Wow

You would not believe the number of people today who wanted to rush past us on the Parkway instead of slowing down and admiring the scenery. The nerve of those people roaring past us as we motored along. Some people have no sense of decorum. I was forced to think bad language in their direction several times.

We made our way slowly to Spruce Pine, NC today - home of Gem Mountain. Gem Mountain Rocks! We were a little more knowledgeable about the types of Gems this time - I know last time I repeatedly threw away all of the ugly brown stones, only to find out that they were actually rubies and garnets. Just goes to show you should never take anything for granite. Gneiss!

This time, out of the bagfull of cutable gems, we picked out a nice juicy emerald for me, and a garnet for Rob.

Other than that, for those who know where it is, we are now in Banner Elk, and are planning to get breakfast at Fred's on Beech Mountain before leaving tomorrow.

Uncomplications

As we picked up the Chrysler from Pate's (following a taxi-ride as unpleasant as this morning's was relaxing), we were informed by their receptionist that it is to Pate's that come all of North Carolina's old car owners with their carb problems. If this was golf, I think we just got a hole in one.

Complications

The nature of our trip - and my love of old cars - is such that the engine could have fallen out on the road yesterday after we carried the whole car on our backs down from the the peak of Mt. Pisgah, and I'd still be saying 'that's what you have to expect on a trip like this,' and 'it could have been worse.' I am going to rationalize away in advance the impact of any problem with the Chrysler because nothing about a a new vehicle replaces any part of the experience of driving an old one. Consequently, you should view nothing of what follows as whining. Because the engine didn't actually fall out and it's possible to coast down from Mt. Pisgah, if you have to. Which we didn't. It could have been worse.
Toward the end of our first day driving through Great Smoky Mountain National Park (hereafter if necessary GSMNP) we noticed the motor had an occasional hiccup on some of the upward slopes. By the next day, the hiccup was a somewhat more obvious hesitation on our trip to Clingman's dome (not a dome but an observation tower; dome refers to the mountain). Once down the mountain and into town in Cherokee however, we noted no problems at all.
But this was only reality following the dictates of narrative drama, pushing in the foreshadowing so that when we came to start our drive on the Parkway, we wouldn't have a look of total confusion on our face when the real problems started, and there would be no excuse for the audience to say 'where did that one come from?' There is a reason Scotty always remarks that he 'dinnae likes the way the wee mendacitron generators are behavin', Capt'n,' somewhere in act One; it is just the warming up of Kirk's Graceful Babe-o' the-Week AutoDump Feature (tm), and should be regarded as the Universe unfolding as planned.
We had barely started to climb up from GSMNP on the Parkway when it was obvious that the Chrysler was having problems with that misbegotten Thermoquad. Originally at the top of my list of things I wanted to fix on the Chrysler, this carburator had moved to the top position of Things About Which I can do Absolutely Nothing Because There is No Time Left list when the govenment neglected to get me my refund on a timely basis. And to tell the truth, the carb had actually performed well enough for every other bit of this trip so far, well enough that I can claim no rueful regret at leaving without fixing it. No 'I knew I shoulda...' here, unless it was an 'I knew I shoulda' lived in a place where they get me my money back at least half as fast as they'd be down my throat if they thought I owed it.'
A decade younger than the engine it sits on, the Thermoquad is festooned with all sorts of pollution control fittings that are blocked off or left open, intended for emission control devices undreamed of in 1966. Its electric choke is disconnected, which makes cold starts interesting, if by that you mean a thoroughgoing nuisance. But once it is running, and right up until yesterday, it peforms just fine and gets a respectable distance out of the premium gas that runs through it.
Now it coughed and gasped and wanted to lay down and die. Going uphill was too much for it and it wasn't having any fun, and everything was uphill and more trouble than it was worth. If it stalled, and it did, it didn't want very much to start again, and it accelerated the car only in the sense that we picked up speed in terms of half minutes, not seconds. In hindsight, this is where rational (not rationalizing) people would have turned around at the nearest overlook and gone back down to Cherokee and tried to find a garage that still fixed carbs. Did we do that? Nooooo, with as many oooo's as you want to add. We continued to limp onwards to Asheville, a distance of eighty miles or so. The idea of going back never occured to us.
The speed limit on the Parkway is 45 mph, and we found that if we could get close to it, the Chrysler would not stall. Unfortunately, 45 mph is a best possible speed, and the scenery, curves and sheer drops at the side of the road are such that most people savour the experience and stick to 30 mph or less, depending how all three of those factors add up on the Wow! scale. This means that they get in your way, usually at the moment at which the road starts to climb for eight miles. Going downhill was not a problem for the carb; it behaved here as if there was nothing at all wrong with it. Against expectation, the road went up more than it went down.
Jane drove for nearly all of this portion; her skills at keping the engine alive and the car on the road so surpass mine that I gladly dumped the task in her lap and sat in the passenger seat and admired the deep drop-offs next to the curves with no guard-rails. Or speculated aloud if required as to the intelligence, ancestry, upbringing and medical conditions of all those in front of us who slowed down to look. One regrettable result of this hurried dash was that we were passing some of the most outstanding scenery of our trip, unable to properly appreciate it or even pull over for a longer look. But as we passed Looking Glass Rock, we threw caution to the winds and stopped for a picture - the overlook was sloped downhill in the direction we were going - but did not shut the car off. (The Rock gets its name from the fact that under the right conditions, when it is covered with a fine layer of water, it will reflect acres of sunlight. On this day, it was merely a vast, impressive rock.)
We made it to Asheville, and the carb started to behave itself again, still following the laws of narrative drama. At our motel, we hooked up the computer, and found the yellow pages and between the two, started making calls in what I thought would be a drawn out and difficult job, trying to find a garage that knew what a carburator was. But the first place I tried recommended the garage at which we ended up; Pate's is the best place for carbs or anything else, according to the taxi driver, who drove us back for a measly $28.00 (ten mile drive, and he most definitely did not dawdle or take the long way). Finding Pate's garage was yesterday; we had the car to the garage at 0800 this morning and were told that there was a carb kit in Charlotte for the Thermoquad, and even as I type now, they are working on it. We await their call, and another expensive taxi ride with bated breath, or at least as bated as you get when you go back to the motel and sleep away the morning, and a good chunk of the afternoon.

