Monday, July 27, 2009

National Parks--National Treasures

This morning I was listening to a discussion about our National Parks on the Diane Rehm Show.

As usual on our travels, we hit several National Parks on our recent vacation: the Great Smoky Mountains, Cumberland Gap, Mammoth Cave, and the Stones River Civil War Battlefield in Tennessee. Over the years, we have hit several of the biggies--Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Canyonlands, and Arches. We have also hit several of the lesser known parks, such as the Black Canyon in Colorado, Theodore Roosevelt in North Dakota, Cumberland Gap, and Bandoleer in New Mexico.

No matter where we are, we are in awe of the majesty and variety of the United States. And we appreciate the work that is done in the National Parks. The knowledge and courtesy of the Park personnel. The facilities. The variety of opportunities in each park.


My very favoritest on this trip was Cumberland Gap. For one thing, it was quiet, very quiet. I don't recall hearing a single airplane while we were there. Tucked into the corners of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, the gap is nestled among tallish, soft Eastern-style mountains. This mountain girl felt protected and very much at home.

On Sunday when we went to the visitor center, we learned of a ranger-led trip up to the Hensley settlement, an early 20th century settlement that is much more like the 19th century. It was a slow day at the park, and it turned into a private tour for Dick and me.


The settlement consisted of one large extended family. It sits on the absolute top of the mountain, in Viriginia. It would have been a cold, wind-blown desolate place to live in the winter. But on this July day, it shone under the bright blue sky; the fields were green and lush.

We visited several of the remaining cabins and outbuildings on the property. The ranger pointed out lots of flora to us, including a few chestnut saplings, which unfortunately will not reach maturity because of the blight. I could have spent several hours hanging around taking photos and just being.

Friday, July 24, 2009

On the Road, 2009--Part 1

A short update on our travels, 2009
This is a copy of an email sent earlier. But it covers several highlights from the trip.

We are currently off-line in central Kentucky, but we do have some time to relax, so I thought I would start an update from the road. Tomorrow we start north and east toward home, and we will be visiting various family members along the way.

Our travels have been varied and in some cases unexpected. The short week in Madison County, NC with Dream Builders was a good experience for us. It has been a very long time since we have hung out with teenagers, and we were with a good bunch of kids from Howard County. A couple of perks along the way included a cook-out along the French Broad River with live Blue Grass music and an evening at Fun Depot in Asheville, where Dick got to try out go-karts. The young folks also introduced us to Sonic drive-in restaurants. Sonic, like Dairy Queen, seems to be a part of small-town America.

Following the week in NC, we headed west to Tennessee. We got to share the 4th of July with our friends, the Dales, who are now living in Knoxville. From there we headed south toward the Smokies for a couple of nights at a KOA. One day in the Smokies is never enough--why we didn't even get to see a bear!!

On Monday we headed to Lynchburg, TN, home of Jack Daniels. As we were checking in, Monday evening, we got word from Fred that his stepson, Cyp, had committed suicide. As we waited for news of a memorial, we took a look at our itinerary so that we could head back to Winston-Salem as soon as we knew something. It was clear that Shiloh Battlefield [and my first visit to Mississippi] was going to be reserved for another time. When we learned that the celebration of Cyp's life was to be on Friday, we decided to visit the Stones River Battlefield and Franklin, TN. Franklin, TN, is also on our list for another trip. We enjoyed the little town.

We discovered real southern hospitality, when we had to take the car to a Dodge dealer the morning we had to leave for Winston. One of those little lights on the dash that can't be ignored had come on, and we had to see it taken care of almost ASAP. The Dodge shop in Franklin took us in bright and early on Thursday morning, and while they worked on the car, the various folks in the sales room made us feel welcome as we waited.

Once on the road, we hightailed it back to NC. For us a 450-mile day is not usual, but we spelled each other driving and got in about 7 pm. Friday we got to have lunch with Fred and Barbara. Heather and Samantha had driven down from Md; and of course, Susan and Lee were there, as were Phil and Carol. Cyp's friends did a lovely job of honoring him at a park in Winston, then Barbara's sister had everyone back to her home for food.

Saturday morning we headed west again. Dick had suggested that we resume our trip at Mammoth Cave where we had several reservations as of Tuesday. We added the Cumberland Gap to our itinerary. We stayed in the town of Cumberland Gap, TN, for three evenings. The Cumberland Gap Nat'l Park may not be the first NP to come to mind, but we found it to be a wonderful place.

