The Fog Comes On Little Cat Feet

At the last minute, we decided we couldn't leave the Asheville area without a visit to Connemara--Carl Sandburg's home in Flat Rock, North Carolina. After we had breakfast and re-packed the car, shoving tent here and cooler there, we were off.

Like Lincoln, every state claims Sandburg; North Carolina makes a good claim. The Sandburg family had been living in the midwest in the 1940s, but Sandburg's wife Lilian desired to live in a more temperate climate prompting their move south. The family purchased Connemara and lived there for 22 years until Sandburg's death in 1967. It was and remains a fully functioning farm on which Lilian raised the champion goats she brought with her from Michigan and Carl was able to lose himself in the forest and write. The approach is wooded and opens onto a pond with fish, snapping turtles, snakes and swans above which the house sits about a half mile up a hill. Leaving the parking lot and moving towards the pond is like stepping into another time and like leaving everyone and everything else behind. I've always been smitten with the romance of writing and it's hard to not be lost in the atmosphere of Connemara.

Connemara is a National Park and that is, in part, why it is special. When Sandburg died, Lilian decided that because of his politic and nationalism and literary themes, his home and all of its contents belonged to America. She left the house exactly as it had been: all of the furniture, mail, Sandburg's collection of 14,000 books, typewriters, dishes, linens--all of it remains and remains where it was at the time she gifted the property to the Park Service just a few months following his death. In the front room, on an end table next to a low leather chair is a copy of Life magazine with Lucille Ball on the cover. It is left there as if Sandburg himself has just set it down and left the room. Chris was struck by the lack of restrictions. We were asked to not touch anything, but we were able to walk through the rooms relatively freely and get in close to see thing with wonder. The materials he used to compile his biographical volumes on Lincoln were donated to a university and the family took some personal tokens, but otherwise the house is a memorial, a monument and a bit of magic.

The rest of the day was a long drive to Savannah and we arrived in the early evening. The flora changes almost exactly at the state line and palm trees and Spanish moss are abundant. Considering the heat in Chicago, I have to say it's lovely here. It's been in the 90s but it hasn't been humid--which we're told is unusual and a gift.

We wandered last night up and down the avenues of City Market and had dinner at a place that did not have good food but that did have outside seating that allowed us to watch people strolling past and hear the musicians at the end of the promenade. There are as many tourists here as were in Asheville, but there is more variety to them. On one side of us at dinner was a family from the Netherlands who didn't realize their pepperoni pizza would have meat on it and they were vegetarians and behind us another group of Europeans, who wondered just how much alcohol was in the beer here. It reminds me a bit of Merida in this way.

Today, we headed to the Walking Tours office and signed up for as many as we could fit in while we're here. On our way, the best thing I could ever imagine happening in Savannah happened. Chris walked into a store, tried on and purchased a seersucker suit. He says he only bought it because I was giddy about it, but I think he likes it, too. It's currently being tailored and will be ready for us before we head out of town. P.S. It's a three piece suit, and it comes with two pairs of pants and one of them is white. I wanted him to get spectator shoes, too, but a man can only be pushed so far. I should mention that it was the type of store where one could also purchase ministerial robes, there were lots of pictures of Steve Harvey and Chris may have been the only Caucasian customer in ever.

After an early lunch, we met Ryan at the monument in Reynolds Square and took off from there. His tour was a strolling tour of significant buildings and monuments in the historic district. It began with an explanation of how the 13th colony was formed in 1733. It was originally not a royal colony but a colony with a board of trustees, who had only four rules for its development: no hard liquor, no slavery, no lawyers and no Catholics. All were considered unsavory and a threat to family values and successful labor. Each of these rules--for various reasons good and bad--were eventually overturned.

The river walk in Savannah is terrifically scenic. The architecture and infrastructure in this part of the city was designed around the 18th century cotton industry and you don't realize you are so far above the river until you reach Bay Street and see that you are several stories above it and that streets run below the ones on which you stand so that the wagons could come through from below and the traders above could see the quality and quantity of the cotton at stake. Georgia remains the fourth largest port in the country.

There are a number of William Jay buildings that are architectural beauties that were also highlighted on our walk, and I know I'm the only person in America who has never seen Forrest Gump, even though it is on television every single time I'm anywhere that has cable channels to flip through, but we learned about which scenes were filmed where and I was generally lost during this part of the tour.

