The Scenic Road to Gatlinburg

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Katya Posted in National Park, survival | 1 Comment

When we finally had to decide on a new place to go after Asheville, we realized we weren’t really done with the Smoky Mountains just yet. We had been in Asheville a month and spent most of our time inside while it rained or froze outside. The last week we were there it got up to nearly 80, then a huge storm came and it actually snowed that next morning. It was a great, heavy storm that blew the trailer around like a shake weight in a bad infomercial and the electricity was off for almost the entire night. We have gas heat, full batteries and 12 volt ceiling lights, so it didn’t bother us to go without electricity a while, and thanks to the sun-dome in the bathroom, I got to watch the lightning light up the sky from the shower. Since that storm, the weather has been up and down, one serious storm was expected the day we left and ended up flooding the region north of us (and brought tornadoes). Somehow we dodged it completely, which made the drive ahead that much safer. While looking at the map to Gatlinburg on my phone, I found one that cuts right across the Smoky Mountain National Park. On the map it appeared to be “Highway” 32. It began just over the border into Tennessee , then curved back a little ways into North Carolina – and again back into Tennessee and all the way to the Smokey Bear Campground where we planned to stay the next month.
When we made that exit off the freeway, everything looked good. The road was narrow but nothing we hadn’t shared before. I was looking at the map while Ross drove and when we finally reached our turn onto “highway 32″ it was even more narrow, and to our dismay, turned into a dirt road going straight up a mountain.
As you can imagine, turning around in a 50+ foot rig on a narrow dirt road with steep hills on both sides could prove to be difficult, so our only option was to keep going up the mountain. We tried to rationalize why a highway would be dirt, and hoped that it would either get better or we would find a place to turn around. We drove for a while, going about 5-10 miles an hour, taking jack knife turns that required some extreme skill on Ross’s part and nerves of steel for both of us. Luckily the road was in really good shape, no potholes or loose edges on the turns. The only thing I could do to help was to stay calm and look out my window at the trailer as Ross aimed the truck as far to the left of the road as possible without going in the ditch, and don’t even ask us what we expected to do if a car came around the bend at the wrong time. The trailer is so long, even at the truck’s farthest use of the curve, it was still often a foot or two from going down a ravine. Had I been less nervous, I may have taken some pictures, but getting stuck on a dirt road, on a mountain, in the middle of a National Park, was far too serious a matter at the time. We aren’t veterans here. We had no phone service of course, and even if we did find a tow truck, they wouldn’t have much more luck than us getting the trailer out without it hanging off a cliff at some point.
After what seemed like miles of crawling along, we started to see more people. First a car, then a group of hikers at a sign that said “Appalachia Trail” and then – paved road! Our guess, North Carolina didn’t feel the need to pave their end of the road though we never did see an official “Welcome to Tennessee” sign, and I think a dirt road in the middle of nowhere would have been the perfect place for a greeting like that.
Although things seemed much more stable and predictable at that point, the actual shape of the road didn’t change at all. Before we got off the freeway, Ross had told me that the woman at the Smokey Bear Campground mentioned a “scenic route” – I took a guess that the 32 must be it because everything else was freeway. I had said, “you know maps, they always make roads look more curvy than they are” – but I was wrong. They are as crazy as they look and we had 20 more miles to go.

After about the first 10 death defying turns, we started to get the hang of it. You think we would be looking forward to some railings here and there but the few railings there were actually made the turns even tighter and we had to go about 5 miles an hour while I kept a close eye on the back of the trailer to make sure it didn’t scrape the rail. Somehow, it was like the whole road was built for people in just our situation. We spent most the time in the middle or left side of the road, trying to make the turns wide enough and have plenty of space for our extra width. Surprisingly, the only places we ran into other vehicles was in the longer stretches of road (by longer I mean maybe 100 yards). Every turns was a breath held for whether the trailer would make it or not, and another for whether or not someone would come around the corner at 30 miles an hour while we were in their lane.

I sort of wish I had taken more photos of the turns but we were a little focused at the time so it was sort of an afterthought.

The Tennessee Jack Knifer

One of the nicer curves

Our line of Sight, after being far into the left lane from a wide turn.

By the end of the worst parts, Ross was officially a pro. We started seeing houses and even mobile homes (that had to have been towed there) so we knew the road ahead was getting better. Susa and Chena were sleeping in the back the whole time without even knowing the situation of course and it only took an hour from where we started to arrive at the campsite.

After an unnecessarily tedious ”help” into our campsite by the owner, (hard to do with two exhausted people) and the overheated transmission that didn’t want to go into reverse, and the speech about getting the tranny checked out (we have) – we happily setup and somehow musted up the energy to go check out Gatlinburg before it got dark. Oh my what a surprise – for another blog.

For now, just be forewarned about roads that look like that on a google maps. It is not a shortcut for a 50 foot truck and trailer. That being said. I would totally do it again and knowing we didn’t get stuck or die on that road and knowing that Ross is basically a bad ass truck and trailer driver, I don’t feel the slightest bit stupid for taking us into the gates of purgatory. They were beautiful and thrilling gates and I hope to visit them again soon.

