs allowed” sign you see on Florida state park trails. We walked about a quarter mile and stopped on a small deserted beach covered in shells and dead tree branches. My kind of beach. The water was cold but tolerable enough to wade in and Chena got a chance to cool off but unfortunately kept trying to drink the water.

We ate at a little cafe, too early for the lunch menu (by like 20 minutes) and had banana, pineapple, coconut covered pancakes with a side of papaya syrup. For pancakes they were great though unfortunately not that filling. To make up for it, we later tried to find a pizza place but ended up finding a raw bar and had pita sandwiches, also not so fulfilling, but the raw bar was inside a health food store and book store and luckily they had the awesome and completely satisfying Stonewall’s Jerquee bites (vegetarian jerky) for us to snack on during the drive home.

Our last goal before turning back was the 7 mile bridge, At the end we found a pull-off just where we watched the sun go down and said our goodbyes to any chance of warm sunny beaches for a long time.

The next day we left to north Florida’s St George Island State Park, where it would be down to 22 degrees the first night. After enjoying an average of 83 for the last month, this was going to be a rough change. Sure enough I was sick within the first day. I think spending 3 days in the car between the Keys and the 600+ mile trip north probably didn’t help either.

Shark Valley Florida

Posted on November 24, 2010 by Katya Posted in National Park, out and about | 2 Comments

After the Everglades we moved into a park in Miami. We really didn’t think we would find anything, especially anything reasonable, but Larry and Penny Thompson County Park had spots for as long as a month and cheaper than most places we stay where we pay weekly. We got lucky and showed up when it was fairly empty and got a place all the way in the back with our own private yard and facing some brushy palmetto area. With the truck parked perpendicular to the front of the trailer, it blocks our awning and yard area from everyone else and we feel pretty much alone, as we like it. The park holds something like 250 RV’s plus tent campers so having some privacy could have been hard if we didn’t just have great luck sometimes. We decided to stay a month because, although we look forward to snow, theres no rush, and there are tons of things we haven’t seen in south Florida yet and ran out of time in the Everglades (you only get 2 weeks a year there sadly, though we may try to sneak back in).
Our first weekend at Larry and Penny, we headed to Shark Valley just 40 or so miles away towards, directly inland on the top side of the Everglades. We took the bikes to ride the 15 mile loop, expecting to see Alligators all over the road like we have in pictures, but we certainly got to see enough of them without having to worry about falling off our bikes or having our path blocked completely.
There were moms with babies, juveniles and small adults everywhere, making for some pretty great photo ops but the best encounter was when, about halfway through the bike ride, we decided to walk down a trail into a Hammock, and after about 100 yards of walking, I joked that there should be alligators draped across the trail at least, and just as we turned a corner, there were! All large adults resting on the trail where it met with a large pond. We counted about 6 but couldn’t really see around the next bend and there may have been more.
The bike ride was long but easy, except for my seat being uncomfortable due to my camera box being strapped onto my behind the seat bike rack. It was worth it though because it held my excellent quality, 4lb medium format camera and I got some great shots of the alligators on the trail (which will eventually be developed).
Here’s what I have on digital: