Sorry it's taken so long for this first entry. We stayed last night at the KOA in Townsend, Tenn., which is just north of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and the KOA has wireless internet, but it was kinda sketchy and we got tired of dinking with it, so this is the first opportunity I've gotten to write anything. It's currently 11:46pm on Sunday and we're on I-40 heading East. Destination: Somewhere across the Virginia border where we'll stay tonight. BUT, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll do a quick recap of the hightlights from the beginning.
I got hassled (surprise, surprise) at the SL airport security. They had to do a search of my carry-on bag. When I asked the guy why, he said "you had a couple books that confused the machine into thinking you had some kind of liquid". Well of course. Who hasn't confused the latest Grisham Novel with a bottle of hand sanatizer?
The flight to Chicago was more or less w/o incident. Got to see the Chicago skyline from the plane, that was pretty cool. The Sears Tower, which if I'm not mistaken I believe is the tallest building in the US, was an absolute monster of a building. I think if I worked in it I'd be paranoid and constantly looking out the window for a roque commercial jet heading towards me.
The flight to Knoxville was also w/o incident. The plane was tiny, however. Three seats across, two on one row, and then a single seat on the other side, making it both an aisle AND a window seat. Once at the airport I got stuck waiting for my "valet bag", meaning the plane didn't have enough overhead room for my carry-on bag and they had to put it with the check-on luggage. While waiting an extremely friendly Tenn. native lady struck up a conversation with me. People here light up when I tell them we're from Utah. Kind of funny. I guess Utah sounds kind of exotic to people here or something. Everyone here has that crazy Gomer Pyle accent.
Car rental was a breeze. We ended up with a blue Kia Sedona (minivan). At first we weren't really excited at the prospect of calling a Kia home for a week, but thus far it's been a decent car. Lots of room, lots of cup holders...the necessities.
We floundered like a mother trying to find our KOA in Townsend. We have every high-tech navigation device under the sun and maps galore...not to mention some wireless internet we vamped from some random building we drove by, but we couldn't see the sign. We drove up and down the main drag like 5 times. FINALLY we saw the KOA (small) sign on one of the many campgrounds they had in town. And the truly ironic thing was...it was precisely the building we pulled up to to get wireless internet in order to FIND the KOA. HEE HAW. Long story, I think I'd sooner forget...
ANYWAY, this is getting too long, I'll try to be more brief. Next morning we packed up and headed for the the park, Great Smoky Mountains NP. It's apparently the most visited park in the nation. After having experienced it...I can say definitively it's not because it's the most impressive park, by any means. Probably due more to proximity to the 9 billion or however many people live in these parts. The are called "smoky" because of the apparent blue haze that is visible when you view them from various viewpoints around the park.
The first place we went was what a ranger lady described as "the most visited part of the most visited park", a place called Cade's Cove. Some old school settlement with a bunch of old cabins and baptist churches and stuff. The sites were cool, but it was a one way loop and people drove SO FREAKING SLOW!!! Like 10 mph if you were lucky. So even if someone was polite enough to pull off and let you pass, it wasn't 8 seconds before you were behind the next guy. And if they saw something REALLY exciting, like a mangy deer 100 yards away in the field, they would stop in the middle of the road for 10 min. and point...and there wasn't anything you could do. The coolest thing we saw in Cade's Cove though would probably be this authentic water powered mill that was actually grinding corn and creating corn meal. You could see the gears turning and hear the grindage, and see the powder come shooting out. I believe the ranger guy there answering questions told us it could gring 150 lbs. per hour. Pretty cool stuff.
Next we hiked about a 1.3 one-way trail up to a waterfall called Laurel Falls. It was very pretty, but not spectacular. And there were tons of people and warning signs and stuff. Typical easy-to-reach national park attraction. It's really pretty in the Smokies. Very green, almost like a tropical forest. I guess my only complaint with the mountains here are they are almost TOO uniform. Just green trees completely covering them from top to bottom.
We ate lunch at Gatlinburg. Quite the tourist trap of a place. They even had their own smaller scale version of the Space Needle. We didn't spend much time there, needless to say. The next hike we did was much cooler. A 2 mile, one-way hike to a place called Chimney Tops. It was 1,700 feet of elevation gain to a small peak with some rock outcroppings which afforded you a nice view of the surrounding area. The trail had lots of streams and bridges, all very green and pretty, and a bonus scramble up the rocks at the end to get to the top. AND, we even saw a couple black bears on the trail. A mama bear and her cub, we believe. Bear sightings for me have been very rare, so this was especially cool.
Finally we made the drive up to the highest point in the park (which incidentally is also the hightest point in the state of Tennessee), which is called Clingman's Dome. You drive most of the way up, and then hike the last 1/2 mile on a wide, paved trail. Tons of people, very popular. At the top you actually cross the Appalachian Trail which is some crazy 2,100 mile trail that pretty much crosses the entire range. Clingman's Dome is the highest point on that trail as well. At the top they've built this large, cement perch which is suspended probably 50 feet above the trees, undoubtedly so you can actually have a view, which would be otherwise obscured by the trees, and a long, spiral walkway that you use to get to the top. Pretty cool view. BUt again...just green tree-covered hills, for the most part. I guess I'm a mountain snob being from Utah and all.
Lastly, we attempted to drive to North Carolina's state highpoint, Mount Mitchell. The only road to get there is known as the Blue Ridge Parkway. The BRP is a nice road and all, but my GOODNESS it is one slow, windy, monotonously similar around every corner road. As such, it turned out to be a race against daylight to even get to the top. And then once we arrive, the 100 foot trail to the summit was closed for reconstuction. Doh! At least we saw a really cool sunset on the way up.
Whew, that was more than I intended to write. But you know me, I'm incapable of anything less than novel-esque. :) One thing I forgot. This young ranger at the main Smoky Mountains Visitor Center had THE thickest accent you've ever heard in your life. Like Jordan said, these people may be Rhode Scholars for all we know, but anyone that talks like that just comes across as a few cards short of a full deck. Like it was borderline not even being able to understand what he was saying. Very slow and deliberate like. Funny. Okay I'm done, I need to give up the computer and let someone else write something. Until next entry...
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