I’ve been to Minneapolis a few times, but this time I stayed out of the downtown area. Not much going on except that I really noticed a lot more shopping malls than I ever have. My g/f says there are just as many in Dallas, but I am not so sure about that. I think there isn’t much to do up there in the winter except shop so there are a ton of malls. Those people are certainly trying to support the economy!
After my training I flew into Knoxville to meet my g/f. She was just wrapping up here business there and we spent the night in Gatlinburg. I had never been there before and it was a bit of an odd experience. Nestled in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains it looks like a miniature Las Vegas complete with a bunch of Neon signs and small wedding chapels everywhere. Apparently Gatlinburg is the second most common place to get married. The other thing they have there is mini-golf and pancake houses. It’s a bit surreal with all the neon, wedding chapels, mini-golf, pancake houses, and tourist shops. What I never really figured out is why it is such a famous destination spot. In some ways it reminded me of Paris Hilton who has no real talent and has never done anything to deserve being famous…..other than she’s famous.
We spent the next week driving mountain roads, checking out small towns, and just generally enjoying being away from Texas and not having to work. Everyone was very friendly, but we did notice that there are a lot of dry counties and you often had to go out of your way to even find a beer to have with dinner. I did get lucky, though, and found a liquor store that carries George T. Stagg. Stagg is a most excellent whiskey, but I pretty much can’t get it in Texas due to availability. I bought a couple of bottles of it to bring home. It should last a while seeing as how it’s over 140 proof and fairly expensive…mix it with coke in my house and we’ll have to have words.
The other thing we noticed about driving around out that way is that everyone gives pretty horrible directions. We’d be in small towns that have perhaps six or seven roads and people could not tell you how to get to the grocery store accurately. Mind you, these aren’t six or seven city roads and that makes it a bit more difficult, but still…. People would look right at an intersection and tell you to go right and after five miles you realize they were wrong and you should have gone left.
Mostly though, it’s green. REAL green. Trees, vines, flowers, and other forms of vegetation grown naturally all over the place. I’ve been in NC before and it’s one of the things I always liked about it. You could be 100 yards away from a Wal-Mart and not even be able to see it through all the trees! Because of all the hills and mountains you pretty much have to drive slowly and wind your way around to get anywhere. Always plan on it taking longer than you think because you’ll be in the twisties before you know and reducing your speed down to about 30mph. Due to this fact, it is a mecca for motorcycles and we saw a TON of them out there. I really wanted to have my bike, but it just didn’t work out for this trip. Nonetheless, we went to check out The Tail of The Dragon since I had never seen it. The Dragon is often acknowledged as the most famous motorcycle road in the entire U.S. People travel from all over to ride the 11 miles and 318 curves. As I said, I didn’t have my bike but we did manage to have a good run at it in my g/f’s mini cooper – that car sticks like glue! Unfortunately, as often happens on this road, there was a pretty bad motorcycle accident in which a couple of Harley baggers had gotten tangled up and both of them ended up in a ditch (one on top of the other) and a guy was hurt pretty bad.
We stopped at the lodge, had a beer and some fries, and bought a couple of souvenirs. I was reluctant to buy anything that said “rode the dragon” or “dragon slayer” on it as I didn’t really get to ride the dragon. We also checked out the Tree Of Shame which my g/f thought was pretty interesting.
We spent a few days camping while we were in the area. The first night we camped was in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Not a bad place to camp, but the campgrounds were pretty typical – a winding road through a slew of parking spaces with enough space for a tent and firebox. We managed to grab a spot by the river despite showing up late due to trying to find a grocery store and some wine for the evening (see above with regards to bad directions and dry counties). We never did get a fire going very well, which I attributed to some green wood that we picked up. It smoked a lot, but that was about it. One guy had a freaking huge fire and I jokingly suggested that we go sit with him. Even after it started raining his fire was still going strong. Bastard.
The next time we camped it was at Mt. Mitchell State Park. The park is not very large, but it is the highest peak east of the Mississippi at roughly 6,700 feet. The campgrounds are not “typical.” There is a parking lot and then you hike up a fairly easy trail to get to the camp spots which are spread out and fairly secluded. It’s not that you couldn’t see your neighbor, but you did have to make an effort to do so. This was nice as it gave you the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere.
It’s worth noting that up there you are in black bear country. The park ranger even warned us to cover up our suitcases as the bears had learned to recognize “cooler-like shapes” and would tear into the car to get to them. I had never heard of this, but we took his warning to heart. He also said to put everything that had a scent, including toothpaste and chap stick, in the bear-box at the camp site!!! This is a bit of a double-edge sword. Put it in the bear box and it might attract bears to your camp site, but put it in the car and they might break into the car and tear it to pieces. We elected to go with the bear box, but this also lead to us being completely paranoid at any little noise outside the tent during the night. It didn’t help that we had the rain-fly on the tent to help keep the tent a little warmer and the breeze would blow it around and you couldn’t ever tell if what you were hearing was a huge bear outside the tent, or the rain-fly brushing the ground a little bit. I never had a thermometer, but it got fairly chilly about 4:00am. I was guessing in the 40’s to low 50’s. Fortunately my sleeping bag is fairly well insulated and I was OK as long as I had some jammies on.
The second night we stayed there I asked the park ranger what the forecast was for the evening and he said there was a thunderstorm watch in effect until about 11:00pm. Sometime during the night, that obviously changed into a thunderstorm warning and it hit us about 11:30pm. It’s one thing to experience a thunderstorm at ground-level when the storm is above you. It’s entirely different to be at over 6000 feet and IN the thunderstorm. This was the second time I had been in one, but the first time I tried to camp through one. It was pretty intense. The lightning was so bright it was blinding even with your eyes closed and the thunder would ricochet off all of the mountain peaks. Very cool, and very frightening. The rain and wind would pound the tent and then it would lightning and thunder. You could hear the wind coming from a long way off, building speed and intensity. It would start as a little roar, then build into a whisper, then it would keep building into a shriek and just when you thought it would rip the tent right off the ridge it would shift and go off in a different direction. It was the most bizarre thing. Dolby Digital has nothing on this. Due to the side of the ridgeline we were on we didn’t get hit with the really bad winds even though there was a time or two when we weren’t sure if the tent was going to make it, but it did just fine. One guy, on the other side of the ridge said that it pulled half his tent off the ground and ripped up four of his tent-stakes. He had to curl up in a ball and ride it out until the storm died down enough for him to run outside and re-stake the tent. During all of this, I was thinking “at least we are dry and it’s not hailing.” I had already decided that if it hailed we’d have to make a run for it. There were two storms that night and while the first was the most intense the second one lasted much longer. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep!
When we woke up in the morning we learned that a bear had broken into someone’s new mini-van and ate all their food. We went down to check out the car and talked to them for a bit. They were nice, and were obviously not happy as the bear tore things up pretty good. It busted out a side-window on the back and crawled in. They said it got everything – a few pounds of hamburger meat, a couple of pounds of peanuts, some peanut butter, etc. Pretty much everything a little black bear would love. They had even been so nice as to crack the windows so the scent would escape and the bear could get its claws in and pull the window out. How nice of them. My g/f and I wanted to ask them “what the fuck were you thinking?” but they were already having a bad day.
It was a long drive home, but it was a good vacation and a much needed break from work.
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