Saturday evening we had dinner at a local restaurant--one of two in town, where we sat on the lower level, once the town livery stable, and listened to home-grown blue grass music on the stage one level up. I was in heaven and it wasn't even West Virginia.

Sunday afternoon we had our own private tour of the Hensley settlement on top of the mountain in the eastern end of the park. A ranger drove us up in a four-wheel drive Blazer. We had a couple of hours up on top, and I got some wonderful "Beth" photos.

Monday morning, was a tour of the Gap Cave, up above the town. We then drove up to the Pinnacle where you can look down into the Gap itself. Monday evening after supper we walked the saddle of the Cumberland Gap. Even though my direct forebears did not travel the Gap, Ashbys did and they settled in Kentucky. [Check with Missie for further details on the Kentucky Ashbys].

I fell in love with the Cumberland Gap area. The mountains there are intimate; they aren't as high as the Smokies or the mountains around Asheville. They are higher than the WV mountains. But they felt unspoiled--that is not the case, but I did not feel any of the bustle of the touristy Smokies or the metropolitan-area feel of WV. One contributor was definitely the absence of air traffic. You couldn't hear traffic in most places, and you never heard an airplane on its way in or out of the Baltimore-Washington corridor.

The decision to visit the Gap was a very good one.

Tuesday morning, we had a leisurely breakfast back at the restaurant in the Gap and once again headed west toward Mammoth Cave. We stopped briefly to see the Cumberland Falls, nice, but not Ohiopyle. Not on the return to list.

We arrived at Mammoth in time to visit the Visitor Center and pick up our tickets for three tours. A ranger suggested a small country eatery called "Porky Pig's Diner" in Pig, KY. Not our best experience, but authentic.

We make it a point to check out local restaurants as we travel. Four weeks of chain-restaurant food gets really awful. We have visited several unique places and had a couple of unique experiences.

The tours at Mammoth were wonderful. The lantern tour got me thinking about my own caving days. The New Entrance tour is one to repeat. Just the entrance is something to experience again. It makes some of the various cathedral tower climbs seem downright spacious. We got to see a lot of the cave we hadn't seen before. As with the River Styx tour. It focused on the geology of the cave and again I was back in my own spelunking days. We even did one section called Fat Man's misery that came somewhat close to the wildcave experience.

While in the Mammoth area, we had some encounters with local culture. First of all, the counties in the area are all DRY. Bowling Green--30 miles away--was the closest place to buy any kind of alcohol. So we drank a lot of sweet tea, until the last evening, when the ranger told us about a couple of restaurants that served drinks [I can't begin to fathom the logic on this one]. We had a Mexican dinner complete with sangria and Negro Modelo.

Just down from our KOA "Kabin" was a simple restaurant that was under new ownership, so we tried it out our first morning. The owner was quite friendly and when we asked about an Amish buggy road sign just down the road, she told us there was a fairly large Amish community in the area. In fact, her husband who is a CPA goes out to the Amish families with his laptop to do their taxes. They won't come to him, but with a battery-operated laptop he can go to them. We saw lots of Amish families at Mammoth and assumed they were from the area.

Yesterday we went back down to the restaurant, and several Amish folk were there. They had just finished breakfast and some of them were in the process of buying antiques from the owner. We spoke with a couple from Iowa who said they were in the area for a "Carriage Meeting". It is a carriage makers convention that meets once again in various places across the country. Later in talking with the owner, she confirmed that these folks are old-order Amish. They had come to Kentucky via car with a hired driver. They also took the opportunity to pick up Eastern antiques. one gentleman sells them back home.

Thursday morning, we had breakfast at a restaurant in Horse Cave. It is in an old gas station. The owner there was in conversation with someone about buying advertising. He was a big burly guy wearing a very handsome leather vest that read "Bikers for Christ". Dick talked to him about that--it's an organization of about 400 bikers. In Newport, TN, we had seen the local "Bikers' Church" 'and their thrift shop.

It is great fun to see different parts of the country and meet folk who would find Howard County to be a foreign country.

We are actually on the home stretch of the trip. We arrived in Batesville, IN, last night for a weekend visit with Dick's cousin Lydia and her family. It is always a pleasure for me to see a part of the world where large farms still flourish, where developers haven't started carving up the countryside for McMansions. Our American breadbasket still exists, although I couldn't help but wonder if we were actually looking at the American ethanol basket.

Love to all,
You are in our thoughts and we are looking forward to getting back home.
Beth