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Weekend one in the Smoky Mountains

Published on May 4, 2011 by Katya in the category National Park, out and about | Leave a comment

Ripley's CircusWe 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.

Gatlinburg, Tennessee

Gatlinburg, Tennessee

Downtown Gatlinburg, Tennessee

Gatlinburg Downtown & The Space Needle

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.

Smoky Mountain Cemetery

Smoky Mountain Cemetery

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.

Laurel Falls Trail

Laurel Falls

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.

Lion Dance Tree
Tree Romance

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

Chena at Smokey Bear Campground, Gatlinburg Tennessee

The Scenic Road to Gatlinburg

Published on April 14, 2011 by Katya in the category 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.

32 to Gatlinburg, deathtrap roe

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

The Tennessee Jack Knifer

One of the nicer curves

One of the nicer curves

Our line of Sight

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.

Raccoon Mountain Cave Crawl, Bump, Slide & Climb

Published on February 17, 2011 by Katya in the category out and about | Leave a comment

Raccoon Mountain Caverns
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.



Canyon CrawlPhotos 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).

Chattanooga, Tenessee

Published on September 14, 2010 by Katya in the category travel | Leave a comment

Chattanooga was the first bigger city we stayed in since New Orleans and a great example of how modern the south can be. We arrived on a Saturday morning, ready to spend the weekend exploring the town and find some good restaurants along the same line as the Bottletree in Birmingham.

We arrived at Raccoon Mountain State Park early Saturday. It was a touristy campground with some caverns $14 to $99 to explore (depending on tour), a go cart track and one basketball hoop. The older man, the manager I suppose, was a total grump but other than that no one really bothered us, even though they had a stated “no pitbulls” rule in their pamphlet and on their website, we ignored it and had no trouble. I hold dearly my “your ignorance and fear will not affect my plans” policy.. as well as a “your stupid insurance company can go to hell” in those cases.

The first weekend we had researched a little online and got an idea of where the “things to do” were at, as well as where some of the better vegetarian options could be found. It was probably about 90 when we got in line to the Incline Railway, a really amazing train that makes its way directly up a mountain side – reaching an angle of 71% (practically up a cliff face) by the top. The seats are at an angle so you dont fall out by the time it reaches its peak angle, but even then you have to lean back and hold yourself a bit to keep from falling forward and shooting through the front window and down the mountain. It cost $12 a person, which I suppose id worth it but there arent really any perks to go along. You get taken to the top where a building containing a little shop full of tourist toys, stones and candy (and stone candy) – inside of some kind of cafeteria with some homemade fudge and coolers with a few bottled drinks. Outside in the neighbourhood, you could walk to a Civil War reenactment (which we did but did not pay to see). If you started at the top of the Mountain and therefore had a car, you could drive a little ways to Rock Mountain, which is some kind of a theme park which seemed a little kiddy oriented for us. At the bottom of the mountain, where we were parked, you can go to Ruby Falls, a huge waterfall in a cave which we also did not go to. After getting a drink and walking around a bit at the top, we rode the rail back down and headed out to find something to eat.

Incline Railway, St Elmo, Chattanooga, TN

Incline Railway, St Elmo, Chattanooga, TN

The first place we went to eat was another Mellow Mushroom, a place we had discovered in Oxford Alabama that had vegetarian sandwiches and good pizza. It was right in downtown Chattanooga so we got to see some of that outside the car. It’s a fairly nice little area though not very old or particularly interesting. When we came back to the area later at night, searching for a cool and somewhat empty bar, we discovered downtown to be just like Austin or New Orleans to some extent, tons of drunk girls in heels stumbling around and huge lines outside overcrowded bars. We looked around online some more and found an area farther away that showed promise, everything was closed but we had now discovered an all vegan cafe, Sluggo’s, to check out the next morning.


Sluggo’s was a little expensive but had really good food and a “do it yourself” attitude which I love in a restaurant if the cashiers aren’t jerks about it.