There were a dozen or so monuments that Ryan told us about and that I won't share here because it will lack context; suffice to say, I learned more about Count Pulaski here than I ever have at home and I enjoy a day off school each year in his honor.

The day gets progressively hotter as it goes on and by late afternoon it was time to sit in the hotel pool and drink cold beers, which we did until it was time to head out for dinner and our evening walking tour: Haunted Savannah. While the subject matter was ridiculous, the tour brought us to squares we hadn't seen earlier in the day and the architecture in the historic district is worth a walk in the evening so you can see in windows. There were several eight, nine and 10-ish-year-old boys on the tour with us and they loved every story and took lots of pictures and were sure they had captured orbs and apparitions on what used to be called film. At dusk, the bats come out and are all about which was creepier for me than any ghost story, and, Candace, our tour guide who hails from Milwaukee, commented more than once that the cicadas were loud and that was a sure sign that the temperature was going to spike in the coming days. I imagine that heat in Chicago has to go somewhere and it may well be coming here.

Tomorrow, we have a Civil War walking tour and will likely spend some time in the Revolutionary War Cemetery in the historic district. Once upon a time, I wanted to visit Flannery O'Connor's house, but now I'm not sure now how it could possibly compete with Connemara.

We'll Respect Your Privacy

On our way out of Smoky Mountain National Park, we drove through Cherokee, North Carolina. It is a Reservation for the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation—those people who remain on the traditional homeland of the tribe. The majority of the Cherokee were removed to Oklahoma and are recognized now as the Western Band. Today, there are about 14,000 members living in the 56,000 acres of reservation territory in North Carolina. The parts of town closest to the SMNP have been reduced to caricature. There, it is synonymous with Pigeon Forge. There are lots of Minnetonka moccasins for sale and turquoise available that is not indigenous to the area or remotely associated with the Cherokee. That comment made, all municipal and street signs are in English and Cherokee, using the syllabary developed by Sequoyah in the 1800s, and the governmental structure is tribal with a principal chief at its head. We spent the morning at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, a place I think my sister Kristen—whose great compassion was evident upon her reading of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—would love and have a difficult time working her way through. Some exhibits are hokey with holographic videos and dioramas, but there is a wealth of information—most of which I had never encountered before—and I think—for anyone who is going to pick up some arrowheads and a shot glass that says you were in Cherokee—you should earn your souvenirs with a visit. The halls dedicated to the treaties and the Indian Removal Act, the role of Cherokee women and the Trail of Tears were particularly captivating to me.

We doubled back to the Blue Ridge Parkway and took that from Cherokee to Asheville. It was alternately breathtakingly beautiful and breathtakingly death defying. There’s a reason they’re called Smoky Mountains and the rains we experienced each day gave way to mist and fog and mountain smoke that decreased visibility to 20 or 30 feet in some places. Cherokee to Asheville is downhill most of the way and that hill is a mountain with sharp turns and without guard rails. Chris tells me it was stunning. I mostly had my eyes clamped closed. I did have my eyes open once and spotted a wild turkey at the side of the road.

Our B&B isn’t in Asheville but in the next ville over: Hendersonville, which is also a charming town with shops and restaurants and a General Store that has been in constant operation since 1838 and still has wooden floors. It’s possible it has always sold mostly crap, but now it definitely does. In any case, as I mentioned last time, the B&B is so called because there is a bed and we were served breakfast but it isn’t what you’re picturing if you fancy yourself B&B goers. In truth, it isn’t really in Hendersonville either; it’s more out in the middle of nowhere up a dirt road and behind a horse farm and then into the woods. We passed some stray dogs and two waif-like children on our way and when we arrived we weren’t sure we had because we found ourselves in front of a house with no signs of commercial endeavor. Our hostess ushered us into our two room suite. The first has a jukebox and pool table and a Lazy Boy and a rocker. Attached is a closet with a refrigerator in it, in which the family who resides here keeps some of their food but when they’re getting it they’ll respect our privacy. We can use it too, if we want… Our bedroom is off the billiards room and its decorated like a motel at the seaside: starfish are a prominent theme and each sheet of wallpaper almost meets the next. They’re clearly trying hard; they’ve painted clouds on the ceiling and there was a single pink long stem rose in a bud vase on an end table when we arrived, but they have three beast-size dogs and the whole place smells quite a bit like they got wet and ran through shaking their pheromones on every last piece of furniture and then rolling it around on the carpet. All of this would fall into the “you get what you pay for” category and not fall into the creepy one until we asked about our room key and were told that our host was never given any keys for any of the doors in the house and asked us to please not lock our room door else they would have to remove the door to get in. Again, they’d be sure to respect our privacy while we were here with them. None of it mattered because Chris and I hadn’t showered in four days and were desperate to get away from her and out of our campfire-stinking clothes. After good hot showers, we left our doors unlocked and went into Asheville to get the lay of the land.

