We Have Come This Far, Always Believing

What a strange day. It didn’t really have a beginning, since I went right from writing last night’s post into watching breaking news coverage of what at the time looked like a random crime spree around Boston but that was getting national coverage because all the media in the country was already there. When I decided to go to bed around 2:30 that was still all it was.

From there, things got weird. The first important piece of information is that the Motel 6 sheets were made of some strange material that got much warmer than most sheets. The other key piece of information is that the TV in the room had no sleep timer. Combined, these factors led me to wake up several times during the night to adjust the heat, while also hearing a version of the story that was slightly different from the last one. It wasn’t until 8:00 when the alarm went off that Morning Joe proclaimed “it’s all connected, folks.”

On Top of Old Smoky

While it wasn’t covered in cheese, it was still the main event on today’s schedule. But before I get to that, there is much scenic driving to report:

Chasing Waterfalls

Success!

I laid out a rather ambitious plan for today – carefully navigate to 4 waterfalls in a precise order and then wind up a dirt road to set up camp and climb a mountain. All this needed to happen within 12 hours.

With so many places where parts of today’s plan could have gone awry, I’m pleased to report that I reached each of those destinations and did everything I wanted to do at all of them. The only low points of the day, and to call them low points is a stretch – were that I didn’t get as good of a picture of Looking Glass Falls as I had hoped and I wasn’t so happy with the Max Patch Road. But more on those momentarily. 

After the Morning After

 North Carolina comes through again. Having trudged through 200 miles of fog yesterday all through Virginia – your remember Virginia: my least-favorite state due to its questionable politics, overeager state troopers, those ugly-named suburbs of DC, and Shenandoah National Fog Park – I awoke today to a Virginia invasion across its southern border. In other words, Wildcat Rock was still enveloped quite thickly in fog. In fact, after turning out all the car lights last night the fog still seemed to glow even though there weren't any signs of civilization for miles. Spooky.

With no Plan B, I just kept on going down the Blue Ridge Parkway, knowing that the forecast called for “AM clouds / PM sun” and that the road would be rising higher than in Virginia, which might put me above the fog. Apparently I also had the sun on my side, as it burned off all of the fog by the time I stopped in Boone (yes, a real place name – as is “Gooch Gap”) at 9:00. Of course, by that point I had reached the one stretch of the Parkway that I was able to drive last year so there was nothing new to see. I was even there at the same time of day.

Everything Old Is New Again

So here we are again, on the eve of another road trip adventure. Having procrastinated all day, my bags are finally packed, my itinerary set, and my dog sufficiently confused. In the morning the two of us will head out once again towards the Blue Ridge Mountains. This time, the goal was initially to go back and see the places on the Blue Ridge Parkway that were closed when I was there last February. But then when I found out that the governor of North Carolina will personally send you some pretty good swag for driving the entire 469 miles and becoming an “end-to-ender” I decided to try that. Throw in a little bit of Great Smoky Mountains National Park that I missed last time (namely Clingman’s Dome, the highest point in the park), some waterfalls in nearby Transylvania County, and a couple of strategic stops along Skyline Drive at Shenandoah, and my week was pretty much filled out. As usual, here’s the plan, courtesy of Google Maps: 

  

Country Roads, Take Me Home

Most of the time, I love my Copina Jr. She reliably gets me from point A to point B, only ever getting confused at times when it doesn’t affect (there’s that word again) my directions. She can usually figure out where I’m trying to point here, even if, like today, all I tell her is to find “Grandfather” near “Newland, NC.” Her “warnings” about traffic conditions are largely useless, but we’ve come to an understanding on that point, and I no longer hold it against her. She can even perform slightly better than a blind toddler when GPSing in Boston.

But sometimes it becomes painfully obvious that Copina Jr. a machine and doesn’t comprehend the emotional impact of sending me through, say, 25 miles of hilly southern Virginia farmland via windy backwater roads on a day when I’ve already traveled 300 miles and still have another 150 to go. When we can manufacture a GPS that takes this into account and offers “least frustrating route” under its options, then we’ll know that we’ve truly created an artificial sentient being.

Blue Smoke

Have I mentioned that mountain weather changes rapidly? If not, you should know that mountain weather changes rapidly. In addition to doing things like closing Skyline Drive in 13 minutes, today I saw firsthand some more results of the strange confluences of moisture and strong winds that occur in places like this. And once again, nature did its best to foil my plans. But today I was not about to be defeated.

Can’t You Just Feel the Moonshine?

This morning I awoke in the east, and now I am in the uttermost west. Well, probably not the most uttermost, but there are several 6,000-foot peaks between Asheville and my current home: The Comfort Inn & Suites at Dollywood Lane in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Let’s parse that name for a moment, because it’s perhaps the greatest place name in the history of mankind. Dollywood Lane does, in fact, refer to the theme park based around the large-bosomed country singer. Dollywood is right down the street, and while I don’t plan on going, Ms. Parton has infiltrated much of this town, for better or for worse. Her ghoulish likeness is on my room key, advertising “Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede,” which is apparently some kind of strange animatronic dinner theater production. I bet if I tried hard enough I could come away with at least a life-sized cardboard cutout of her. But wait! We haven’t even talked about the name “Pigeon Forge” yet! Picture, if you will, a pigeon forge. Is this an iron smelting forge fed by pigeons? “Quick, Larry! Throw some more pigeons on the fire before that metal hardens!” Or maybe it’s a forge that makes pigeons? Who knows.

Snow & Opulence

Really only one thing happened today: The Appalachian mountains became larger, closer, and more picturesque; going from this:

 to this.