The neigbourhood we really liked, though didnt find till a few days later, was the Northside Neighbourhood near Coolidge park, a cute little area with cafes, restaurants and shopping. Once we discovered it we repeatedly returned to Stone Cup Cafe to work, also a place that had good vegetarian sandwiches, and Aretha Frankenstein nearby which had amazing french toast and waffles, tagged the “waffles of insane greatness”.

aretha frankenstein
Aretha Frankenstein has death masks

The neighbourhood also featured a dog park, a free one even! The Chattanooga Chew Chew. The last we’d seen was in New Orleans and required a paid membership to use. Unfortunately, Chena doesn’t care much about other dogs but the 5 seconds of excitement she gets from meeting one is at least some socialization for her. I feel bad that she has only a cat and two humans to play with sometimes.

Dog Park Chattanooga

Dog Park Chattanooga, Chattanooga Chew Chew

We spent most of the weekend rotating Stone Cup, Sluggo’s and Aretha Frankenstein’s, having only paid till the following Friday we were unlikely to see much more of the daytime things in the city and this was upsetting after seeing how cool Chattanooga was. We decided around Thursday to stay the weekend, unaware till we went into the office to pay, that it was Labor Day weekend and the park would be almost completely full, our space already reserved. Our only options were to leave town, move to another park in town (all of which would be equally booked), stay at a Walmart all weekend or move the trailer 60 feet to the last remaining spot. All of these options required the same amount of work preparing the trailer and truck for the move so we had some options to weigh but we ultimately and grudgingly decided to move the trailer 60 feet. When we moved to the new spot, a spot that was nearly on a hill, we parked the trailer backwards to avoid too much of a slant and ended up with out door facing another campers door and having to use the back side of the trailer as our “front yard”, hanging the lights on the slide out, no awning of course but a table and chairs for the one time we decided to BBQ some sausages. It was good enough though, since we didn’t plan to spend our weekend hanging out in the ridiculously crowded campground.

The last weekend in the area we reserved for nature. We had already decided to avoid the kid filled campground, and therefore the caves there and all other caves and touristy things in town because it was Labor Day Weekend and all would be completely full of people. On Saturday we decided to go to the Chattanooga Nature Center, a poorly advertised place which suited us, that also wasn’t very crowded. It featured a trail that lead to a great huge treehouse which in the spring-winter must have a great moat like swamp below it. Basically one of my dream houses, especially if the swamp had alligators in it. The trail went on to a rentable cabin next to the water and some rental canoes then arrived at the wildlife rehab area where they had owls, a bald eagle, a bobcat, some endangered red wolves and a crow. The birds didnt have much space and most had no company but they were there because they could not be released back into the wild, not for show exactly. I liked the crow, seeing one in a cage reminded me of my pet crow who I took home after if flew into the window of the pet store I worked at. He eventually recovered enough to release but I never knew if he made it for sure. I am pretty sure I had a crow stalker for the rest of my time in Portland, about 5 more years minus my year in Argentina.

There were some snakes back in the center building and a basic little gift shop but the best part was the drive around the grounds on a small dirt road. We barely fit in the truck as usual but the drive was great, allowing us to finally see some “untouched” Tennessee nature. There were large bunches of wildflowers, ponds, gardens and a bamboo forest, officially one of coolest forests to wander in, and some great little things to stop off and see like “Cherokee eye” – some kind of hole in a rock and our favorite, the spinning bench.  About half way thorough we were told by a woman in a Mustang that the park was closing in 15 minutes and we grudgingly headed out. The last thing we saw before the exit, the land keeper’s house with a bit of land, horses and barn. Lucky guy.

Sunday we decided to leave town completely, having gotten used to the South shutting down on Sundays – even the vegetarian restaurants, but we knew we could depend on a State Park to be open. We headed to Georgia to see the so called Canyon in Cloudless Canyon State Park. We’d taken Chena this time and hiked a small trail that over looked the town, then headed to the crowded Day Use area where the actual canyon trail was. It was ok, after seeing canyons in the southwest it didnt impress us but the hike was nice and it was a good way to spend the last day in.. or near… Chattanooga.

In this park, tree picnicks you!

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