I could live in Asheville. I know I could live in Asheville because I was raised in a town exactly like it. Substitute bluegrass music for Frank Lloyd Wright and Asheville is nearly identical to Oak Park. It is littered with boutiques and art galleries and ice cream shops and cafes and actually has some of the same shops as are in Oak Park. Chris was going to trade in the Saturn for a Subaru so we would fit in better and for my part I was going to plaster myself in FREE TIBET bumper stickers but I decided I looked enough like all of the other Southern Appalachian lesbians who had relocated here that I didn’t need to do much more. We wandered up and down hill, into and out of shops and settled on an Indian place named Mela for dinner. Given the fact that there were no Indians to be seen anywhere in the restaurant, including in the kitchen, which was open air, dinner was quite good. After, we went to Pack Place, a park in the center of the historic district, where there was a Shindig. There were a ton of bluegrass bands and cloggers on stage and pick up song circles around the park. It was a lovely way to finish the evening.

Any disparagement of the B&B stopped with the second B. There were three people catering to the two of us and we were served frittata with sundried tomatoes, spinach and feta with a potato crust, grits, muffins, strawberry/banana smoothies and coffee all of which we enjoyed on the lanai abutting the woods. We chatted a bit and it turns out that our hostess lived in Chicago—at 75th and Western—for a time. She was doing mission work. We had to appreciate the irony of Southern Appalachians coming to Chicago to do mission work at the same time that Chicagoans are going to Southern Appalachia to do mission work. They left us to our breakfast and that kind of decadence first thing in the morning led to a different kind of decadence: we napped right after, but we made it to Hendersonville by noon. It’s a smaller and calmer than Asheville and mostly closed on Sundays but it was a nice stroll and we actually returned there for dinner, eating at a place called The Black Rose and enjoying decent Irish food. Between, we spent several hours in Asheville, in and out of different shops than those we had visited the day before and taking a rather leisurely break in a coffee shop mid day, something I don’t think we’ve ever done at home but we have enjoyed more than once on vacation.

Returning home, we visited the Mill Pond Cemetery and found several graves of men who had served in the Confederate States Army. It was a tiny graveyard and we left when a woman came to tend the grave of a loved one. We’re back now and Chris is working on a new song about Jesus coming back to Kentucky. You should ask him to sing it; so far, it’s pretty good.

Ducking into a Coffee Shop for some Wifi

We left Cumberland Falls State Park on Wednesday and, again on Susan’s advice, stopped at the Museum of Appalachia in Norris, Tennessee. Basically, everyone should do whatever Susan says. The museum is a remarkable exhibit of artifacts and buildings collected by a man named John Rice Irwin over the course of 50 years. Irwin traveled Southern Appalachia extensively, talking to folks and collecting stories among other things. A goal of the museum is authenticity and, in fact, the buildings are not recreations; they have been moved from their original locations throughout Appalachia—some of them with the original furniture and tools and other artifacts of everyday life still in them. All of which you can see from the front door because these homesteads are tiny. There’s too much there to try to tell here, but there were notable exhibits… Six by nine foot free standing jail cells from Madisonville, Tennessee, made in 1874 and containing four steel bunks each… The enormous display of bluegrass and homemade instruments showing that people will make music no matter how little they have at their disposal to do so… The whole building dedicated to Harrison Mayes a crackpot Christian whose goal was to erect huge concrete crosses waxing poetic about Jesus all across this country and the rest of the world. He hoped to have his concrete crosses on each of the planets in our solar system by 2020… The man and woman playing guitar and mandolin on the porch of the Homestead Smokehouse who did a Carter Family tune for us at Chris' request... The peacocks and goats and chickens and horses milling about… Mark Twain’s family cabin which was brought to the museum from Possum Trot, Tennessee… There are 36 buildings on the property; it would take hours or days to go through them all attentively. We enjoyed what we had an opportunity to see.

