27 June 2008

Reflections

There are a few things I'll always remember about the trip:

It should also be noted that there are some days when I didn't bother to report driving miles (starting and ending points should give you an idea of how far we drove).

9 June 2008

Depart: home; Arrive: Big Meadows Campground, Shenendoah National Park

It got cool after the sun went down. Eventually, we were glad of our sleeping bags. I was knocked out of drowsiness around 5.30 A.M. when Mary said "Hi there" to the deer grazing a foot from our heads. The deer here are fearless.

10 June 2008

Big Meadows Campground, Shenendoah National Park

A huge storm went through as we were at the winery. I was worried because Mary and I had left our tent unzipped, but an entirely different storm hit the campground much later, when we were able to zip up the tent in plenty of time.

11 June 2008

Depart: Big Meadows Campground; Arrive: Peaks of Otter Campground

When we got bored in the car, Joe read to us from the atlas. It translated Michigan's state motto as "If you seek a pleasant peninsula, simply look around you." Georgia's state nickname is "The Empire State of the South".

12 June 2008

Depart: Peaks of Otter; Arrive: Julian Price Memorial Park

A beautiful day. We stopped at Mabry Mill (restored, awesome), a music center (we watched two local guys play), and a few other places.

13 June 2008

Depart: Julian Price Memorial Park; Arrive: Bon Paul & Sharky's Hostel, Asheville

Visited the Folk Art Center, where we saw a very impressive exhibit of portfolio items of recent graduates of the graduate-level crafts program of a local community college. Wandered around Asheville, a great hippy town. Experienced the Friday night drum circle in the central park. Saw some good bluegrass.

14 June 2008

Asheville

Not many statistics today. We spent the day wandering around Asheville. Mary and I did a lot of window-shopping and spent a long time going through vintage movie posters in an antique store. (She wound up with a small poster from Tarzan and the She-Devil, that well-known classic film.) Our favorite poster was for a movie called Canadian Mounties vs. Atomic Invaders, but we sadly agreed that it was too big to survive a road trip.

We tried to make it to a music festival, but there was hard rain that only got fiercer as we approached our destination, so we agreed to turn back, at which point the rain gradually stopped. We spent the rest of a pleasant day in town. Mary and I had lunch at a pizza place called Mellow Mushroom, which we later learned was a chain. It was delicious, and the decorating was quite eclectic (lots of old gas pumps).

15 June 2008

Depart: Asheville; Arrive: Deep Creek campground, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

In the morning, before leaving Asheville, we went down to an area full of artists' studios, which are open once a month, and wandered around. Mary and I discussed what we would buy, given money and ability to transport, and she almost bought a collage.

16 June 2008

Deep Creek campground

Lauren, on our hike, 15 miles in: "So the rest of my body is like, 'this kinda sucks', but my feet are like, "TRAITOROUS BITCH! We quit!"

After dinner some folks from the next campsite got together with some mandolins, aguitar, and a bass (you haven't lived until you've watched a man pull a full-sized string bass out of a small tent). I worked up my nerve and went over to chat and wound up singing with them for a while. We were joined by a couple of other guitars and a flute. They played bluegrass and they were really good! I left after a while (my lack of instrument was a little awkward) and went back to our campsite to listen.

17 June 2008

Depart: Deep Creek campground; Arrive: Abrams Creek Campground, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

On our way around the Smokies we stopped at the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, which had been recommended by a woman Mary and I chatted with at our hostel in Asheville. (Joyce Kilmer wrote the "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree" poem.) It's an amazing old-growth forest with trees so large that it took the wingspan of three of us to get our arms around one of them. The forest was dense and lush and really beautiful.

The road, on the other hand, was totally terrifying. Imagine that you're driving on this, except that in addition to being made entirely of switchbacks, it's also curving around mountains. We were all terrified, and the bikers whizzing past us on their way to or from the motorcycle resort at the top of the mountain did not help matters!

18 June 2008

Depart: Abrams Creek campground; Arrive: Music City Hostel, Nashville

As Lauren noted, one comes to realize that the Nashville experience is either working in a bank or being treated like a tourist, and as long as the latter involves good music and possibly alcohol, there's no reason not to choose it.