Soft Bread, Cold Butter - Our Memories of Camping in the Great Smokey Mountains

There are times in ones life that create such poignant memories that one can look back over the careworn years and savour them. Although we were there for only two days, (well, one and a half really) we experienced a richness of culture and nature that will carry with us forever.


Take the brave and noble Cherokee Indians (they still refer to themselves that way, so don't gasp and huff and tell me they're Native Americans now). Visualize their humble and busy village of Cherokee, where they labour all day as stereotypes, some in full native garb, dancing native dances on plywood stages in front of clean cut American families. I doubt this has changed since the 1950's, and in fact the whole town has a distinctly mid 20th century feel to it. Here, the proud peoples of these mountains bravely trek their good in from Mexico and China to sell in "Authentic Indian" wooden shops. With genuine Indian Moccassins (from Minnesota and complete with plastic beads and soles), and real turquoise jewellery (one horrid arrowhead and some cheap rings) mixed in with plastic play tepees and drums for the kids.

The real town is behind the frontier type village, and consists of the usual mix of side split ranch-style homes with satellite dishes and pools, small houses and trailers that seem common to all of rural Kentucky, Tenesee and North Carolina that we have seen so far.

There are many signs that the Cherokee do in fact take their heritage very seriously. Street names, even in the out of tourist areas, are written in English and Cherokee, they are trying to preserve the language and culture and pass it down - it is an affluent area, and they have created their wealth from the ignorance and prejudices of middle America.

Smokemont campgrounds was actually a flat area between hills. Very few trees, although we did have a flowering tree by our tent. We had the Ocanaluftee river flowing about 10 metres away...

Yesterday, as Rob said, we started on the real McCormick flavoured part of the holiday. I will download yesterday's pictures, and leave it for him to post....