We continued on to Smoky Mountain National Park, which is accessed by a drive through Pigeon Forge and then Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Take equal parts Wisconsin Dells and Nascar and Walmart on Christmas Eve; add volume, neon, ill-fitting outfits (many of which are animal print and made of lycra); stir in traffic and Confederate flags and cigarettes and that’s the tip of the iceberg in these towns. You can see the mountains. You can feel the elevation in your ears. But still you must inch past Cooter’s Dukes of Hazard Museum and Ripley’s and theaters advertising shows about the Hatfields and McCoys. Chris commented on the bizarre need to surround what little American wilderness we have left with grotesque symbols of American progress. Eventually, this tax gives way to the most beautiful place I’ve been in this country.

The park is enormous, and we camped on the North Carolina side, near Cherokee, NC, in Smokemont Campground. Those who are campers among you should know that the bathrooms are among the nicest I've ever seen: clean, flush toilets, large sinks, powerful air dryers. Those who are campers among you should know there are no showers in SMNP. None. So that may explain why we look the way we do in the pictures.

Our campsite was forested mountain on one side and babbling brook on the other, and while there were others in the campground, it was quiet and peaceful. I was able to read and Chris played his guitar by the fire night after night. Campers are friendly so we know there was a couple from Florida that was heading north in the direction from which we had come and another couple who had their grandson with them, although they forgot a second tent for him. Forgot? Chris and I worried that he had been kidnapped, but he was a teenager which made the tent thing weirder but the likelihood of his having been nabbed more remote. In any case, I was relieved when his parents showed up the next day with another tent. At one point, I was gathering kindling and looked up to realize that Chris had hung a shingle on a tree and was open for business. Some man from Peoria had sat down at our picnic table and was telling Chris that he hadn't seen his father in eight years. Fortunately for Chris, who doesn't like small talk let lone big talk, we had an appointment with some horses and had to leave.

This ride was an hour through the woods and up a mountain trail and, unlike our experience with Ray, we stayed together the whole time. It was fun to go up and down and we crossed the river on horseback. I expected this to be the place in our lives where our near death kayaking experience met our near death Mexican horseback riding experience and we would surely die but we didn't. Chris and I may be becoming better travelers.

There are elk. Their antlers are enormous and still covered in velvet and we had the good fortune and opportune timing to get close enough for some lovely pictures. They're a protected species and are carefully monitored by the Park Service. There are also deer and non-indigenous wild boar and coyote and wild turkeys. And there are bears and we saw them in a section of the park on the Tennessee side called Cades Cove. It is an 11 mile one way loop that maintains about 15 original structures from the mountain town that existed before the Park Service moved people off the land. A cove is a relatively flat area on a mountain top on which people can farm and live. People lived in Cades Cove until 1944, almost 10 years after the creation of the park. When Tennessee and North Carolina bought the land to give to the federal government, some people refused to sell. Eventually, the government was able to purchase their land and allowed people to remain in their homes until they died. Several private homes, churches and barns remain. One Methodist church was built with two doors, because it was built using the architectural designs for another Methodist church where men and women were so segregated that they filed into church through different doors. This church didn't follow the practice, but they did follow the architectural designs. There is a historic grist mill along the loop and I was brought to a distant memory of trip(s?) to the Mill Race Inn. But the memory is too vague; I remember only weeping willows and swans, nothing at all about what a mill is. So I re-learned. We did the loop of the cove twice because we had been told that the bears and elk graze in the early evening and we would know when someone saw one because there would be a bear jam. We saw in two separate spots an adult female bear with two or three cubs and were able to get out and move in relatively close to them. The cubs jump up into the trees and then slide right back down to the ground and tromp around behind their mother like all children do. The adult bears seem largely indifferent to the humans that surround them, although the notices throughout the park about it being bear habitat and how campers should respond if a bear becomes aggressive makes me think it is not always so. I had decided that I was going to be a good sport if we didn't see any bears. While I'm a little disappointed to not get to show just how sunshine-y I can be, I'm more happy that we saw them.