Asheville, North Carolina: The Vegetarian South’s first in line.

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Katya Posted in food, Vegetarian Travel | 1 Comment

Since we are vegan/vegetarian, it’s been a constant point of ours to check the vegetarian options in each town we go to. It’s never a deterrent if there isn’t anything around. It would ridiculous to miss the Everglades just because we couldn’t get Tofurkey lunch meat nearby (even if it is Susa’s favorite). Not having a ton of restaurants or a Whole Foods to go to usually just means we save a bunch of money. You can find tofu and garden burgers in the most surprising towns in the country and to many people’s surprise, vegetarians can survive quite easily almost anywhere.

That being said, when we do find a town that has a really great vegetarian scene, we usually get pretty excited. And of all the towns we’ve stayed in in the last year and a half, Asheville has got every other city in the south beat when it comes to vegetarian options. Cities four times its size have nothing on Asheville for grocery store and restaurant options. You can often count Indian food and Chinese food as “vegetarian” because there are usually more than one good option there, but even without counting Asian food, Asheville has a heaping handful of cafes and restaurants to make west coast hippie towns blush.

The first place we went was the Green Sage Cafe, the first cafe on our way into downtown from Taps RV Park. The Green Sage was fairly busy, gathered foot traffic, tourists and locals in its convenient location near the Court Plaza, Shopping and of course some great local brew pubs. Its a “bus your own table” kind of place, with local art on the walls and a variety of seating. We usually sat befuddled beneath an average looking bicycle suspended from the ceiling. Not an antique, not surprisingly nice, just a bike with a basket on it. The food was good, though a little more expensive than we expected. After eating out several times in Asheville, we realized this wasn’t an isolated incident. I ordered a breakfast burrito and Ross a breakfast scramble (both with tofu). My coffee was not amazing and cooled quickly in its giant cup, but coffee didn’t really seem to be their thing. Overall I don’t remember being impressed though we did go back a couple more times, unable to stay away from the possibility of breakfast (even if we ate it at 3pm).

Green Light Cafe Asheville, NC The second place we went was nicer than our usual places, The Green Light Cafe. It was more like a “european cafe in an art gallery” than what I expected from a vegetarian cafe but it proved a place can be both nice and vegetarian without being expensive or “health nut – elitist” vegetarian. The server was really nice and helpful, the place was quiet and open, and the food was amazing. I got the special, a chili relleno dish and Ross got the enchilada – “Saucy beans and greens baked in a sprouted tortilla, smothered with our homemade nutty mole & your choice of daiya vegan cheese or cheddar.” Not many places offer vegan cheese so that was a big plus, and the homemade mole was just the right amount of sweet and nutty. We only went there once but would defiantly try more things if we visit Asheville again.

The restaurant we visited the most was Rosetta’s Kitchen. It’s a marginally small place, average for a vegetarian cafe, with a small kitchen and one person running the till. What I liked most about this place was its typical vegetarian cafe attitude of “we make you huge plate of excellent food – you get your own cutlery and bus your own tables”. I definitely think more restaurants should adopt that business model. It saves the place hiring more people, therefore allowing them to charge less for potentially expensive plates and leaves people to feed and take care of themselves unharassed by a tip desperate waiter. I enjoy cooking and good food, and have an appreciation for people who work in the service industry. Possibly my experiences and perspective are a bit skewed.
The food at Rosetta’s was amazing. We get burned out on eating garden burgers, especially during our first year when it was often the only thing we could get eating out, but of all the options on the menu I decided to go for just that. They claimed on the menu it was “famous” and that always means they make it themselves. This can vary from place to place, a homemade burger can be full of grains and falling apart, bursting with little more than undercooked black beans and dry as a cotton ball, but sometimes homemade burgers are surprisingly moist and flavorful with just the right amount of everything. This was one of those burgers. I added jalapeños and cheese to make my favorite combination, and besides the fact that the jalapeños were barely hot, the burger was great. Ross got The Family Favorite, Peanut butter baked tofu, smashed potatoes and gravy and sautéed kale. Of course I had to steal some, tasty as expected. So far my favorite vegetarian meals in the South have been the “home cooking” style meals with things like pecan crusted seitan steak, grits with nutritional yeast and of course some good greens/kale cooked in a way I can only dream of accomplishing. Gravy is always a highlight of one of these dishes and the gravy on the The Family Favorite may be nearly my favorite. We asked the cashier what was in the gravy (to make sure it wasn’t a mushroom gravy) and practically got the whole recipe. I of course memorized this simple concoction and plan to work on and improve upon it over time (nutritional yeast, flour, fresh sage, salt, soy milk). In my version there will definitely be breakfast sausage, as soon as I see some around. After gorging ourselves on this meal, we eyeballed the cakes in the case by the register and wished we had room. On our next visit we made the mistake of buying the Indian and Pad Thai bowls, when we should have got the plates and took some home (for just a little $ more) but it worked out because we then had room for a huge piece of chocolate cake with strawberry frosting. The kind of frosting that sends me into sugary seizures, but a good rich frosting (not real seizures, more like a reaction when eating a lemon, but with sweet things instead).
On other visited we tried various things but my favorite is still the Ruben sandwich with grilled marinated local made tempeh, homemade sauerkraut (from red cabbage) and Swiss cheese smothered in a herb-walnut sauce on homemade rye focaccia. As with all of downtown Asheville, parking is pretty bad on a weekend unless you pay for a lot, but luckily we always found parking just a block from Mellow Mushroom (which we never made it to) and within 8 blocks of everything else.