Day Three, Great Smokey Mountain

The problem with putting to computer the events of two days past after a day eventful in and of itself is that I am not certain that I will recall all or even the best of it. Once again, we drove on major highways only when we had to, and on twisting, hilly secondary roads everywhere we could. By 4:30 (1630 for those of us with 24 hr time on our watches) we were back on a major highway (66) of necessity, crawling through the rain in heavy traffic, in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. Pigeon Forge (or at least the section of it we saw) is a garish tourist trap designed to separate people from money as quickly and painlessly as possible, and if they can do it by catering to everyone's stereotype of mountain life and hillbillies, well that's just fine too. Dolly Parton, of Dolly Parton fame, has built Dollywood, an amusement park that cashes in on the fame of Dolly Parton; the major point of access to this promised land is in Pigeon Forge. In case this fact has escaped the weary traveller, there are plenty of billboards
to remedy that very thing.
Eventually the volume of traffic in Pigeon Forge and the next big city, Gatlinburg, fell away and we realized that nowhere near half of these people were headed to Great Smoky Mtn park to steal our camping spot and we relaxed. As we were crossing the park to camp on the North Carolina side, we had thirty miles of twisty, tree-shaded road with fantastic views and no sane reason to travel over 45 mph. The skies continued to be overcast through the park, and we took pictures of the clouds moving up the slopes and through the trees because we could.
We came, we saw, we camped. Yesterday we drove back into the park and then to an observation point at Clingman's dome. This is the site of the world's longest one-way, half-mile walk; coming back down is much faster and easier. For variation, we tried a short segment of the Appalacian Trail at the dome. More great views, more photos, of which one is included below.
This morning I had close look at a mountain farm display at the NC side of the park (Jane passed on the opportunity as there was a persistent odor of horse and a likelihood of allergy problems thereby). I can say that the concept of the lazy, shiftless hill-dweller is - if the sheer work necessary to survive on a farm like this one is taken into account - a total fabrication.
Then we started on the Parkway; and here begins complications enough to warrant a separate post later.

Day 2 - From a Day 3 point of view

Yesterday was split nearly evenly into pleasant and unpleasant driving, all of the latter being on the interstate, and all of the former off it. Rural Ohio is flat and interesting, with mostly straight roads; rural Kentucky seems to have sold all their flatness to Ohio and thrown in their straight roads just to seal the bargain. There is only one road per valley, with miles of double-line sections where you can't pass anything, and guard-rails only when it is obvious that a car hurtling over the edge would do a triple somersault before it landed. Well, a double at least; I should not exaggerate.
With the exception of a very nice 1953 Buick custom seen on the interstate, we are driving the oldest car on the road. The Chrysler is perfectly set up for long trips. Lack of air conditioning is not a problem. Air flow from floor vents, vent windows and having every window down at 60 mph is such that overheating is not possible. You won't see us with our feet hanging out the windows, trying to cool off and drive at the same time.
By sheer accident, we ended up at a resort at the top of Pine Mountain, in a room with a private balcony overlooking hundreds of acres of trees and nothing else. Jane has taken pictures of this, but breakfast is screaming at us to come and find it and eat so I doubt any pictures of the place will be posted until later. Later being the next time we find internet access, of course. In fact, I will have to cut this post short as I am likely to be breakfast; Jane is that hungry.

Above is actually a view from the balcony - (this is Jane/Mum now) and the view from the dining room in the lodge is here.

Starting Out - June 23rd

Naturally, nothing went as we had originally planned it. We didn't get on the road until 15:00, between one thing and another. With the car as tightly packed as it could go. I would show you the picture I took of the trunk, except that my new camera didn't seem to keep it. Here is one of the inside of the car though...

Our first official stop on tour - Tavistock Ontario! Wes and David are actually on tour with Dutch Boy (drum corps) and Wes, of course had forgotten some very vital things. We were lucky enought to get there just as they were going to start a run through of the show...

Most of my day was spent trying to get what I want out of my new camera. Upon learning that my medium format film is now almost impossible to get, I cried for a while, then bought a digital camera.

It is very, um, sharp. 10 Megapixel images etc..., but there are so many things I can't do! The worst part of it is that there is a delay from the time I spot the picture, to the time it takes it. This has resulted in untold numbers of perfect moments gone - do they make cameras without delays?

Toledo was lovely. I sneezed a lot while I was there, which we are putting down to the horse racing track across the road. Here is a picture from our romantic hide-a-way.

Almost Ready

This is a test to see how the whole 'blog thing works. I am not computer illiterate, I've just always been a little more at home with a dos prompt than a mouse - so creating a web anything this easily seems too much like magic.

Here we go...I am hitting the publish button....