We're in Asheville now, staying at a bed and breakfast so named because there is a bed and we did have breakfast but it probably is not exactly what one pictures when they hear the term. More soon...

Playing Pranks in the Bath House

We woke to thunder and lightening and the pouring rain in the Kentucky woods and were glad that we were snuggled inside warm and dry but sad about our prospects for going outside. The storm left us without internet connection so we were relegated to the brochures found in the lobby for planning our day.

In fact, the storm was a blessing. It brought cool air and a gentle breeze with it and by mid morning, after an early nap and coffee at the lodge, we were on our way to Big South Fork Scenic Railway in Stearns for a three hour tour. The roads there were at turns beautiful and misty. Were we to work in the employ of the Kentucky Department of Tourism, we might suggest including the fact that the train doesn't run on Tuesdays in the brochure, but we did not despair. Instead we asked around town about the Blue Heron, an abandoned coal mining community outside of Stearns. Several winding roads later, we found ourselves there, at what is now an open air museum of sorts. Because coal mining communities were transient, the homes and bath houses and stores were not built to last and have either faded away into the landscape or were transported to other coal mining communities up or down the mountains. As a result, only bits and pieces of the original community remain. There is part of a tipper, a bridge and a sand house. Three dimensional outlines of the other buildings have been erected and, in each, visitors can hear the voices of those people who lived there, at least those 40 or so who participated in an oral history project run out of University of Kentucky. The voices tell of having to buy their own tools and explosives to extricate the coal from the earth and about the short shrift given to courtship and about the pranks played in the bath house and about how visiting was the primary form of entertainment. One woman said that her favorite pastime was reading Nancy Drew mysteries and that she considered the girl detective to be her best friend. I had to wonder how many of us have had that same thought in the last 80 years.

Blue Heron was abandoned in the early 60s and the museum was abandoned today, too. We were alone in all of the structures and then in the trails into the woods beyond. We tromped around on one of the trails for some time and it was calming to hear only the sounds of our own footsteps and the river water sometimes near and sometimes at a distance. The trail was slippery from the storm and there were some squishy patches that ultimately turned us back but not before we spent a couple of hours in that area of the Daniel Boone National Forest.

We retraced our path to a scenic overlook that was about 500 feet up from the Cumberland River. It was like God played all of his cards and used every single shade of green at the world's disposal in this one area. It was stunning. There were blackberries along the trail back from the vista so we had our eyes peeled for bears but saw none today.

Our plan after dinner was to sit on the veranda over the river, but alas the rains came again and so we were driven to the Great Room of the lodge for a spell. Chris is poring over the map now, thinking through the next leg of our trip... Tomorrow we set up our tent in the Smokies.

Beef: It's What's For Dinner

Susan and Dennis recommended back roads, so back roads we took and the hills began to roll almost immediately. The patch of land between Lexington and Cumberland Falls State Park is lovely, green, quiet. About half way between GPS Point A and GPS Point B, we saw a cattle trailer hauling what was easily 5000 pounds of nose to rear steer behind a pick up truck. Had it been Sunday, they might have been out for a drive in the country. As it was Monday, Chris wondered aloud whether they were headed to slaughter. A moment later, the pick up turned off the road we were on and we saw the sign for the livestock auction. It's in moments like these that I realize what excellent travel companions Chris and I make. There was no question but that we were going to the livestock auction and now.

There weren't any other Saturn Ions in the open field parking lot. It was mostly dusty pick up trucks, a few flat beds and dozens and dozens of trailers. Today was painfully hot. Hot like... well, probably hot like Kentucky. In any case, it was 97 degrees and sunny and we had the AC on full blast as we traveled the road so we were insulated. Spilling out of the car there were three simultaneous sensations: the hot wet inhalation of Kentucky humid, the sound of a thousand moos and the smell of all of those cows uttering them. It was a terrific assault.