There were about 5 more places we never made it to and a couple that were more expensive or too busy for our mood. Then there was Doc Chey’s Noodle House, a place with lots of good reviews but ended up being a disappointment (please don’t put jalapeños in your Thai food when I ask for ‘Hot’).

Asheville is also great for beer lovers with several brew pubs in the downtown area and of course, wine and whiskey bars run rampant downtown. Our favorite being the one we almost walked past, a hole in the wall with a dark entrance and black door (still don’t know the name but I checked in on Foursquare at “The Dirty South” while there).

Scully's Bar 13 West Walnut Street

Given more time, I would have also visited:
Firestorm Cafe, Laughing Seen Cafe, Tupelo Honey (on a slow night) and Early Girl Eatery.
These are still just a few of the options available in Asheville and why it’s definitely leading the South that I’ve seen so far in vegetarian concentration and quality.

We always hope to see more of this on our travels and places like Asheville are definitely at the top of our lists of places we would recommend to other vegetarians, health geeks or basically anyone who loves food, good beer, nature, shopping and a town designed for foot traffic.

Susa the leash trained cat

Posted on April 3, 2011 by Katya Posted in pets and travel | Leave a comment

Aside from the rainy days, Susa likes to spend at least half her day tied outside the trailer. We started leash training her as soon almost as we adopted her. The thought of some poor cat locked up in the trailer all day every day without even a chance of eating fresh grass or chasing a butterfly was unbearable. She was already about 6 months old when we got her, but it was surprisingly easy. Maybe she’s a tolerant cat but I’m still pretty sure anyone can leash train a cat if they start them young.
We started by buying a harness. We spent about $30 on a nice padded harness from one of those fancier pet stores, this one on Magazine Street in New Orleans. It was intended for small dogs but after just one return we had the right size and she was on her way to being an indoor outdoor cat while we travel.
We started by putting the harness on her while inside the house for a few minutes a day, with treat reinforcement. Her first real test was when we took her to the vet for an ear infection and didn’t have a carrier yet. We still had the brougham as our main transportation and she wasn’t accustom to the traveling part yet, so she stayed in the bathroom for the drive. When we got to the vet, there was a man with a weed whacker outside making a ton of noise and I knew the only way to get her inside the building was if he stopped. He was willing to wait for our mad dash to the door (where she still scratched the crap out of me) but we made it inside alive.
She was immediately cooperative. Aside from trying to crawl all over and behind the bags of dog food (not out of fear, out of curiosity), she sat in the chair next to me or on the floor patiently, and because she was so used to Chena, when dogs came in or left she just watched them curiously, and luckily none of them cared about her.
She didn’t walk to the vet room when it was time but the fact that a cat can wear a harness and leash and not freak out and do wacky back flips to get out, is a feat in itself.
Ever since, she’s been a regular outdoor adventurer, as you may have noticed from previous blogs and videos. We spent most of the summer with her tied out while we work outside, keeping an eye on her at all times in case she harassed some dangerous bug, lays in a fire ant pile or gets scared by a passing car, but she’s now at a point where she is tied outside alone with the door open about a foot. I still check on her every 5-10 minutes or whenever I hear a noise, in case she gets tangled and can’t come inside or to comfort her when a car drives by. After all she is basically a country cat with no socialization with other people, I’m sure one day she’ll live in an apartment or house in a city somewhere but as it in, strangers and cars make her nervous. She is not at all nervous around the house which assures me she’ll adapt just fine to any busier life she suddenly may have.

I don’t think theres a good chance of most cats being lead-able, even if they can accept the harness without incident. Cats are stubborn and paranoid animals and Susa still doesn’t like to be pulled on. She won’t freak out or anything but she’ll only move if she wants to. We go for regular walks when we stay in state parks and you can entice her to go a direction by giving her a slight tug. Unless she’s really set on going somewhere specific, she’ll do a little jog in that direction. When it’s time to come back, there’s a half ‘carry her’, half ‘tug in the direction of home’ game that usually works, although in her own time. She won’t be walking down any city sidewalks or anything and I hope no one expects their cat to either.

Today I let her go a little further to the river side where she found a pile of dried leaves. She rolled around and dug her face in them for a good half hour.
This is why I won’t have a strictly indoor cat. Safety aside, its their happiness that matters, even if it means they die 5 years before their time. People might live longer too if we were kept inside a bubble and fed nutritional gruel, but we would be much happier if we could smell the breeze and feel the sun (through a window doesn’t count).

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).