We hopped from bar to bar listening to (free! pretty good!) live music, sitting at tables where we remained amazingly unnoviced by the waitstaff (which was great, since we didn't have to buy any drinks) as the bands tried hard to convince us we were having an Authentic Country Music Experience.

19 June 2008

Music City Hostel

A day of wandering around Nashville. Lots of greasy food: for breakfast, a bacon and cheese omelet in which the eggs were simply a vehicle for the melted cheese; two biscuits; and grits. For lunch, half a milkshake. Both meals were at an adorable 1939 soda fountain.

Nashville is full of large grey metal boxes, maybe 2'x3'x4', that play music. One played "Moon River" at me wistfully; one played opera; one played good old-fashioned country. It's very strange.

20 June 2008

Music City Hostel

We didn't expect our trip to the Jack Daniels Distillery to take all day. The drive down took an hour, through fairly scenic Tennessee countryside. The tour was really interesting. Now I know all about how Tennessee whiskey is made (it consumes many, many trees). It took us almost four hours to drive back: there was an accident ahead of us on the highway so we took a very long detour.

With that driving time and the traffic we'd observed previously in mind, Mary and I left a couple hours early to get to the Grand Ole Opry, which turned out to take only about twenty minutes. Luckily there is a giant temple of consumerism right next to the performance hall, so we wandered around for a while. It's pretty intense: there's a mini-golf course, two carousels, a restaurant in an aquarium, and a small "train" to transport children and their parents around the mall.

The show was really fun. My absolute favorite moment was when one of the Riders in the Sky (whom I will always think of as "those singing cowboys") stood next to the emcee as the latter read a commercial. The cowboy plopped his hat onto the emcee's head and then began miming along to the commercial (like Donald O'Connor in "Moses Supposes"). I was very impressed that the emcee was able to keep a completely straight face and voice.

Our other favorites were "Little" Jimmy Dickens, who told hilarious jokes; Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, who are simply fantastic; and Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers. We were not particularly impressed with Vince Gill, who was by far the most popular performer with the audience.

21 June 2008

Depart: Nashville; Arrive: Charleston

After a day of driving (Joe took the first shift, I the second), we arrived at Joe's aunt's house in Charleston around 8 P.M. We said hi, unloaded our stuff, and then put on swimsuits and went to the beach. The sun had mostly set, and the beach was empty as we joyfully walked into the dark water. I kept laughing with delight as the waves hit me, so glad to be out of the car and in such a wonderful place. At 81 degrees, the water felt like bathwater, and the waves were gentle. We stayed in the ocean long after darkness fell.

After we finally dragged ourselves out of the water, we stopped at a beach bar for fried pickles and fried green tomatoes. A guy played acoustic covers of classic songs as we sat out on the patio, eating our fried food and grinning at each other, so happy to be there.

22 June 2008

Charleston

Breakfast with another aunt of Joe's, then a tour of Charleston with her (she knows a lot about the town and writes local history books). She left us and we wandered around town some more, admiring the beautiful old houses. I really love the live oaks. They're such perfectly southern trees, arching, covered in tiny ferns and dripping with Spanish moss.

The older (but not the oldest) houses have false front doors leading to double-decker verandahs looking out onto beautiful side-gardens. There are tiny alleys running by some of the houses for car access; we walked down them and gaped.

In the afternoon we went swimming. The sand on the beach is very fine. I loved watching the pelicans over the beach and over the city. They soared and I stood on the ground, wishing I could fly.

23 June 2008

Charleston

I woke up feeling ill, so the others went into the city in the morning without me. I felt better in the afternoon so they came to pick me up and we wandered around Charleston some more. Dinner with Joe's aunt at a Mexican place; we sat outside and managed to get up to leave the table just as the first drops of a huge thunderstorm began to fall. I drove us home in sheets of rain with terrible visibility. Our beach plans thwarted, we instead watched a compelling Japanese T.V. show called 'Ninja Warrior'. I watched lightning flash over the ocean as I fell asleep, occasional thunder growling long after the corresponding lightning bolt had silhouetted the palm trees.

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Est. 24.04.02
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Ostensibly © 2008 by Kyree.