The auction was in a room with stadium seating facing a pen above which sat the auctioneer and in which were two men who worked from either side, opening one door, using cattle prods to usher the animals along and then out a second door. The pen was small, maybe 15 feet by 30 feet, and the cows big and dumb. Mostly the men stood around and mostly the cows were docile; on occasion, there was some ruckus and those men dashed behind their protective fencing. The stadium seats were for the sellers who were straight out of central casting: dusty dungarees, different iterations of faded plaid, suspenders (and not the kind worn by a dandy), and baseball caps. These were men whose beards could only be referred to as whiskers, and who maintained a far off look in their eyes that belied the importance of the sale. The buyers sat in box seats at the top of the room and with the flick of a finger purchased 13 head at a time. It was strangely captivating and we stayed for the sale of probably 30 animals before heading out. We might have stayed longer but for the smoke. I forgot that there were still places where people can smoke indoors and where they can smoke indoors while at work. On the way back to the car, we walked along the stockyard; there were hundreds of pens, all full. The auction had started at 8:30, we were there at 11, and I'm sure it went on for most of the rest of the day.

We stopped once or twice more. There's an abundance of fruit stands and we'll bring some homemade peach jam home with us. One craft market we visited was housed in a log cabin built in 1863 and maintained by a local 4H club.

We arrived to the state park mid afternoon in the height of the heat. We visited the falls, which are rushing and loud and beautiful and walked along the river a bit but ultimately decided to spend what remained of the day at the pool to beat the heat. We met a couple who had just spent 11 days in the Smokies and said it was cooler and there were bears in abundance. They recommended several places for us to visit when we arrived.

Dinner included fried okra, fried catfish and fried hush puppies. Enough said.

At the 4H Craft Market, we had seen a posting for a three-hour bluegrass jam on the second Monday of the month for local and visiting talent in the Great Room of the lodge here in the state park. In fact, after dinner, there was music everywhere. In the lobby, there were two women playing mountain dulcimers and people sat in a song circle around them. In the Great Room, there were four guitar players, a fiddler and a harmonica player. In the room adjacent, there were several guitars, a mandolin and a woman was wheeling a piano in when we entered. We settled in the Great Room to listen, but after only two songs Chris itched for his guitar. He went for it and joined the circle. He played with them for an hour or so: Wagon Wheel, Jambalaya, Long Black Veil... It was music and music makes every day better.

We're hoping it will be cooler tomorrow, but we're hoping against hope because the reports say it will be close to 100. Luckily, we're clever and we'll figure out some way to make use of the day and enjoy it.

We're Off Like a Herd of Turtles

In the past, I didn't begin the blog until we arrived at our destination. I didn't blog at Miami International, I waited until Antigua. But on a road trip the road itself is the destination and so I begin despite the fact that Chris, who disparages Indiana which we spent much of the day driving through, sits next to me saying, "but nothing has happened yet."

Does the road trip begin on Dakin Street? It doesn't feel like it. Does it begin once we're out of Chicago? Too many (hundreds and wonderful) trips to Michigan makes my gut say no. Today, it wasn't a mile marker that started our trip but a bill board. The first one I saw in Indiana that said "HELL IS REAL" and I knew we were on our way. I knew, too, when we passed 12 churches in 8 miles of Ohio road. For sure I knew when we passed the Creation Museum at the Kentucky border. The billboard had a dinosaur on it and when I checked their website it boasted exhibits depicting that same dinosaur walking with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I wanted to go but 25 bucks a pop seemed a heavy price to pay just to poke some wicked fun. I guess I'll probably pay a heavier price when I spend eternity in that real hell the Hoosiers were advertising.

When we arrived at the motel in Georgetown, Kentucky, at which we had arranged to spend our first night, we discovered we had actually arranged to spend next Sunday night there. Unfortunately, we won't be here then so we had some scrambling to do. We used Priceline for the first time for this trip and the man behind the counter was quick to tell us that costumers using Priceline always pay more than the regular room rate to stay in his joint and that there was nothing he could do to help us because our contract was with Priceline. We were primed for some frustration, but it only took three minutes on the phone to cancel our existing reservation and book a room with him at his regular rate, about $10 less than we had originally agreed to pay.

A quick drive around Georgetown revealed that Kentucky closes up shop early on Sunday nights, that there are some lovely antebellum buildings and that Georgetown College--established in 1787 and the oldest Baptist college west of the Alleghenies--is probably not easily confused with Georgetown University.

Tonight we sleep. Tomorrow we drive.